In the last couple of years, a new type of web designer has emerged: the WordPress web designer.
What is a WordPress web designer?
In a nutshell: smart, forward thinking web designers that base most if not all of their web design work off of WordPress. That means the entire web site is built using WordPress.
Why build all your sites using WordPress?
For the very same reason you don’t go the woods to kill a turkey for Thanksgiving (you go to the grocery store) … is why WordPress web designers don’t build static HTML websites – why would you not take advantages of all the things that WordPress does for you for free!
… Some nerd details:
When basing your web site off of WordPress, you get all this functionality for free:
Advanced templating for easy site wide updates.
Built-in SEO
Automatic search and categorizing of your content.
Built-in image upload and insertion.
Built-in text editor and the ability for non-nerds to add, edit delete pages.
… And that is just scratching the surface!
The economic advantages of using WordPress
If you haven’t guessed it already, using WordPress in your day-to-day web work WILL have major economic advantages – in a nutshell, you will be able to provide a lot more for your clients for a lot less work! This will lead to you landing more web design contracts and making more cash because the extra WordPress skills will allow you to charge more for your time.
Maybe I’m beating a dead horse, or maybe I can’t overstate how important it is these days, that web designers should learn (at least) a little web programming. For me, that means Javascript and PHP.
The modern website demands a little behavior!
When you look at creating a website, you can break it down to three basic tasks:
Adding Structure – the HTML
Adding Style – the CSS
Adding Behavior – Javascript/DOM scripting
All web designers recognize #1 and #2 and so they learn HTML and CSS. But few want to admit that the third element in the trinity, is staring them right in the face.
… Boy, web designers can really fear learning Javascript or PHP! The problem is, that if they don’t learn how to program, they will find themselves at a great disadvantage.
Modern websites …
Modern websites almost always require some behavior – functionality that only web programming can provide. Think about it, how many websites these day, DON’T have some dynamic behavior, whether it be a simple contact form, the use of ‘includes’ to make updating the site easier, a shopping cart, a blog, a forum, a CMS, form validation, RSS feeds and on and on …
Does that mean that I have to become a full-fledged web-nerd programmer?
No. But you should be comfortable reading Javascript and PHP code and you should feel comfortable editing script. This way, adding pre-packaged PHP and Javascript will be relatively easy. Installing and modifying a blog, CMS or shopping cart will not be an impossible task.
I am starting to hear that all too familiar nerd-buzz of premature excitement – this time it’s about HTML 5 and all it’s cool new capabilities.
Yes, HTML 5 does have a lot of cool things it can do, and so it’s tempting to jump in and start learning. But that would largely be a waste of time … at least for now.
What?! Isn’t HTML 5 the future?
It sure is. In fact, I’ve been telling people for years that XHTML was a pipe dream (because IE would not support it) and I advised people to stick to good old HTML … even when it was heresy to say so! Here’s the problem (now) with HTML 5 – most of the browsers being used today don’t support it AND it will take a few years before the majority of people out there will have HTML 5 equipped browsers.
… Man, reality does bite!
Hard-core nerds tend to ignore reality
A time long, long ago, in an Internet that is now far, far away … back in the mid to late 1990’s, CSS was invented and naive nerds such as myself started playing with it, investing precious time that could have been spent playing video games, only to find that most of the browsers being used did not support it … so using CSS was basically useless.
… It took several years before CSS enabled browsers had penetrated enough to use CSS in a serious way. Using CSS prior to wide adoption, only ended with wasted time and disappointment, since you could not actually use it live. The same will be true for much of HTML 5 – unless you start hacking and browser sniffing and all kinds of other nonsense.
Let me conclude by quoting Coder’s Code #36:
The wise web designer shall not waste precious time on learning cutting edge technology … if said nerd wishes to earn a living.
If you are a web designers/developer or just a geek, you’ve probably heard about the recent ongoing battle between Apple and Adobe.
The fight revolves around Adobe’s Flash and Apple’s iPhone and now the new iPad – basically Apple has blocked both these devices from running the Flash player and thus, any Flash delivered content, whether it be video or applications … can anyone say NO Flash games!
Apple says that they blocked Flash because Flash runs terribly on Mac OS. This is true. But recent events tells me that there is more to it than protecting iPhone and iPad users from the evils of the Flash player ….
“Apple Gives Adobe The Finger With Its New iPhone SDK Agreement”
This title (form a Techcrunch article) tells it all. You see, not only does Apple prevent Flash from running on iPhone and iPad, they are even blocking Flash-created programs that would then be ported to (translated into …) native iPhone-code based applications!! This is truly a poke in the teeth … from Apple to Adobe.
… Apple is blocking Flash with their new license agreement – basically, applications must be “originally written†in C/C++/Objective-C:
3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
I don’t normally swear on my blog … but WTF!?
Bottom line for web designers and developers:
We is screwed! Especially if you are Flash developer …
😉
Ok, not really … but read on for details how to get around this mess.
Apple basically want’s to kill Flash … this is clear. They want to kill it because they want to replace it. This is nothing new for Apple, they nailed Adobe with Finalcut years ago … and Apple basically took over the video editing market … took it away from Adobe.
