The Next Generation of Web Development
The Question
A question that gets thrown around a lot in the web development world is, "What's the next big thing and are we ready for it?" I believe the that next "big thing" is already here. It is a combination of truly semantic markup and the separation of data from design. To best understand this concept we should probably take a look at the history of the web to see how we've gotten to where we are now.
The Early Years
When the Internet first became accessible to the general public it was a mess. There were no standards for developers to work off of. Everyone was just kind of feeling around in the dark. The end result was generally a page with a bunch of tables and font tags all over the place telling individual things on each page how they should look. That was a great approach until we came to a point where we needed to redesign the site. First we had to figure out how to redesign the table structure, then we had to figure out how to move all of the content from one page design to another. Finally, if the colors or fonts changed, we had to go into every single page and update every single font tag to work the way we wanted it to. Needless to say, it was a agonizing and time consuming process.
The Current Years
After a little while the web community started realizing that standards were needed and that mixing tags that controlled look and feel with tags meant to define the structure of a page was just silly. The next step in the evolution of the web was to introduce Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and XHTML. XHTML forced a more strict version of HTML markup making it easier for multiple types of browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox to understand what we wanted them to do. CSS gave us the ability to define all of the "look and feel" elements of our site in an external file. In effect, it separated the "look and feel" component from the "Structure and Content" component. With CSS a redesign became much simpler. We just had to create a new stylesheet, maybe change a little bit of the overall structure and then move the content from one page to another. This was, and still is, a fairly time consuming prospect, but much better than what we had to work with in the past.
A New Beginning
We now come to a point where we are ready for another step in the evolution of web development. Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) is here and if we can bring ourselves to take a leap, it has the potential to change the way that the internet works. XSLT finally separates all three pieces of the puzzle: content, structure, appearance have all been separated from each other.
To be honest, the first time I read about this I thought "so what?" It turns out that this is a huge development. Imagien doing a redesign and not have to move your content at all to do it. The time savings would be enormous. That, however, is just scratching the surface. With proper use of XSLT you can use the exact same data in multiple different ways. If a person is using a cell phone to view your page, you can automatically change the structure of the page to match their needs. If the user wants to download a PDF of the page, you can use the exact same content and produce a PDF of the page. If you want to create a data driven Flash based virtual tour and are worried about accessibility, you don't have to any longer. You can use the XML content to be read into flash and then use XSLT to create an HTML page of the exact same content for people with screen readers.
In a Nutshell
The basic point is this. The data on a page generally doesn't change. What does change, is how people and different programs want to see that data. With XSLT you can easily reuse one piece of content for an unlimited number of applications and when you go to do a redesign in a few years it will be dramatically simpler.
A question that gets thrown around a lot in the web development world is, "What's the next big thing and are we ready for it?" I believe the that next "big thing" is already here. It is a combination of truly semantic markup and the separation of data from design. To best understand this concept we should probably take a look at the history of the web to see how we've gotten to where we are now.
The Early Years
When the Internet first became accessible to the general public it was a mess. There were no standards for developers to work off of. Everyone was just kind of feeling around in the dark. The end result was generally a page with a bunch of tables and font tags all over the place telling individual things on each page how they should look. That was a great approach until we came to a point where we needed to redesign the site. First we had to figure out how to redesign the table structure, then we had to figure out how to move all of the content from one page design to another. Finally, if the colors or fonts changed, we had to go into every single page and update every single font tag to work the way we wanted it to. Needless to say, it was a agonizing and time consuming process.
The Current Years
After a little while the web community started realizing that standards were needed and that mixing tags that controlled look and feel with tags meant to define the structure of a page was just silly. The next step in the evolution of the web was to introduce Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and XHTML. XHTML forced a more strict version of HTML markup making it easier for multiple types of browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox to understand what we wanted them to do. CSS gave us the ability to define all of the "look and feel" elements of our site in an external file. In effect, it separated the "look and feel" component from the "Structure and Content" component. With CSS a redesign became much simpler. We just had to create a new stylesheet, maybe change a little bit of the overall structure and then move the content from one page to another. This was, and still is, a fairly time consuming prospect, but much better than what we had to work with in the past.
A New Beginning
We now come to a point where we are ready for another step in the evolution of web development. Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) is here and if we can bring ourselves to take a leap, it has the potential to change the way that the internet works. XSLT finally separates all three pieces of the puzzle: content, structure, appearance have all been separated from each other.
To be honest, the first time I read about this I thought "so what?" It turns out that this is a huge development. Imagien doing a redesign and not have to move your content at all to do it. The time savings would be enormous. That, however, is just scratching the surface. With proper use of XSLT you can use the exact same data in multiple different ways. If a person is using a cell phone to view your page, you can automatically change the structure of the page to match their needs. If the user wants to download a PDF of the page, you can use the exact same content and produce a PDF of the page. If you want to create a data driven Flash based virtual tour and are worried about accessibility, you don't have to any longer. You can use the XML content to be read into flash and then use XSLT to create an HTML page of the exact same content for people with screen readers.
In a Nutshell
The basic point is this. The data on a page generally doesn't change. What does change, is how people and different programs want to see that data. With XSLT you can easily reuse one piece of content for an unlimited number of applications and when you go to do a redesign in a few years it will be dramatically simpler.
Comment
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Comment by Barbara Randazzo on February 12, 2009 at 12:46pm - Hi CJ, This is very interesting. It's nice to see that you are looking longterm for your clients. So many agencies statically give you what you ask for and don't design with future redesigns in mind. In such a techie area as this, lack of knowledge can get you in trouble and cost alot of money. Thanks, Barbara
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