W3C recommends that content is kept separate from layout and stylistic
elements as much as is possible. This is achieved using fairly simple
structural HTML (headers, divs, paragraphs, images, links etc.) for
marking up the content. Tables should never be used purely for layout
purposes.

The HTML head should contain links to CSS, Cascading Style Sheets (not
to be confused with XSLT stylesheets!) allowing the browser to apply
styles. This also provides capability for applying media specific styles
(e.g. for screen, printers, mobile devices etc.)

If you used this approach for styling, the CSS would be applicable to
your hand created HTML to begin with, and would be reusable if HTML were
to be dynamically generated using XSLT at a later date.

Hope this helps

--
John Harrison

Special Collections and Archives
University of Liverpool Library
Chatham Street, PO Box 123, Liverpool, L693DA
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w: sca.lib.liv.ac.uk
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f: 0151 7942681


On Mon, 2007-10-29 at 10:01 -0400, Deena Schwimmer wrote:

> For those of us currently posting our finding aids to the web as flat
> html files, is there a difference if some of the style aspects (color,
> font, spacing, etc.) were to be handled by modifying the html file
> directly post-transformation, versus having all the style come from
> the xsl transformation? Our resources are much stronger in html than
> xsl, and we’ll be able to post our finding aids looking just like we
> want them much more quickly this way. Are there issues I’m missing
> with doing this (only in the short run until we get up to speed…).?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Deena Schwimmer
>
> ________________
>
> Deena M. Schwimmer, Associate Archivist
>
> Yeshiva University Archives / 500 W. 185th St. / 6th Floor / New York,
> NY 10033
>
> email: [log in to unmask] / phone: (212) 960-5451 / fax: (212) 960-0066
>
>
>