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Production philosophy: Separation of structure and design
An important aspect of building sustainable, accessible websites is the principle of separating structure and presentation. Applying the principle results in cost cuts, efficient in construction and maintenance, as well as improved recognisability and usability.
Keep structure and presentation separate as much as possible: use HTML or XHTML for the structure of the site and CSS for its presentation.
Guideline R-pd.1.1
The principle
HTML for structure
The content of the page consists of text, images, table data, audio fragments or even Flash animations. HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) describes the structure.
CSS for presentation
In a separate file, linked to the page, the presentation of this structure is described by means of another language, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
This separate CSS file can be applied to a single page, but it becomes really useful when it is linked to multiple pages. A browser only has to load it once (caching) after which it can be applied to dozens, or even hundreds of pages.
“Experience has shown that separating the structure of a document from its presentational aspects reduces the cost of serving a wide range of platforms, media, etc., and facilitates document revisions.”
