1. Copenhagen, 6 June 2006 Modern Web standards in CHM portals Mădălina Sauca Finsiel Romania

2. 2 Web Accessibility  The site information must be accessible to:  all users, including users with physical, mental or technical disabilities  all types of devices (different browsers, PDAs and mobile phones, TVs, speech synthesizers, Braille interpreters, TVs, printers, etc.)  other web sites, web applications and search engines  WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) – guidelines discussing accessibility issues and providing accessible design solutions  There are three levels of conformance:  WAI A Conformance Level "A“ (used in CHM for administration functionalities)  WAI AA Conformance Level "Double-A" (used in CHM for end users interface)  WAI AAA Conformance Level "Triple-A“; the most strict

3. 3 Accessibility - Further reading  http://diveintoaccessibility.org/ http://diveintoaccessibility.org/  http://www.w3.org/WAI/ http://www.w3.org/WAI/  Full WAI standards description for all the three levels of conformance:  http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/complete.html http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/complete.html  http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/complete.html#ckl ist (check list) http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/complete.html#ckl ist

4. 4 Usability  Ensuring a “Easy to use” (or “User friendly”) interface supposes to:  improve the website navigation (ex: search, sitemap)  improve the user orientation within the site (ex: bread crumb trail)  improve user control and flexibility (ex: language option)

5. 5 Usability - Further reading  http://www.useit.com/ http://www.useit.com/  http://www.usableweb.com/ http://www.usableweb.com/

6. 6 Semantic HTML  “Semantic Web” refers to Machine-Understandable information  Semantically correct HTML is important - thinking on how applications (Google for instance) interpret it, more than how users view it  Use the proper HTML tags for certain types of information  use of, tags for headings, use of only for tabular information and NOT for the layout design... etc.

7. 7 Semantic HTML - Further reading  http://www.ermanz.govt.nz/news- events/archives/presentations/semantichtml.html http://www.ermanz.govt.nz/news- events/archives/presentations/semantichtml.html  http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

8. 8 XHTML (eXtensible Hyper Text Markup Language)  XHTML is a family of document types that reproduce and extend HTML4 and are XML-based  XHTML documents are XML conforming (is designed to work with XML-based user agents and can be validated using XML tools)  Can utilize applications (e.g. scripts and applets) that rely on  either the HTML Document Object Model  or the XML Document Object Model

9. 9 XHTML - Further reading  http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/  Validation service  http://validator.w3.org/http://validator.w3.org/

10. 10 CSS2  The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used for the graphical presentation of website layouts. Target! Complete separation of the structure from presentation – the CSS should have absolute control over the appearance. CSS level 2  is used in two major directions: for the elements positioning and for their stylization  builds on CSS1 and, with very few exceptions, all valid CSS1 style sheets are valid CSS2 style sheets  allows information to be presented differently according to the target media (screen, printer, handheld/mobile etc.) and to the client’s settings (alternative layouts, text browsers, etc.)

11. 11 CSS2 - Further reading  http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/ http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/  http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/  http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/  Validation service:  http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/