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This style manual developed as an outgrowth of our own World
Wide Web (Web) development projects. It reflects our attempts to apply
some of the lessons we've learned in twelve years of multimedia software
design, graphic interface design, and book design to the new medium of Web
pages and site design. There are fine existing Web sites and books that
emphasize Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and others that emphasize
commercial and art-oriented Web graphic design. However, few existing
resources have attempted to approach Web page and site design as a
challenge that combines traditional editorial approaches to documents with
graphic design, user interface design, information design, and the
technical authoring skills required to optimize the HTML code, graphics,
and text within Web pages.
What this manual is not
Our approach to both the
HTML language and the general problem of information design in World Wide
Web systems is not grounded in the philosophy that drives the development
of structured information publishing tools like HTML's parent language,
SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language). The advice here is aimed at
the practical concerns of bending and adapting a relatively primitive
authoring and layout tool (HTML) to purposes it was never really intended
to serve (graphic page design). If you are interested in the larger
questions of publishing in highly structured systems that are independent
of browser software, operating systems, or typographic restrictions you
might want to begin with the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web site,
which lists many technical and historic references related to the
development of structured text, and material on the history of the
Web.
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A
note about web browsers
Most of the design advice and technical
information contained here on optimizing graphics in Web pages is tailored
to recent versions (2.0 or later) of both Netscape Navigator and
Microsoft's Internet Explorer. There is little here of benefit to users of
text-based Web browsers, as the primary focus of this manual is on graphic
page design.
References
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