Presentation Issues on the Web 2004

1
Presentation Issues on the Web2004

• William J. Bill McCalpin
• EDP, CDIA, MIT, LIT
• Xplor Tri-State Chapter
• May 18, 2004

2
About MHE

• MHE is the print2image2Internet consulting firm
• MHEs principals have nearly 40 years of
  experience in electronic print streams, in taking
  electronic print streams to imaging systems, and
  now in taking legacy information to the Internet
• See http//www.mhe-consulting.com

3
About the Speaker

• William J. Bill McCalpin is a principal at MHE
• Mr. McCalpin was the first - and for years the
  only - person in the world to have the MIT, LIT,
  CDIA, and EDP designations
• Mr. McCalpin has held numerous offices at Xplor
  and AIIM, including Chair of the Accreditation
  Committee for AIIM and Board member/Treasurer for
  Xplor

4
About the Speaker (cont.)

• Mr. McCalpin has held a number of technical and
  management roles in the industry, including VP of
  Product Marketing at Xenos and General Manager of
  Xplor International.
• Mr. McCalpin is a frequent speaker at both AIIM
  and Xplor

5
The Two Types of Presentation Architectures
6
Presentation Methodologies

• Author-centric
• Reader-centric
• Author-centric means that the author controls
  100 of the presentation
• Reader-centric means that the reader controls
  much of the presentation

7
Print Presentation

• All traditional printing - offset and electronic
  - offers an author-centric presentation
  methodology.
• The Internet offers the possibility of a
  reader-centric presentation methodology
• On the Internet, the amount of control that the
  reader has over the presentation varies from a
  little to a lot

8
Author-centric Architectures

• AFP, Metacode/DJDE, PCL, Postscript, line data,
  XES/UDK...and so on...
• PDF(!) - despite its electronic nature, PDF is,
  for all practical purpose, an electronic print
  architecture
• Note that all of these architectures are
  proprietary in nature - yes, even PPML, which is
  XML around print objects

9
Reader-centric architectures

• SGML
• HTML
• XML
• All of these formats rely on the premise that the
  composition is not completed until the data is
  actually displayed on a screen
• Note that these architectures are all widely
  accepted standards

10
XML And SGML

• XML is eXtensible Markup Language
• XML is an instance of SGML, Standard Generalized
  Markup Language, an ISO standard (ISO 8879)
• XML is extensible because people and
  enterprises with common interests get together to
  define the tags which describe their data

11
XML and HTML

• HTML is a tagged language, but the tags are 40 or
  50 grammatical tags like ltpgt or lth1gt
• XML is a tagged language, and the tags are
  (usually) created and agreed to by domains or
  vertical industry segments. E.g. ltaccount_numbergt
  or ltcitygt

12
Three Parts of an XML Document
Tagged Data (in XML)
Tag Definitions (in DTD or Schema)
Presentation (in XSL or CSS)
13
The XML Document

• Data - data values bounded by XML tags
• Presentation
• CSS - Cascading Style Sheets, like for HTML
• XSL - format information in XML
• Tag Definitions
• DTD - Document Type Definitions - old SGML
  definition
• Schema - definitions in XML

14
Data In the XML Document

• Data is the purpose of an XML document
• Each piece of data is specifically identified by
  a tag
• Data is organized because the tags match patterns
  in the DTD or Schema
• An example of data in XML

15
Data Example in XML

• ltAUTHORgt
• ltNAMEgtWilliam J. "Bill" McCalpin, EDPP,
  CDIA, MIT, LITlt/NAMEgt
• ltJOBTITLEgtPrincipallt/JOBTITLEgt
• ltAFFILIATIONgtMHElt/AFFILIATIONgt
• ltADDRESSgt
• ltSTREETgt1400 Cheyenne
  Dr.lt/STREETgt
• ltCITYgtRichardsonlt/CITYgt
• ltSTATEgtTexaslt/STATEgt
• ltZIPCODEgt75080lt/ZIPCODEgt
• ltEMAILgtmccalpin_at_mhe-consulting.com
  lt/EMAILgt
• lt/ADDRESSgt
• lt/AUTHORgt

16
Presentation in XML

• Tags in XML dont have natural formatting (unlike
  HTML), so if presentation is needed, it must be
  explicitly defined
• CSS can be used for HTML and XML
• XSL can be parsed by an XML parser, and it can be
  used by XML and XSLT
• XSL example

17
Presentation Example

• lt?xml version"1.0"?gt
• ltxslstylesheet xmlnsxsl"http//www.w3.org/TR/WD
  -xsl"gt
• ltxsltemplate match"author"gt
• ltTABLE WIDTH"100" BORDER"1" CELLSPACING"0...
  ltTRgt
• ltTD COLSPAN"2"gt
• ltTABLE WIDTH"100" BORDER"1"
  CELLSPACING"0...
• ltFONT COLOR"000000"gtltxslvalue-of
  select"name"/gtlt/FONTgt
• lt/TDgt
• ...
• lt/xsltemplategt
• lt/xslstylesheetgt

18
Why Two Style Sheet Languages?
19
DTD/Schema in XML

• The DTD is the old (SGML) way of defining not
  only what tags are valid, but their relative
  order, number, mandatory/optional attributes, and
  so on
• The Schema is a total rewrite - written in XML
  itself - which defines all of the above as well
  as possible legal values for a tag (e.g.,
  integer, date, days of the week, etc.)

