What is behind the new design of BalearWeb?

BalearWeb has started an important reform of all their web pages, to adapt them to the standards of XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) recommended by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). The aim is to offer greater accessibility and functionality to the system, an essential requisite for a portal based on contents and with much traffic.

The language XHTML is the new version of HTML and is designed to offer a greater accessibility to all kinds of platforms, including from PDAs and televisions, to the specialised browsers used by people with disabilities or the web spiders, such as the Google bot.

This new system separates the contents from the design via the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), allowing these pages to be read with and without al graphical presentation. All the tables that were used for layout, disappear making the source code much simpler and the pages download much quicker.

Very few webs in the Balearics and throughout the world have adapted to this system. The majority of government and written press have not followed yet the new standards recommended by the W3C, nor bear in mind the subject of accessibility.

The old navigators had many difficulties to interpret correctly the pages of the CSS style, but the recent versions that the majority of cybernauts use let the web master foresee more exactly the aspect that the web documents will have. It is possible that users with very old versions can see the page without any style, but even so, they will be able to access their contents.

For the moment, only the new front pages of MallorcaWeb in Catalan, Spanish, English and German have been put onto the Net. At present work is taking place to adapt the front pages of MenorcaWeb, EivissaWeb and FormenteraWeb, and also the search engine for webs and news and the remaining areas. All users are invited to communicate any defect they see in the web pages via the forum Table or CSS layout?

Date of publication: 23/03/2004

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