University identity
The university has formal identity standards for use in various media; these are specified in the Identity Standards booklet [PDF]. Web authors are required to abide by these standards, and to follow guidelines for use of the university logo.
Code standards
The university produces its pages using semantic-based extensible Hypertext Markup Language (xHTML) for content and cascading style sheets (CSS) for layout and formatting.
A standards-compliant website
Top-level, institutional sections of the site are standards compliant pages, which means that they are made without tables but use CSS to provide layout. The web staff are available to work with units and departments to create standards compliant sites.
Using CSS, rather than HTML tables, for layout has several advantages:
- It separates the content from the format, which makes future format changes easier and allows non-technical people to edit the content.
- Different style sheets for the same content can be created and automatically detected, so that information will display properly in all browsers, and on all hardware (including tiny screens, such as cell phones and PDAs).
- It meets the requirements of Section 508 for accessibility across platforms, browsers and devices.
- It reduces bandwidth demands considerably, as styles and formats are cached after the first page is viewed, and one style file works for many pages.
- It makes a content management system a real possibility, since a CMS requires that content (data) be separate from formatting and layout specifications.
For detailed information about standards-compliant websites, visit these sites:
- A List Apart: Why Don't You Code for Netscape
- A List Apart: To Hell with Bad Browsers
- Netscape DevEdge Redesigns As Standards Showcase
- ESPN Conversion to standards-compliant design
- Jeffery Zeldman: Daily Report
- Eric Meyer: CSS Edge
In terms of web authoring, CSS layout replaces table-based layout. A great place to start is the article A Roadmap to Standards. The university supplied templates help to eliminate some of the learning curve by providing basic layout and styles.
The Campus Web Council of Wisconsin (CWCW, the UW-System webmaster's group), is in full support of campus migration toward standards compliance.