Web Design
November 24, 2006
With all these Web standards zealots running around proudly placing W3C validation buttons on their websites, you have to ask yourself:
Does anyone really care about web standards, clean code (xhtml, html and css) in the real world?
THE SAD TRUTH
Only in large companies (if you’re lucky,) and government might you find someone that may care. Sorry zealots, you can take down your little W3C buttons now …
🙂
The web design community codes itself into an academic dreamland sometimes. That’s why I attacked the web-standards-movement in the past … the leaders were misleading the ‘faithful’ down the path to the unemployment line.
PAYING WEB DESIGN, IS ABOUT BUSINESS
At the end of the day, all this web design junk is there to do, is to get out a message.
As for business, they don’t care about code validation and other nerd stuff that the web design zealots have fooled everyone into believing really means anything in the real world.
A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL FOR CODE-MONKEYS
But in the programming world, code quality moves to the front – well near the front of the line. This is because good code means faster more adaptable software – this has a bottom-line ($) affect.
… On the other hand:
Clean, standards compliant web design code (html/xhtml and css,) does not have any financial impact for most sites:
In the days of super cheap hosting and bandwidth, saving a few kilobytes on a web page amounts to nothing – most of us are not building sites that have millions of page-views!
So if you’re a frustrated web designer who is obsessed with code, you should get into php programming!
By Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com
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November 16, 2006
Web-nerds need to stay on top of what browsers people are using since still today, there are differences with how browsers will display web pages.
I thought some of you might find this interesting – it’s always good to know what is going on out there …
Highlights:
- MSIE: don’t bother with anything before IE6.
- Firefox: something you have to pay attention to.
- Netscape: only the dead and government employees (same thing?) use this browser.
- Opera: Not Netscape, but I’m not loosing any sleep.
- Safari: pay attention.
- Everything else: check you own site’s stats just in case you have some freakish gathering of strange nerds.
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October 23, 2006
One question that comes up every so often is whether you need a degree to get a web design job?
The short answer to this is: it depends!
THE TOP 3 FACTORS IN GETTING WEB DESIGN JOB
When I’m talking about a web design job, I am not talking about becoming a contractor or opening your own web design business. I am talking about going to work for some company.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, here are the top 3 factors:
- Design ability: can you make the web page look nice.
- Work experience: I’m talking about doing real commercial work; your own pet web projects don’t count.
- A Degree: some sort of IT degree is best but any degree helps.
How important the degree is depends on how big the company is. The larger the company, the more bureaucracy you will have to deal with … that means company policy will factor into this, and that usually means degrees are important.
That said, highly skilled and experienced people can get around this … even in the biggest of companies.
What about coding skills?
Some of you may be asking, how about knowledge of web standards, CSS, HTML? Sadly, the only people who care about those skills are other web designers and to a lessor extent, web programmers.
But why is this so … how can good technical web knowledge be so unimportant? The reason is simple my young weblings:
… the people hiring web designers are looking for design ability and not coding ability. After all, the job title is ‘web DESIGNER’ and not ‘web coder’.
Beyond that, most of the people hiring don’t have a clue about code. They may know a little bit about HTML and CSS, but they would probably have kittens trying to create a hyperlink!
Code-Monkey’s Can’t Design (typically)
Some people enter the web design world only to find out that they can’t design worth a dime … but these same people are typically much better coders. Or as I like to call them: ‘code-monkeys’
You see, if you are a born ‘code-monkey’, chances are you will never be able to design a good looking page … or draw a straight line.
From my 14 years experience doing design and web design work, I’ve found that design ability is something you are born with … you either have it or you don’t, and no amount of training or schooling is going to help you if you don’t have the talent.
With that in mind, it is important that you figure out where your strengths lie and play to them.
… if you are a code-monkey (as I am,) then you need to look into the profession of ‘Web Developer’ and forget about being a ‘Web Designer’.
Web Developer vs. Web Designer
What’s the difference between a web designer and a web developer?
A web developer is someone who builds web applications – sometimes called ‘database driven websites‘.
Esssentially, a web developer is concerned about the functionality of a website and not neccesarily the look. When I’m talking about functionality, I am talking about things like, contact forms, shopping carts and anything else that takes a website from just being a series of pages, to being an engine that preforms some task.
