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Review: Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook - What You Need to Know About Web Sta



As Cederholm discusses each possible solution to the markup conundrums he poses, he closely examines the semantic purpose of each tag to help readers learn to make better choices. Readers may feel a pang of guilt when they recognize their own markup in the options. However, true to the big-brother simile, he never chastises or derides an option as wrong; instead, he guides us to make better markup choices based on good semantics. What the reader gets is a series of best practices for lists, headers, tables for tabular data, quotations, forms, anchors and phrase elements like and . Additionally, Cederholm details several of the markup and CSS techniques used on SimpleBits and on the standards-compliant redesign of the Fast Company magazine Web site.


Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML).[1] CSS is a cornerstone technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and JavaScript.[2]




Review: Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook




Separation of formatting and content also makes it feasible to present the same markup page in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (via speech-based browser or screen reader), and on Braille-based tactile devices. CSS also has rules for alternate formatting if the content is accessed on a mobile device.[4]


Before CSS, nearly all presentational attributes of HTML documents were contained within the HTML markup. All font colors, background styles, element alignments, borders, and sizes had to be explicitly described, often repeatedly, within the HTML. CSS lets authors move much of that information to another file, the style sheet, resulting in considerably simpler HTML.


Before CSS, document authors who wanted to assign such typographic characteristics to, say, all h2 headings had to repeat HTML presentational markup for each occurrence of that heading type. This made documents more complex, larger, and more error-prone and difficult to maintain. CSS allows the separation of presentation from structure. CSS can define color, font, text alignment, size, borders, spacing, layout and many other typographic characteristics, and can do so independently for on-screen and printed views. CSS also defines non-visual styles, such as reading speed and emphasis for aural text readers. The W3C has now deprecated the use of all presentational HTML markup.[15]


Improving web presentation capabilities was a topic of interest to many in the web community and nine different style sheet languages were proposed on the www-style mailing list.[26] Of these nine proposals, two were especially influential on what became CSS: Cascading HTML Style Sheets[22] and Stream-based Style Sheet Proposal (SSP).[25][28] Two browsers served as testbeds for the initial proposals; Lie worked with Yves Lafon to implement CSS in Dave Raggett's Arena browser.[29][30][31] Bert Bos implemented his own SSP proposal in the Argo browser.[25] Thereafter, Lie and Bos worked together to develop the CSS standard (the 'H' was removed from the name because these style sheets could also be applied to other markup languages besides HTML).[23]


You might be wondering, what the heck is Markdown anyway?Markdown is a lightweight markup language. It allows you to style a digital text document using typical formatting techniques: for example, headings, emphasis, lists, images, and links. Markdown files are stored as .md or .markdown. Also, Markdown can be optionally converted into XHTML or HTML to display nicely in a browser.


The most important aspect of the AASTeX package is that it defines the set of commands, or markup, that can be used to identify the structural elements of manuscripts. When articles are marked up using this set of standard commands, they may then be submitted electronically to the editorial office which aids both the peer review ingest and production processing while producing high quality output in a variety of styles.


Bibliographic data supplied by the author in the reference list must conform to the standards of the AAS journals. The specific citation and bibliography styles are outlined here. Fortunately there are two easy options for properly marking citations and formatting reference lists. They are the standard LaTeX thebibliography environment, and the AASTeX references environment. Authors are strongly encouraged to use thebibliography.


The preceding explanation of the markup commands in the AASTeX package has merit for defining syntax, but many authors will prefer to examine the sample manuscripts that are included with the style files. The files of interest are described below.


If an attribute syntax is possible, using the attribute syntax is typically more convenient and enables a more compact markup, but that is often just a matter of style, not a technical limitation. The following example shows the same properties being set as in the previous attribute syntax example, but this time by using property element syntax for all properties of the Button.


For example, the following markup sets the value of the Style property using attribute syntax. The Style property takes an instance of the Style class, which by default could not be instantiated by an attribute syntax string. But in this case, the attribute references a particular markup extension, StaticResource. When that markup extension is processed, it returns a reference to a style that was previously instantiated as a keyed resource in a resource dictionary.


The xmlns attributes are only strictly necessary on the root element of each XAML file. xmlns definitions will apply to all descendant elements of the root element (this behavior is again consistent with the XML 1.0 specification for xmlns.) xmlns attributes are also permitted on other elements underneath the root, and would apply to any descendant elements of the defining element. However, frequent definition or redefinition of XAML namespaces can result in a XAML markup style that is difficult to read.


Just like a variable, the XAML name for an instance is governed by a concept of scope, so that names can be enforced to be unique within a certain scope that is predictable. The primary markup that defines a page denotes one unique XAML namescope, with the XAML namescope boundary being the root element of that page. However, other markup sources can interact with a page at run-time, such as styles or templates within styles, and such markup sources often have their own XAML namescopes that don't necessarily connect with the XAML namescope of the page. For more information on x:Name and XAML namescopes, see Name, x:Name Directive, or WPF XAML Namescopes. 2ff7e9595c


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