Policies and variants

MCS allows you to separate content and presentation by providing device-independent elements for use in layouts. However, some resources are highly device-specific. Images are a good example. The size, color, rendering and even the type of an image may need to vary for different devices. Mobile phones, for example, can require special image formats.

MCS allows you to separate content and presentation by providing device-independent elements for use in layouts. However, some resources are highly device-specific. Images are a good example. The size, color, rendering and even the type of an image may need to vary for different devices. Mobile phones, for example, can require special image formats.

MCS manages the relationship between device-independent content and device-dependent data by using policies and variants.

For example, an image policy can refer to a set of image files, or variants, which individually fit the profiles of several different devices. The attributes of each variant are contained in the policy. In a web page, the object element in the XDIME 2 markup contains the name of the image policy in its src attribute. When a device requests the page, MCS uses the image attributes to select the best image variant to display on the device.

Creating and editing policies

In MCS, you use the New Policy wizard to name policies in your project, locate them, and define attributes or fallback values that refer to other policies.

You use one of the MCS policy editors to add variants to a policy and define the variant attributes.

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