More evidence:
Apple just announced a new tool for creating HTML 5-based interactivity, I’m not sure of the details but it just ads more fuel to the fire. There’s going to be a battle and nerds will take sides; in the end though, everyone will loose.
So what should web designers do?
Code is code and good design and good design – continue to work on your basics:
As I have been saying for years, don’t get married to a particular language or technology. Instead, try to concentrate on the key fundamentals and become language/technology agnostic … and use what works best for the project at hand. Personally, I’ve used 8-9 languages over the years to build web applications; I would look at the project and then choose the language, rather than trying to shoehorn everything into same technological box.
In the following video on Web usability, I talk about how fancy images can actually hurt your web pages in terms of ease of use. Watch the video for details:
About Web Usability
Making a website more user friendly is a tricky thing, because often times what looks good (in terms of design) actually gets in the way of the user – beautiful graphic often times makes the page more confusing. So, the tricky part is to make it look good while keeping it simple.
My Web usability tips:
Pictures should NOT be links to click on.
Use text links that stand out.
Use icons and images that provide information about the links around it.
Web usability is a very important aspect in web design. In fact, there are web professionals out there who call themselves ‘usability’ specialist.
What is Web Usability?
This is basically understanding how a web page and a web site are made easier to use .. from the web surfers perspective. This is really, really important stuff because the less usable a website is, the less likely the site will be successful. For example, if you have very unfriendly (bad usability) shopping cart installed in your site, you would see sales drop off … sometimes dramatically.
… This is bad, because then your client couldn’t afford to hire you again!!
😉
In the following video, I show you a real life example of how simply moving a page widget over to the right of the page, had a dramatic impact. You will also see one of my old (circa 2004) web sites … ouch:
I’m a big fan of Flash and it has many uses .. one of them though, is NOT to create an entire website with it.
My top four reasons for not creating a Flash only website:
Limited search engine visibility.
Harder to update because you have to crack open Flash source files.
Harder to find Flash developers/designers than it is HTML/CSS nerds.
Apple’s iPhone and iPad can’t see Flash.
Learn from the past …
Back in the 1990’s, Flash only websites became a big thing for a while … then people realized that it was a bad idea, and the Web returned to traditional HTML and CSS based web sites. Let’s not make the same mistake.
Attack of the KILLER APPLE
Another fact that should make you reconsider Flash only sites, is that Apple is now in open warfare against Flash, where they will not let Flash work on the very popular iPhone and soon to be released (with much hype) iPad. That means that a Flash only website cannot be seen by millions of iPhone users.
Flash should only be used for:
Application development.
Only in parts of your HTML web sites – to do things like play video, audio or some other multimedia use.
This short article may piss-off some Flash maniacs … but what can I say, sometimes the truth hurts.
I don’t want to bore you guys to tears, but Apple’s latest move to not support Flash (and thus 99% of web video) on the iPad is very disturbing.
The facts are simple:
Millions of web pages with Flash content will break on iPhones and iPads.
Like it or not Flash is ubiquitous.
Flash is controlled by Adobe but free to anyone to write code against.
Apple is doing this to try and control content distribution – IMHO.
HTML 5’s video support is years away from being an option to use on commercial web sites.
Since Flash is not supported by the iPad or the iPhone and since the vast majority of web surfers don’t have HTML 5, if we want to deliver video on the Web, we have to support two methods of delivery.
… Just like it was during the 1990’s browser wars, where we had to write code for IE and code for Netscape. Thanks Apple for bringing back the good old days! Jerks.
Apple has to stop being a bunch of iJerks and support Flash.
It seems that Apple wants to start a new 1990’s style browser war – this really sucks!
Instead of the war being centered around HTML and the DOM, Apple has decided to make it about rich media delivery – Apple does not like Adobe Flash and they are not supporting it on iPad and iPhone.
… Hey Apple, did you hear that Flash IS THE Web standard for rich media?
Because everyone uses Flash to embed video and audio on the Web today, blocking Flash on the iPhone and iPad (with special exceptions made for Youtube of course!) … is NO DIFFERENT than the proprietary tag wars of the 1990’s between Microsoft and Netscape.
In the original browser war’s, it was all about the software, Netscape vs. Explorer … this time the browser is the physical device .. iPad and iPhone vs practically every other device in the world that can surf the Web. Man this is really beginning to piss me off!
With the HTML/DOM browser wars, in the end, everybody lost … and I lost a lot of hair trying to build cross browser compatible websites!!
The iPhone and iPod Touch were the first devices to popularize surfing the Web from a small screen, using multitouch input to allow users to zoom in and out of Web sites that were originally designed to be seen on larger screens. But the iPhone and iPod Touch don’t support Flash, which is widely used for online multimedia content, and Apple hasn’t signalled that it’s interested in adding Flash support to its line of mobile devices.
… This doesn’t solve our web browsing issue but at least we can enjoy the creativity of the millions of Flash developers out there on the iPad and iPhone – something Apple does not want it seems.
