1 The Perfect CMS?

“But for a competent webmaster, building something like this from scratch can’t be all that hard. Can it?”

It’s not (too) hard and there are several examples out there:

Ryan Brill did it: http://www.infinitywebdesign.com/software/xbloglite/
Dunstan Orchard did it: http://www.1976design.com/blog/
I did it: http://urbanmainframe.com/

I’m sure there are many others.

posted at 06:00 am on May 14, 2004 by DarkBlue

2 hmm

Interesting article, but I was never really confused by this. I’ve always considered that I’m constructing the content; using the implied structure of the content.
For me, once I understood that it was a bad idea to do things like class=“blue”, I understood that I was trying to find the right markup for a document that already had implied markup. Using h1 and p is obvious, but it was more difficult to figure out navigation, or how to divide up the page and what comes first in the source.

I think that a big stumbling block can be that people don’t realize that your content needs to have an implied structure. Start there, with well written content.

I’m not exactly sure where the dilemma is though… http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=dilemma

and is it just me, or did we not come back to this thought I was told to hold “After all, what use is a .pageheader {…} declaration block if there is no element with that class on the page?”

posted at 06:12 am on May 14, 2004 by jim

3 Separation Anxiety

“And of course, if you want to get picky, you can consider the markup to also be a part of the presentation as well. After all, the browser has a preset way of displaying <h1> and text, doesn’t it?”

Actually, no. Modern browsers use an internal style sheet for the presentation of all elements. This style sheet is over-ridden by a user’s personal style sheet, and/or the style sheet referenced by a document.

But yes, the separation of style, content and behaviour are very important. Keeping them separate allows people with specific skills to operate on a site without fear of stomping on someone else’s work.

posted at 06:23 am on May 14, 2004 by CM Harrington

4 Nice but...

This article is like the new Prince album – just as you’re enjoying it, it suddenly stops. I felt there was no proper ending to it, no examples of what we should do. Instead the onus was put on the reader to carry out what is required. But how?

I am also left confused as to the relationship between content, structure and presentation. The article seems to suggest previous thought on the issue was wrong. Now I don’t know what to believe.

A good point about a header and a paragraph being already styled though. You’d have to make everything a paragraph to avoid that, then add code like class=“header” where you wanted the header. Which would be silly of course.

Or you could just use CSS to style everything to the same size, then restyle as necessary (which I’ve done before myself):

• {
  font-size:12px;
  font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;}
  font-weight:normal;
  }

That way headers and other tags are no longer pre-set by the browser. Hmmm…

My mind then thought of XML as the perfect solution. The browser would not style this, since it wouldn’t know what the tags meant, leaving us to add the style ourselves.

posted at 07:21 am on May 14, 2004 by Chris Hester

5 Nice Butt

I agree. I did not see the purpose in the article. It seems like I was reading the introductory chapter for a book on why to use CSS.

posted at 07:26 am on May 14, 2004 by Kim Siever

6 structure and content

Nice article, but:

—-QUOTE—-
Furthermore, I’ll show that it’s also pointless to try to separate structure from content.
—-

I’m not so sure about that. Sure structural tags give explicit meaning to content. But does that mean the content sitting in my database or text file is a hopeless jumble of letters and spaces? Should it not have an implicit meaning?

Like Jim stated, content should have an implied struture so that even without <hn>‘s and ‘s it can be dicerned. That’s the job of a talented writer and editor. So it comes down to well-written content, not just well-marked up code.

posted at 07:37 am on May 14, 2004 by Terrence

7 i'm sorrry...

…i read the article twice, but it’s a confused and confusing mess, in my humble opinion.
it seems to make the point that there’s not just presentation and content, but also structure. however, i would posit that structure is an inherent part of the content itself. or am i missing something?

Terrence wrote: “Like Jim stated, content should have an implied struture so that even without <hn>‘s and ‘s it can be dicerned. That’s the job of a talented writer and editor. So it comes down to well-written content, not just well-marked up code.”

discerned by what? a human reader? yes. any kind of user agent, assistive technology, search engine? well, they require it to be marked up properly.

altogether, a muddled mess of an article…

posted at 07:58 am on May 14, 2004 by Patrick H. Lauke

8 The perfect CMS? Probably not, but...

I think we have the closest thing out there in terms of what your article is suggesting. Pure separation of content/structure from presentation, xhtml strict templates by default, full css implementation, and an xhtml wysiwyg editor that understands and enforces xhtml strict. At an affordable price for designers. I challenge anyone to show me a system that allows them to build a standards compliant site faster than I can with Octane8.

If anyone would like an online test drive, drop me a line sblanchard@octigon.com

posted at 09:05 am on May 14, 2004 by Scott Blanchard

9 Content structure

—QUOTE Patrick H. Lauke—-
discerned by what? a human reader? yes. any kind of user agent, assistive technology, search engine? well, they require it to be marked up properly.
—-

Yes, by a human reader. And yes, screen readers, search engines, and the like need markup for interpretation.
But my main idea was that, although markup gives some structure to content, it doesn’t give content ALL of its structure.

As you said: “…structure is an inherent part of the content itself.”

posted at 09:06 am on May 14, 2004 by Terrence

10 Hello Blogger?

“However, full-featured template systems that make CSS Zen Garden-like usage of stylesheets — especially ones that come with a comprehensive content management system — are few and far between.”

Blogger comes to mind! Wordpress…
(though they are specialized tools)

posted at 10:13 am on May 14, 2004 by Mike P.

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