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Control over presentation

If you are used to using a word processor, such as Microsoft Word, or a desktop publishing package for preparing documents, you will be accustomed to having a high degree of control over their appearance. In contrast, HTML gives you much less control. It was a deliberate design decision that HTML should allow an author to specify the logical structure of a document but leave formatting it to the browser. The reasoning behind the decision was based on maximizing the portability of documents between different platforms, and an emphasis on the primacy of content over appearance. Most text-only browsers have one size of font only, and by definition cannot display images. With window-based browsers, the user can resize the window, requiring the document to be reformatted. It may be tempting to try to fine-tune a document to look perfect on your own particular browser, but remember that the formatting will inevitably look totally different on other browsers. View your documents with a number of different browsers if you can, to get some idea of the variability.

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.