Class 06: Logical vs. Physical Formatting, Revisited

Held Tuesday, February 1, 2000

Overview

Today, we conclude our investigations of hypertext, HTML, and the World Wide Web by revisiting the question of ``What is hypertext?'' along with the related question of ``Why is hypertext?''. We also consider style sheets and logical formatting.

Question 6 for today's class: Do cascading style sheets better support readers or authors?

Question 7 for tomorrow's class: Unambiguously describe how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Notes

• A few of you sent me some notes about discussion. Believe it or not, I am purposefully trying to ask questions that don't have easy answers from the readings. We may shift chairs to make discussion easier.
• The Bush and Maso pieces were to inform your consideration of hypertext, its purposes, and even its presentation. We'll try to bring them into the discussion today.
• Jae notes that Christy Sheffield, a visual poet, makes some interesting use of hypertext. You can find her site at http://gnv.fdt.net/~christys/
• I've forwarded Risks digest 20.77. I'd like a short note on one thing you found interesting in the digest.
• An interesting note taken from today's Internet World News. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the link to work before class. You can also try http://www.internetworldnews.com/idx_article.asp?inc=011500/1.15decon&issue=1.15

  Who Should Control Type Size? Internet World's Deconstructing columnist Jakob Nielsen takes sportswear site Boo.com to task in the Jan. 15 issue for robbing Web surfers of their ability to control the font and type size on their screen. He also faults Boo.com for having a difficult navigation scheme and for launching a series of windows that clutter a user's desktop. Read Nielsen's review and one by Jennifer Fleming by going to http://www.internetworldnews.com/POV and then let us know whether you think it is smart for developers to take control of users' experiences on a Web site.

• Read Dewdney 1 (Algorithms), 17 (The Random Access Machine), and 48 (The SCRAM) for tomorrow. No, you are not expected to understand everything.

Contents

• What is hypertext? Revisited
• Who controls appearance?
• How do we indicate styles?

Summary

• What is hypertext, revisited?
  • Why is hypertext?
• Logical formatting, revisited
  • Who should control the appearance of a document?
• Problem: How do you add appearance to HTML?
• Handouts:
  • Styles laboratory
  • Your answers to question 6: Do cascading style sheets better support readers or authors?
  • Raman, T. V. (March 1997) ``Netsurfing Without a Monitor''. Scientific American.

What is hypertext? Revisited

• As we did on the first day we discussed hypertext, let's separate the notion of hypertext from our concept of the World Wide Web.
• What do Maso and Bush tell us about what hypertext is (or can be)?
• What do they tell us about why we have (or perhaps need) hypertext?

Who controls appearance?

• Do the first part of the styles laboratory (up to the first discussion).
• As you've seen, readers can have some control of the appearance of Web pages.
• People have very different preferences for reading text.
• One of the more interesting differences is serif vs. sans serif fonts.
  • Americans tend to prefer serif fonts (and some American researchers claim that such fonts are more readable)
  • Europeans tend to prefer sans serif fonts (and some European researchers claim that such fonts are more readable)
• Others have different preferences for font size
• Of course, another difference is visual vs. auditory. You may want to consider the Raman article in the list of virtual handouts.
• Do the first part of the styles laboratory (up to the first discussion).
• Can you envision a way in which readers could control styles?

How do we indicate styles?

• As the Web grew, the architects of the Web (a group which had grown beyond Tim Berners-Lee) needed to find a way to add new facilities.
• Some requirements
  • New Web pages should still work reasonably in old Web browsers
  • Need to support graphic artists who want more visual capabilties
  • Need to support users who want control over appearance
  • Need to support better information retrieval
  • ...
• How can we do all this?
• The CSS solution:
  • Allow page authors to add logical categories to existing tags. (Not just "This is a paragraph" but "This is a paragraph that serves as the abstract")
  • Separate style sheets assign an appearance to these somewhat logically marked pieces.
  • Two new tags, <span> and <div>, serve as generic tags for different size pieces of text.
  • Readers and authors can specify style sheets.