Form - Content - Essence: Designing Markup for Information Representation

Steven Pemberton, W3C and CWI, Amsterdam

Considering that HTML is the world's most popular document format, it is seriously ill-fitted for information representation purposes.

After an enormous effort in the 90's to undo the damage caused by mixing content and presentation, it seems like that message is now coming through.

But there is still a long road to navigate. The tools you use for content delivery can greatly affect what you can achieve, and the amount of work you have to put in to achieve it.

Do we really want to re-author a site for each type of device that is likely to use it? What are the best ways to meet the challenges of multi-lingual environments and accessibility?

Work is ongoing at the World Wide Web Consortium W3C on producing markup languages that meet the needs of modern web content, and this talk describes the approach used, and in particular how XHTML2 and XForms meet the challenges of structured content, single authoring, accessibility, and device independence.

Slides at http://www.w3.org/2006/Talks/10-01-steven-euroia/