These types of sites are built using languages like PHP, PERL, Ruby and many others.
… read the article on database driven websites for more details.
THE WEB DESIGNERS DESIGN TALENT CHART
I’ve slapped together this web design chart that illustrates how talent relates to your potential of landing a good job. I’ve also included information on when PHP should be considered.
The trick is to figure where you stand on this chart!
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com
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October 3, 2006
Another good book from the boys and girls at Sitepoint – a well written book that walks you through the techniques of modern web design.
Over the last few years a whole bunch of CSS / web standards based books have hit the market. Some were good and some sucked
but there was one thing that was been consistent about them: they all reflected the maturing web design community.
You need to pay attention the word maturing: there were still a few technnical things that had not exactly settled in terms of how web designers should do things.
HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables using CSS is among the first books I’ve seen that demonstrates a maturity in web design.
WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT
It’s all about modern web design practices and techniques. The following topics are covered over 450 pages:
01. Basics
02. CSS 101
03. CSS Code
04. Validation & Backward Compatibility
05. Color
06. Fonts
07. Text Effects
08. Simple CSS Layouts
09. Three-Column Layouts
10. Fixed-Width Layouts
A. CSS Miscellaneous
B. CSS Color Reference
C. CSS Property Reference
WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?
If you are a total noob to web design, this is not the book for you. You can start with my free web design tutorial to get your feet wet, then you’ll be ready to buy this book!
You need to have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS. Once you have that, this book would quickly guide you through the sometimes thorny path to web design nerd glory.
Again, a book worth getting.
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com
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August 24, 2006
I’ve seen this confusion come up from time to time – is HTML a scripting language?
Short answer: no.
Yes a nerd detail, but nonetheless, this is something that should be made clear.
THE DETAILS:
HTML is actually a markup language and not a scripting language.
Scripting implies decision making capabilities (the code can actually evaluate and take an action based on what it finds) – PHP, PERL, Ruby, Javascript are examples of scripting languages.
Markup languages create structure for a document … they only describe data. For example:
… but you knew that already.
[;)]
Stefan Mischook
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August 2, 2006
This book is a mirror image of the book Web Design with Dreamweaver 8 by the same author – except this book is for hand coders.
A good title for people new to modern web design practices that include:
- CSS for layouts
- Semantic code
- Accessibility in web design
The topics are covered within the context of small usable projects, that can easily be adapted to your own web design work.
Though published in 2005, the material is still relevant and still is a pretty good buy.
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August 2, 2006
Beginners book on using Dreamweaver 8 – but not for beginners to web design.
Web Design with Dreamweaver 8 teaches how to use Dreamweaver to build modern, standards-compliant websites.
This is a great book if you are a web designer (with some experience) ready to take the next step in terms of understanding modern web design methods: as you learn to use Dreamweaver, the author gives concise coverage of various modern web design practices like CSS for layout, semantic web design etc …
Project driven for much of the book, you are guided through a series of common web design task:
- Styling links with CSS
- Laying our pages with CSS.
- Creating and styling forms.
… and much more.
Each project covered, is representative of something you would want to do in the real-world, but not so big to bore the hell out of you …
A good book for anyone who wants to learn how to use Dreamweaver 8.
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August 2, 2006
This book should probably be on any web designers/developers desk.
Web design has changed drastically since this book’s first edition came out … and thankfully Web Design In A Nutshell has been updated accordingly.
As with all of Oreilly’s ‘Nutshell’ books, Web Design In A Nutshell covers each topic in a concise and yet complete manner making it both a great learning title (for people with some web design skills,) and a great reference.
Some of the topics covered:
- CSS – basics, page layout methods, hacks, tricks etc
- HTML, XML and XHTML
- Accessibility
- Web graphics
… and so much more.
Besides the core coverage of the material itself, this book is also packed with great references to web sites and other good books on web design.
Get the book.
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July 31, 2006
When I am talking about ‘stickiness’ (in the context of a website,) I am talking about how long and how often people visit your website.
When you have a real ‘sticky’ website, people will spend more time on it, come back often and will bookmark (add to favorites) your site.
If your website is not sticky, it’s almost pointless to make any effort to get traffic to it.
