| 2.1.25 HTML Direction | | HTML-5 is the world standard for all web pages and most documents, but do not confuse a web page with a business document. A web page does not need to look like a business document and a business document does not need to look like a web page. | | HTML-5 training materials tend to try to cover 100% of the standard, while in practice, only 20% is needed for web pages and a different 20% for business documents - leaving 40% that does not need to be learned. Simplification is paramount and to stick with a core of basic elements is good practice. |
| Purpose | | The purpose of a web site can make a dramatic difference in how it is designed. Public web sites like Wikipedia must include citations, links and references with footnotes and evidence. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very special when a fact is to be published for the whole world to review and critique. Public SEO may take benefit from "H1" and "EM" elements that have no benefit to business applications. | | Private business applications have a very different purpose where the web page source code does not need to be human readable - it needs to be minimized. It is easy to confuse the source code standards used for public web pages with those used for private web pages that do not need SEO. |
| Web Page Design | | Web pages have a consistent layout that is defined by nested tables (not by divisions). For example; a business application may employ a common web page layout based on: | | Each web page has 4 tables as: | 1. Header
2. Menu Bar
3. Body
4. Footer | | The Menu table may have up to 10 optional images and text where each image is a link to a different web page. | | The Body table may have up to 3 optional columns as: | 1. Left
2. Center
3. Right | | The Left and Right tables may contain any number of Gadgets where each Gadget is an image and/or text. | | The Center table may contain any number of columns and each column contains any number of Topics where a Topic is an image and/or text. |
| Content Management | | The above design creates containers for Articles as Gadgets, Menu bars and Topics where each Article is an optional image and/or some blocks of text. Online forms are used to store all Articles in the database where they can be easily edited, searched and extracted for presentation in as part of any web page. This is known as the (eBay-like) Content Management technique for all web page design. Text may be stored in any language to match the readers selected requirement. |
| | | Business Document Design | | Business Documents are designed to be printed or represented as pages of a book. This has a critical fixed size design to match a target print area that may be expressed in millimetres and points. | | Each Business Document is a series of sections containing paragraphs where each paragraph is one or more sentences. Tables may be imbedded as part of a section to represent data in a tabular (or left and right) layout. | | Some Business Document are closer to a spreadsheet than a book and so tables may dominate the content of each section. A business document can include print break elements and should be designed for an approved print area of say A4 paper using 10 point font. |
| Class Library | | A reusable CSS style sheet is provided to help design all business documents. This provides classes for normal headings, paragraphs and lists, together with a bunch of typical tables. A three column table enables data to be presented to the left, center and right in any row - invoice data tends to use just the left and right columns. A four column table enables data to be presented in two label and value pairs in any row. | | Common formatting rules for addresses and the placement of logos are also built into the business document class library. Colour and backgrounds may not play a major part of business documents as many documents need to be readable when sent to a mono (black) printer. |
| Content Management | | A business document has a fixed page of text and images with placeholders where variable data is inserted. This should not be confused with management information and reports that are tabullar with 90% of the data taken from the database. | | A business document begins life as a template HTML document using any human language. Placeholders define where variable data needs to be inserted. but the total variable data in a business document tends to be less than 40%. | | Business document templates can be edited online and changed in real time by authorized people. Version control of business documents is provided by naming conventions - new versions of a business document have a different name to older versions. |
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