20
Schema Example

• lt?xml version"1.0"?gt
• ltSchema name"sample_schema" ...gt
• ...
• lt!-- Element Types --gt
• lt!-- data --gt
• ltElementType name"author"gt
• ltelement type"name" minOccurs"1"
  maxOccurs"1"/gt
• lt/ElementTypegt
• ...
• lt/Schemagt

21
Important Fact

• A primary difference between print architectures
  and XML is that XML fully separates content from
  presentation

22
Implications of Important Fact

• The author does not necessarily determine the
  presentation when the content is created - hence
  the possibility of reader-centric content
• In XML, the content can be presented in a variety
  of ways on a variety of media
• The reader now chooses the media, not the author
  - e.g. web page, email, hand-held, voice, and so
  on

23
The User Chooses the Browser

• The reader chooses the browser with which the
  document is read
• This may be Netscape, Internet Explorer, Opera,
  or something else
• This may ALSO be a current copy or an old copy of
  the browser
• So even the simple case may look different...

24
Netscape, Normal
25
IE, Normal
26
Old Copies of Browsers

• The standard in HTML is to display as much of the
  page as possible
• That is, if the browser cannot understand some
  presentation commands, it displays what it can
  and ignores the rest - as opposed to failing with
  an error message
• Furthermore, you cant tell all your users that
  they MUST use a certain release of the browser!

27
Netscape 7.1
28
Netscape 4.7
29
Choosing Initial Layout

• The author can code for any size display, or
  make choices that optimizes one size
• If the author codes for any size, then he/she has
  less control over the exact layout
• If the author codes for one size, then other
  readers will not see on first blush what the
  author intended

30
Netscape, Normal
31
Netscape, Normal Settings
32
Changing Font Size

• With an aging population, changing the default
  font size may be the first thing that the reader
  does
• All browsers permit the reader to override the
  authors choice of font
• However, text in graphics will not change

33
Changing Font Size
34
Netscape, Normal Settings
35
Netscape, Large Print
36
Browser Accessibility

• Readers of Web pages can have visual acuity
  issues
• The reader may choose to suppress the authors
  choices of font, font size, color, and so on
• This can lead to significant page elements
  disappearing

37
IE, Accessibility Panel
38
Netscape, Normal
39
Netscape, Accessibility
40
Netscape, Normal
41
IE, Accessibility
42
IE, Normal
43
IE, Accessibility
44
The Opportunity of Color

• What we didnt have to worry about before

45
Color But No Communication

• About 8 of all males and about ½ of all females
  have some sort of color deficit.
• This translates to more than 11 million
  Americans, and more than a quarter billion people
  worldwide.
• Thus, a company that is sensitive to its
  customers with disabilities must consider
  colorblindness whenever it uses color.

46
Ishihara Test
47
Using Color

• A person with color vision sees hats with 5
  separate colors yellow, red, green, magenta, and
  blue
• Suppose as part of your color marketing piece,
  you asked the customer to pick the red hat?

48
Deuteranopia

• A person with deuteranopia (the most common
  red/green colorblindness) may see yellow,
  brownish, brownish, dark brownish, and blue
• If you asked your customer to pick the red hat,
  what would he/she do?

49
Daltonize

• Stanford University came up with a way to enhance
  photos for (some) colorblind especially those
  with deuteranopia.
• This process is called to daltonize.
• Daltonize was named after John Dalton, the
  person who first wrote about colorblindness in
  1794.

50
Full Color

• The photo on the right shows a merchant with 5
  colors of produce in front of him and to his
  left.
• The produce is orange, yellow, red, green, and
  red.

51
Deuteranopia

• However, someone with deuteranopia cannot readily
  discern the red and green produce.
• If the shape does not provide enough of a clue,
  then it appears that there are only 3 types of
  produce here.

52
Daltonize

• Using the Stanford algorithms, the red and green
  objects are altered so that there is a noticeable
  contrast, and 5 different items reappear.
• You can do this by visiting www.vischeck.com

53
Standards

• In the Spring 2000 issue of Xploration, Elisabeth
  Gooding of APT noted that one of the differences
  between print and the Web was that the Web had
  ability to extend brand with color, sound,
  animation.
• But now, print has the ability to match brand
  color, even with variable data.

54
Standards

• Thus, print people can learn from Web people the
  best practices for print and color
• For example, there is a W3C standard Web Content
  Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, which become a
  Recommendation (i.e., standard) on 5-May-1999.
• One guideline is to never rely on color alone to
  communicate information.

55
Standards

• 2.1 Ensure that all information conveyed with
  color is also available without color, for
  example from context or markup.
• 2.2 Ensure that foreground and background color
  combinations provide sufficient contrast when
  viewed by someone having color deficits or when
  viewed on a black and white screen.
• For example, when asking for input from users, do
  not write "Please select an item from those
  listed in green."

56
US Government

• In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act
  to require Federal agencies to make their
  electronic and information technology accessible
  to people with disabilities.
• This is covered under Section 508
• See http//www.section508.gov/

57
Summary

• On the Web, you no longer control 100 of the
  presentation, unless you use PDF
• It will be difficult to code pages for every
  circumstance
• Ask yourself Do I expect the reader to print
  this page, and do I care what it looks like?

58
A Final Note

• The World Wide Consortium (www.w3c.org) is the
  standards body for the generic protocols of XML,
  such as XML syntax itself, XSL, RDF, etc.
• Most domain or vertically centric XML
  definitions are supported by the verticals
  themselves, e.g., CML, GEML (Gene Expression
  Markup Language), etc.

59
Footnotes

• All the slides related to colorblindness
  including the photos are from www.vischeck.com
• The information on the W3C (World Wide Web
  Consortium) on accessibility standards can be
  found at http//www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

60
Contact Information

• William J. Bill McCalpin
• MIT, LIT, CDIA, EDP
• Principal
• MHE
• 1400 Cheyenne Dr.
• Richardson, Texas 75080-3921 USA
• [phone] (v) [phone] (f)
• mccalpin_at_mhe-consulting.com
• www.mhe-consulting.com