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO MAKE A WEBSITE STICKIER?
It comes down to a few things:
- Keep the website layout simple.
- Keep the website layout consistent throughout the site.
- Have concise and clear writing.
- Have interesting and entertaining content.
- Stay on topic.
I think the first 4 points speak for themselves – we all know that you should have your ‘home’ button and other navigational elements in the same spot on each page …
That said, I think point #5 needs to be expanded on a little.
WHY STAYING ON TOPIC IS KEY.
One mistake website owners can make, is to try and cover many diverging topics on the same website. This may seem like a good idea, but all it does is confuse your visitors, presents a bigger challenge in terms of organizing the content and finally, it dilutes search engine traffic.
I AM GUILTY OF THIS ERROR
I knew about staying on topic years ago and because of this, I started creating micro-sites that were topic specific. But then, I went nuts …
Killersites.com started to grow in all kinds of directions … soon I had:
- PHP articles
- Photo galleries
- Web design articles
- Web site monitoring
- Page Rank meters
… and all kinds of other stuff.
I should have kept it clean and simple and concentrated on the thing that killersites.com was all about: web design and creating killer websites.
MICRO-SITES
Because of the content-creep found in killersites (it has too much stuff buried in deep dark holes,) I’ve started to create my new and topic specific micro-sites.
Each web site deals with a particular topic and does not diverge. So far I have these websites out:
- www.killerphp.com -> teaches web designers php.
- www.killerajax.com -> teaches you how to use ajax.
- www.killeractionscript -> teaches, yep … Flash Actionscript.
… I still also have the classics:
- www.how-to-build-websites.com
- www.csstutorial.net
- www.secretsites.com
MICRO-SITES ARE ‘STICKIER’
To prove my point, I can share one very interesting web statistic with you: the percentage of people who bookmark my websites.
Consider these numbers:
- killersites.com -> 18%
- how-to-build-websites.com -> 33%
- killerphp.com -> 90%
- csstutorial.net -> 92%
There are many factors that go into affecting these numbers, but a major factor is found in the focus of the content.
For example:
The majority of people bookmark (add to favorites,) killerphp.com because the website is ONLY about php … and that’s why they are there.
Contrast this to killersites.com, where a relatively small number of people bookmark it … we get too many people looking for too many different things … the content is too divergent.
MAKING KILLERSITES.COM STICKIER
It’s not going to be easy, but I am now cleaning things up, moving things to micro-sites, simplifying the pages – sometimes spring-cleaning comes in late summer!
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July 15, 2006
Killersites.com was first made famous about 10 years ago (1996) when it taught web designers to use design principles when building websites.
In those days, dancing mice and ‘under construction’ animated gifs were common …
Years later (2002-2003,) web designers started to become very aware of the importance of good code, separation of styling (CSS) from structure (HTML/XHTML), usability, accessibility etc…
This may be surprising to some (who may be new to web design) but before then, most web designers barely understood HTML!
WHAT IS THE NEXT STEP?
Today I think the next challenge for web designers, is to learn to program.
I know, I know … many of you are probably have a 1000 reasons why you have no need, and no interest in learning a programming language like PHP or JavaScript.
But consider these few simple points:
- Learning even a little programming will open you to a whole new world of possibilities with your websites.
- Learning to program will teach you to think in new ways that can have great benefits in all aspects of life.
- Learning to program will improve your understanding of web design – it will deepen considerably.
Besides what is listed above (with each being reason enough,) learning to program will give you a very marketable skill … you’ll be worth more!
MY GOAL
I’ve been dancing around the whole programming thing for a while with: the occasional article, video or podcast.
I’ve been slowly ‘priming’ you guys for the big move … the move into highest level of nerdom: programming.
…
My goal is to teach total non-nerd and artsy web designer types, how to write PHP. Not theoretical stuff; useful PHP that you can use in your own web projects.
Don’t worry, I am going to take it slow and do everything in my power to avoid nerd jargon. Or as I like to call it: ‘nerd-speak’.
KILLERPHP.COM LAUNCHED
To get the ball rolling, I’ve created what I call a ‘micro-site’ – a website dedicated to one narrow subject.
In this case, www.killerphp.com is dedicated to teaching web designers (not programmers) how to create database driven websites with PHP.
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