The Start Of Website Design And CSS

In the long history of web design practice, use of style sheet languages such as Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, has greatly revolutionized the way professionals create and design websites. It has not only made design easier, but also made it easier for web professionals to edit their websites effectively and systematically. But before stylesheet language became popular, the use of tables and spacers known to be the only way for graphic artists to check each element found in a website.

Beginning of website design

The Internet was not always a medium for mass media, as we have grown to know. Internet was used previously for the sole purpose of exchanging information and research notes simultaneously worldwide. But when the Internet expanded to accommodate a more wider media, particularly in advertising and marketing people were looking for ways on how to control the elements contained in the website, so it looks more attractive from a user perspective.

One of the many methods used by graphic designers to control the elements contained in a website is through the use of tables. Tables and spacers, which are normally transparent single pixel GIF images with explicitly specified width and height, has been widely used in web pages to control its visual appearance. But even if it did websites more appealing and organized, using tables and spacers caused more problems with a website's accessibility.

Unlike today's Internet connections, which could go to as high as 45Mbps, Internet speed in the past could only go as high as a dial-up does. The use of tables and spacers made it harder for people to open web pages, because tables made major websites. Many websites are designed with tables nested within tables, resulting in large HTML documents that use more bandwidth than documents with simpler formatting.

According to many experts, Web design Philippines, where a table-based layout is linear, can, for example, when parsed by a screen reader or a search engine, the resulting sequence content to be a little messy and confusing.

Eventually it was the use of the Web fallen steadily and people now sought ways on how to manipulate elements within a Web page without using tables. It is also the time, table less website design was a popular idea.

The introduction of the style sheet language

Style sheet language was then introduced into the market that promised to offer a way for graphic designers and web professionals to create websites without using tables and spacers. Before CSS were introduced in the market were several other computer languages used like DSSSL and Foci.

DSSSL Document Style Semantics and Specification Language and is a computer language first used to specify style sheets for SGML which was eventually converted to XML. SGML contains information in machine-readable but not very human-readable format. A "style sheet" is used to present the information stored in SGML in a more convenient or accessible way. This is why it was eventually used in XML as an alternative to the use of tables. And like the DSSSL are Foci. Foci or Formatting Output Specification Instance is also a computer language used for SGML which was also eventually used for XML.

Even DSSSL and Foci became popular as an alternative to tables and spacers, many people still make it inappropriate. Eventually CSS introduced in the market, giving more effective means to check a Web page visual appearance. The advantage of using CSS to DSSSL and Foci is that CSS allowed a document style to be influenced by several style sheets.

According to the Web design Philippines specialists, a style sheet can inherit or "cascade" from one another, allowing a mixture of stylistic preferences controlled equally by the site designer and user. CSS is the only style sheet language is called "the table less website design".

Other style sheet language used in the market

Other than CSS, DSSSL, and Foci, there have also been other style sheet languages were introduced in the network. XSL, CSS 'largest competitor in the market is also one of the most popularly used style sheet language market. Similar to CSS, XSL is also a default style sheet language, together with DSSSL. But even if CSS is known as the most popular style sheet language used today in the market, many said that XSL possessing characteristics that are not found in CSS.

The advantage of XSL from CSS

XSL, or Extensible Style sheet Language is a term used to define a family of style sheet languages. Some of the most popular style sheet language is the XSL-FO and XSL Formatting Objects and XSLT or XSL Transformations.

According to many Web design Philippines experts when these two types of XSL, XSLT and XSL-FO, are combined, it creates a powerful styling language. XSLT, which is a Turing language, shows a power and flexibility not found in CSS. And finally, XSLT is capable of creating content, such as automatically create a table of contents only from chapters in a book, or remove / select content, such as only to generate a glossary from a book.

Another is that compared with CSS, XSL-FO document stands alone. CSS modifies a document attached to it while the XSL-FO document contains all the content to be presented in a pure presentation format. It has a wide range of specification options for paged formatting and higher-quality typography.

Disadvantage of XSL from CSS

But although the combination of XSLT and XSL-FO provides a powerful styling language, many found it much more complicated than CSS. The complexity of XSL-FO is also a problem. This is due to implement a FOR processor is very difficult. CSS implementations in Web browsers are still not completely compatible with each other, and it is much simpler than writing a FOR processor.