Part 1

(a) Explain what is meant by standards-compliance in terms of valid XHTML 1.0 ‘strict’ Document type and valid CSS 2.1

Description and implementation of a coding solution to achieve standards-compliant XHTML and CSS for prototype OURC website.

(b) Explanation of what is meant by the term usability in terms of the websites.

For the amendments you have made to the templates to achieve usability of the prototype OURC website.

To ensure usability of the website, I amended the code on both templates to ensure that there is clear and consistent layout with lots of white space between the text and tables making it easier for a user to read.

I amended the code in both templates to link the pages together, thereby increasing usability by making the webpages operable, efficient and easy to use.

Index template

I amended the coding for the (picture) image information to specify an “ALT” attribute tag, which I described as “picture of people running”. ALT tags are intended to be provided, to assist users who may be sight challenged - or using older browsers to obtain an explanation of the image(s) are representative of.

I amended the code by adding an opening bracket to the HTML comment about the comments not being rendered by the webpage. This stopped this comment from appearing on the webpage and thus confusing the user.

I deleted the random character ‘w’ which was an error in the text about the handicap race distances. I also deleted the html word, which was appearing randomly on this web page.

Data template

Greater usability was achieved by amending the code for the data page holding the running competition results. This web page was appearing in the web browser with an untitled page tab, so I amended this in the title coding to show/read “Open University Running Club” to assist a user to identify that they are still on the OURC website.

I amended the coding around competition results by using the table attribute and increasing the border setting from 0 to 1, which allowed users to read the competition results more clearly, as each column and row of the table is now separated by a border. This should also make it easier for anyone accessing the data from a mobile or other web accessible device.

(c) In your own words, describe your understanding of both valid XHTML and valid CSS and explain the nature of the changes you made to the files provided to achieve standards-compliant coding of the prototype website.

XHTML and CSS are both programming languages used in the design and development of web pages. They both fulfil different functions and follow different sets of rules and coding methods, whilst at the same time combining to form web pages that are efficient and accessible.

For XHTML and CSS to be classified as valid the code they contain must be validated on the W3org validator websites for each type. Any errors must be dealt with for code to be valid.

XHTML (eXTensible Hyper Markup Language) is a stricter version of HTML and is used to set out the content and structure of a web page.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are used to define the style of the page for attributes such as colour, font and spacing.

An XHTML page can be used on its own, but a CSS file will not produce any results on its own.

XHTML provides the bare bones or skeleton of a page and CSS adds the flesh in the form of how it looks.
Rules for valid XHTML include the requirement that elements must be nested properly. XHTML also only validates when all elements are closed and must be only in lower case.
Attribute values must be placed within quotes.

To achieve validation for the OURC templates, as XHTML 1.0 Strict, I have amended the code to include a Document Type Declaration (DTD) at the top of each webpage so coding correctly follows the syntax rules for XHTML and so that they will be XHTML compliant. The DTD tells the browser what language the page is speaking.

I also included coding for content type, keywords metadata and meta-name description, which were missing.

CSS

I validated the CSS style sheet template and found 5 errors which needed to be corrected before the code would validate on the W3org website.

The footer colour was not in the correct hexadecimal format of 6 characters so I amend this to represent the colour Black.

There were brackets, which were missing form the code and I had to replace either the opening or closing brackets to validate the code

There was a problem with the relative attribute of the NAVbar which I had to correct.

All style declarations are kept in the CSS file and all content and structure are in the XHTML file.

There are three ways to declare style:

Linked style sheets (these are separate files linked to the .html page in the tag)

Embedded styles (these are style declarations placed in the between tags)

Inline styles (these declarations are placed within an individual XHTML element)

Part 2

(a) Explanations and proposals for improving site accessibility

(b) Implementation of accessible solutions for the OURC data page