|
Separating_Presentation_Content_and_Structure
| Separating Presentation, Content and Structure
The overall quality of the website quantifies its worth. It must
not only be unique, flashy or overwhelming, it should also be
functional, entertaining. It is not only there for display. Its
there for a purpose and it should serve that purpose. There are
three elements that make up the website –it’s the presentation,
content and structure. They are intertwined with each other to
create an awesome website.
The very reason why separation of presentation is necessary is
to simplify any alteration from a minor design adjustment to a
full-fledged redesign. In order to achieve this, isolation of
presentation from the rest should be completed. Isolation should
involve everything purposely and exclusively geared towards
style. This is not limited to CSS or a site like CSS Zen Garden.
It also includes HTML tags and properties that subsist only to
offer a handle for the designer to apply styles to.
Content is text which includes accompanying semantic coding. It
should not require any additional presentation tags or styles in
order to convey the message clearly. In isolated cases,
additional tags are necessary to present the content correctly.
The reason for the separation of content from the rest of the
page is to make adding and updating things easy while still
preserving the presentational consistency of the site.
Structure, on the other hand, is what makes up a page minus the
presentational elements and content. In theory, you can separate
content and structure. However, to be a functional site it is
advisable not to. Structure should not be separated from
presentation. Presentation depends on structure, however,
presentation should be separated. While main presentational
changes may require change in structure, content can be change
even without any need for structural change.
The perfect website separation system stores content in a
database to tolerate the isolation and management of content
information. Structure and presentation can be handled together
– presentation with the stylesheet and accompanying structural
elements when needed. Structure, on the other hand, is best
dealt with through a system of template package built using a
server-side scripting language like PHP or ASP. Each template
can have one or more stylesheets but every template package can
connect to the same with matching database to recover content
for display. Lots of content management systems provide varying
levels of this kind of support. Nonetheless, full-featured
templates systems that make CSS Zen Garden-like usage of
stylesheets are few and better.
About the author:
For additional information and comments about the article you
may log on to http://www.printingquotesonline.com
|
|
| |
| |
