Web Design

In the migration from HTML web design to XML based design, why wouldn't one choose to skip XHTML and go straight to the source, cut the middle-man and code content in XML?

It may come as a surprise or shock to hear this, just when we all thought that XHTML was the happy in-between buggy, irregular and bad HTML, and the neat, orderly, structurally valid XML. Many web designers have come to like the comfort ease of use that one finds in HTML. Besides the short-comings of badly structured HTML and the mix of presentational and layout markup (Believe me, we all know some web designers who refuse to embrace semantic markup and CSS), we can all admit to have liked the forgiving nature of HTML.

It is not more or less a universally accepted fact that HTML 4.x and its predecessors are not future-compatible enough to be used in creating valid and stable web content that is accessible, and that stays faithful to the web content presentation architecture of separating content from design, from mark-up.

XHTML in its various flavours of Transitional, Strict, and to a lesser extent Frameset are quickly becoming the standard markup languages for web content. XHTML is a representation of XML, and when valid, it is as good as any other XML document that is built upon a valid DTD especially when well written, strict and valid.

Client-side XML

XML, the term and the technology is talk about and used almost everywhere. It is thought and talked about by everyone. It is now arguably the de-facto method for presenting and exchanging data between applications, disparate technologies and products. Most of the noise is being made about server-side or inter and intra-application interfacing. for client-side use, this is mostly installed applications.

Making a case for Client-side XML

As a subset of XML, XHTML by definition and characteristics complies with formatting and structural architecture of XML. Technically,XHTML is XML. It even has a DTD (Document Type Definition). If browsers support XHTML, the it supports XML. Through my trials and research, I have found that more browser versions support XML, than these that support CSS 2.x . It is ironic that CSS is more widely used than XML markup, yet they at least have the same support. It should therefore makes sense for anyone who prefers pure XML for markup to go ahead and markup his/her content in XML as opposed to XHTML, and much less in HTML.

This document is one of many that discuss the use of XML in Web Design

Drupal was selected as the ideal CMS infrastructure by the Recreational Services Department of Indiana University. The design team for this department had a clear vision, and an approved set of mock designs for the proposed website. The In-house content manager for Indiana University described the vision to include available functionality in Drupal, as well as customizations of existing modules to fit the specific website needs of the student, staff and alumni community. The presentation of content in this CMS setup was to be based on the already approved mocks (Adobe Photoshop files) with reasonable enhancements and accommodation for the specific needs of a CMS website.

iDonny Productions created a custom Drupal theme based on the approved designs provided by the client; with multiple content regions to enable the dynamic placement of content blocks depending on a predetermined logical relevance matching system.

NB: Although we always recommend the use of semantic XHTML markup without using tables for layout, the scope requirements for this site required the use of tables for basic layout to avoid differences in browser implementation of CSS-P positioning box models.

Indiana University Recreational Services Website