Website Development

I was having an interesting conversation today regarding POSH with a colleague during the development of a back-end system. Over the years, we have both detached ourselves from the mind-set/methodology of using tables for layout in our markup (generally speaking - properly separating content from presentation). Although, towards the end of the conversation, we delved into the use of Microformats to further semantically markup items such as contact information and mailing addresses, and my colleague brought up an interesting assumption that he made regarding use of the class=”" on HTML markup to Microformat it. Essentially with this assumption, he concluded that applying CSS was the sole purpose of the class attribute and therefore applying classes to the markup only to get the data microformatted was the same as using the “table” tag to layout a page.

Now, I voluntarily teach a class covering semantic markup of HTML and applied CSS. A good number of the students traditionally in attendance are those that are still familiar with the “old school” markup techniques (and fresh out of college, no less). I have yet to have a student or another colleague have the same assumption, but I can clearly see now how that could be concluded without a proper education, so I am putting this out there educationally to help others with a similar assumption.

Here is what I quickly found on the topic to help him understand the “old school” way is not being duplicated again by “presentationally” applying classes to markup to solely “format” it. The first two seem a little light in their description though, so this has spurred my colleague to seek out what those “other” straight-forward uses of the class attribute are. What do you know of? Drop me a line and let me know.

• W3C - says For general purpose processing by user agents
• Web Design Group says An author could use <code CLASS=Java> when giving Java code - so use for self-identification in programming or further development
• Tantek’s Blog - some other things to note

In anything, it is of course easier to learn good habits early on than to unlearn a bunch of bad habits later - though it was still funny when I was two and Dad spent weeks teaching me that the word for absolutely everything was “helicopter” (pronounced “he’we-copper” in the vernacular of the age deficient) in preparation for Christmas dinner and the rest of my family’s amusement. For those of you who wish to learn good habits in Web development from the beginning without all the nifty soul-crushing humiliation, the Cleveland Web Standards Association is starting a regular study group for people with zero to intermediate developer knowledge (see what I did there, ending the opening paragraph with the actual topic sentence? Inverted pyramid be damned).

Once again, the CWSA has done a better job of describing their event than I can so please check here for details. I will say that the initial meeting is a two-parter, the first part of which was actually last Sunday, but you can still make it to the concluding meeting this Sunday, February 24^th at 5:00pm at Caribou Coffee in Rocky River.Why would I fail to post this before the initial meeting? Because I can’t just sit here being focused and vigilant all day on the off-chance that someone somewhere decides to schedule something. I have things to do, people. Important things. Like partaking in intense psychotherapy over the whole helicopter incident.

Beginner developers should also check out the TKG Institute, our ongoing evening program here at The Karcher Group for teaching developer basics tothe youth of Northeast Ohio that are in to that kind of thing.