History
During much of the first fifteen years of the World Wide Web, interface designers have had to tailor their work for multiple publishing systems, each of which had its own model and methods for rendering Web designs.
In addition, in early years, browsers also required special tricks, or hacks, to make sure the intended interface design looked similar across platforms and browsers.
A movement toward Web standards and tableless design was well underway when, in the fall of 2004, Jay Collier, who was then associate director for Web publishing at Dartmouth College, started developing a conceptual framework for a standardized, sustainable, but flexible interface system. First presented in March, 2005, this model was in development when Collier moved to Bates College in April, 2006.
Version 2 introduced several important changes in March 2008:
- Changed all columns to floats, which allowed all main content to be organized semantically rather than linearized by column location
- Streamlined the regions into three containers — header, main, and footer — to allow greater latitude in CSS-only styling and positioning
- Rather than linearize main content to appear at the top of style-free pages, all regions are fluid, allowing changes in text sizing
Bates Online Communications
12/6/06, 2/12/08