Norsk Tid as
Po.Box 140 Alnabru
0614 Oslo
NORWAY
Unveiled Mai 27, 2004, www.norsktid.no revives classic look-and-feel features with modern functionality, built to conform to Web standards. The site is now easier to use, quicker to access and much more streamlined to update and modify.
The norsktid.no web site have been rebuilt to comply with Web standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium(W3C). Norsktid.no now relies entirely on Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) for all page layout and design details. Tables used to set up and control page structure, are gone. All font tags have been stripped out. The markup language we use to describe the content of these pages now adheres to Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) rules, ensuring norsktid.no will be compatible with past and present Web browsers, as well as future browsing applications.
CSS is a simple but powerful mechanism for defining the style and presentation (fonts, colors, margins, and borders) of Web documents. It was formalized as a W3C recommendation in 1996, but has faced resistance from large content-based websites because of poor Web browser support. The recent release of newer, standards-compliant browsers provides a more consistent platform where CSS can be used to achieve predictable formatting results.
XHTML combines the power and versatility of XML (Extensible Markup Language) with the familiar Web language of HTML. XHTML is the next version of HTML, and is designed to allow for richer Web pages capable of displaying on a widening range of browser platforms, including mobile phones, PDAs, and televisions.
Content based in XML and XHTML can be easily modified to be read by the new browsing applications emerging on a variety of Web devices. Through the use of CSS, the content can be set up to render differently in each device according to its inherent capabilities. By switching to XHTML and completely adopting CSS, norsktid.no load faster, and are at once more accessible to all Web browsers and specialized browsing environments used by the visually or physically impaired. By stripping out font, color, and margin rules from the markup, and aggregating all those style rules into just a couple of CSS files, design changes can be propagated to all pages instantly.
XHTML and CSS exist as W3C standards to bring consistency, predictability, and accessibility to both Web browsers and the content produced for viewing in those browsers. Competition between Netscape and Microsoft during the late 1990s forced the browser companies to jump ahead of Web standards claiming unique support for their own features. Web developers had to code separate versions of pages that could work in specific browsers, or even worse, restrict the functionality of their site to only one browser. This required a huge amount of extra engineering and development time, and continues to fill pages on the Web with code optimized for one browser or another. Complex nested HTML table hacks are still used by a majority of websites to control columns and margins around blocks of text and images. This holds back advancement in accessibility for the Web. The glut of useless markup tags often confuses older browsers, as well as the screen readers which help the visually and physically impaired use the Web.
Older browsers weren't built to support CSS, and only recent versions of the major browsers support CSS adequately enough to avoid unpredictable layout problems. To get around this challenge, CSS can be effectively hidden from browsers incapable of displaying the content properly. The shiny details of the new design are only visible in newer standards-compliant browsers. Our content, in its entirety, can still be accessed from every available commercial browser -- even the first versions of Netscape or IE. Those who continue to use older browsers will see a much simpler version of the site -- one that offers the full content in a stripped-down design.
We would have loved to keep norsktid.no pure and free of work-arounds that fix obscure rendering issues in specific browsers. We admit that this is not entirely the case. In a perfect world, our implementation of Web standards would render flawlessly in every single browser. However, the fact remains: past browsers were not built for -- or held to -- the same standards of today's browsers. Even recent browsers (like Internet Explorer 5.x) thought of as "standards-compliant" carry slight discrepancies which create differences in the appearance of our pages. Imperfections are bound to show up. We've done our best to ensure our site renders as consistently as possible and apologize if the content is rendered in a way that somehow makes it inaccessible.
In order to fully utilize all functionallity this is what we recommend:
To report significant bugs with the design, or send us feedback, please mail webmaster@norsktid.no . If you'd like to ensure norsktid.no is displayed as we've intended it to look, we encourage you to visit the Browser Upgrade Campaign page from the Web Standards Project to learn how and why you should upgrade your browser.
©2004, Norsk Tid as. Med enerett.