DavisPontiac.net Site Help
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How to Navigate this Web Site
Each department of Brooks Motor Products has a section of the website which can be accessed by the menu on the left hand side of every page. Upon clicking a department, a sub-menu will appear below your selection to guide your further.
At the bottom of every page, are links to the various departments as well as our privacy policy, the site map and this help page.
At the top right of every page, are links to the site map, a general contact form an this page. Also in the top right are links to supplementary websites and the current time here at Brooks Motor Products.
About the Site Design
CSS is a powerful mechanism for defining the style and presentation 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 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. And, 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 thousands of pages instantly.
DavisPontiac.net will hopefully encourage other sites to follow and join WaSP (Web Standards Project) in the campaign encouraging users to upgrade their browsers. Doing so will help pull the Web out of the Dark Ages, and allow us all to progress forward.
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 DavisPontiac.net's 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 website -- one that offers the full content in a stripped-down design.
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.
More information on the W3C can be found at w3.org.
A quick summary of what they beleive and what they are trying to accomplish have been neatly summed up in 7 points.
Website questions or comments?
Contact the Webmaster: webmaster@davispontiac.net
No spam will be generated as a result of submitting your information. All information is kept private and confidential. [View our Privacy Policy]
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