Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) contain a set of rules about stylistic elements such as font-size, font-style, background color, and the positioning of text and images on a website. CSS is an important tool because it allows website designers to separate information about presentation of a website from its content. When a single CSS is applied to multiple HTML documents, CSS becomes a useful tool for branding a website. Amazon.co.uk utilizes a style sheet to create a unified look on its website. The same style sheet is applied to Amazon.com and Amazon.fr. Regardless of where you live, Amazon's website has the same look and feel. In this way, companies and organizations can use CSS as a marketing tool.
When a company like Amazon.com wants to implement a stylistic change to its website, the CSS can be altered and the update will be reflected immediately on every webpage linked to that style sheet. This simplifies the potentially daunting task of maintaining and revising a complex website.
CSS also address important issues of user accessibility on the web. Because a user can apply their own CSS to the websites she views, a visually impaired person can increase the font-size or a colorblind person can change the font-color so that they can access the information they seek.
While CSS is a powerful tool with many advantages, there are disadvantages as well. One of the most frustrating of these is that your CSS is not always interpreted the same way by every browser. You may spend a significant amount of time designing your CSS and when you open it in Firefox, it does not look the way you planned. It is important to test your CSS in multiple browsers and make adjustments to ensure that the site maintains a consistent look and feel.
I created two different CSS to apply to my websites.
My first CSS:
First
Index
Tea
My second CSS:
First
Index
Tea
Thursday 19 November 2009
Tuesday 3 November 2009
3.5 XML
MARC (MAchine-Readable Copy) was first developed in the 1960s.1 MARC set the standards for creating metadata about the bibliographic items in a library. The metadata is used to catalogue the items, to make information about these items available for searching by users, and to simplify the exchange of information between libraries.
Today, the international exchange of library catalogue information is facilitated by MARCXML, an XML language based on MARC21.2 MARC21 contains 5 types of data: bibliographic, authority, holdings, community, and classification data format; it has been adopted by "The British Library, the European Institutions, and the major library institutions in the United States and Canada."3 While MARC 21 was a step in the direction of worldwide library catalogue interoperability, MARCXML offers an even better solution. MARCXML was developed to allow "easy sharing of, and networked access to, bibliographic information" between library systems throughout the world.4 When library catalogue information is stored in MARCXML format, file conversion is lossless, the data is software independent and "flexible and extensible to allow users to work with MARC data in ways specific to their needs."5 Interoperability is crucial for the efficient functioning of the library of the 21st century.
I created a DTD to help a public librarian manage data about the acquisition of books for the library collection. My DTD specifies the following information: the title of the book, the author, ISBN, the cost of the item, the number of items to order, and if the item has been ordered. I then created an XML markup to represent the DTD.
While XML offers many opportunities to the field of librarianship, it is important to note that "relatively few current browsers are able to interpret it" (Lecture Notes, Session 5). As XML-compatible browsers develop, the potential of XML will increasingly be realized.
Today, the international exchange of library catalogue information is facilitated by MARCXML, an XML language based on MARC21.2 MARC21 contains 5 types of data: bibliographic, authority, holdings, community, and classification data format; it has been adopted by "The British Library, the European Institutions, and the major library institutions in the United States and Canada."3 While MARC 21 was a step in the direction of worldwide library catalogue interoperability, MARCXML offers an even better solution. MARCXML was developed to allow "easy sharing of, and networked access to, bibliographic information" between library systems throughout the world.4 When library catalogue information is stored in MARCXML format, file conversion is lossless, the data is software independent and "flexible and extensible to allow users to work with MARC data in ways specific to their needs."5 Interoperability is crucial for the efficient functioning of the library of the 21st century.
I created a DTD to help a public librarian manage data about the acquisition of books for the library collection. My DTD specifies the following information: the title of the book, the author, ISBN, the cost of the item, the number of items to order, and if the item has been ordered. I then created an XML markup to represent the DTD.
While XML offers many opportunities to the field of librarianship, it is important to note that "relatively few current browsers are able to interpret it" (Lecture Notes, Session 5). As XML-compatible browsers develop, the potential of XML will increasingly be realized.
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