The main aim of the eiderweb project is to develop a convenient and flexible web design and management tool for both new and experienced users, allowing them to:-
To accomplish this, eiderweb will use an object-oriented approach to page composition. A set of core objects (node, page and segment) will provide the basic organisational structure of the page; shared and page-specific components within this structure will encapsulate the actual content. All of these elements will be defined and stored using XML, and XSLT will be used to transform the assembled page data into XHTML. XSLT templates will provide different ways of displaying the same content, including dynamic, form-based views to allow privileged users to edit or create new pages.
The separation of content, structure and presentation is an important design principle for eiderweb, allowing the raw content data to be:-
Groups of related data items, such as a set of images or a list of options, may be defined and referenced in a variety of ways. Components that are common to several pages, such as a menu or a footer, may be defined in one place and built into pages as required. Style data, which is used to control the precise visual presentation (colour, fonts, margins, etc) of individual elements within a page, will be defined separately. Default content (column headings on a table, for example) or styles may be specified by an object, but these must still be defined and stored separately, and may be over-ridden by component designers in derived objects, or by the user when adding an instance of the component to a page.
