Real World Web Design
December 28, 2008
I’ve been critical of web design zealots for years now and have gotten into some pretty heated battles over what I would consider to be overly zealous interpretation and adherence to the all not-so-mighty Web Standards.
I don’t want to argue the issue again, but in a nutshell: I always felt it unwise to ignore the practical realities of the browsers actually being used in favor of the Web Standards. I argued that the Web Standards, though noble in thought, were not reflective of the reality on the ground. As such, I advised web designers (years ago) to pay much more attention to browsers that people used, rather than to the Web Standards and the W3C validator.
Heresy!!
“… When people start surfing the Web with the W3C validator, I’ll start testing my sites with it. In the meantime, I will test with IE and Firefox since that’s what people use!”
The forward compatibility myth and the Web Standards
One of the big arguments put forth by the Web Standards zealots was that if you follow the Web Standards, your pages would be “forward compatible” … your web pages would more likely render properly in web browsers that have yet to be created.
Well, recent evidence is showing me that these academic shills were wrong once again.
The PS3 web browser prefers tables!
Being a hardcore nerd, I went out and bought the best blu-ray player on the market: the PS3. One of the reasons I got the PS3, is that it is equipped with a web browser. Yes, I like to surf the Web on my big tv.
Anyway, what I’ve discovered is that the PS3 browser screws up only on ‘forward compatible’ Web Standard compliant web sites. Whereas with old school table based layouts – never a problem.
It seems to me that the fine people at Sony (like so many others) realized that there are hundreds of millions of pages that are built with old school techniques and that they better support them. One thing academic nerds can never understand: pragmatic business decision making. Instead, they are defenders of the faith and thus, are very dogmatic in their decision making.
… Reminds when IE7 came out and it broke all these ‘forward compatible’ websites because they were using CSS hacks rather than safe and sure (non standard) IE Conditional comments. Man, many CSS books had to be corrected and reprinted!
Conclusion
I think this post is best summed up by what one my assistants (and formally Web Standards zealot) said when he started actually having to produce web pages in the real life:
“It’s hard to believe that these zealots are actually building web sites!? … When you’re trying to follow the strict standards in real day to day work … it simply isn’t always practical.”
Happy new year!
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
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November 10, 2008
Now that we are entering into a recession, potentially the worst economic crisis since the great depression (!!), web designers are probably wondering if their jobs are safe?
… This all comes down to whether or not companies will be spending money on web design? The answer:
– Short term: they will spend less.
– Medium term: they will spend more.
My reasoning is based on my 18 years experience as a business owner and on my observations of the current market.
The Short Term
People are nervous now. They hear all the negative news and so they pullback on spending and wait to see what will happen. The REALLY nervous people out there load up on gold, guns and dried fruit … while most of us just rent a movie at Blockbuster and cut back on trips to Vegas.
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September 13, 2008
If you’ve been struggling with CSS based page layouts (as apposed to using tables) and you’ve been smacking your head against the wall to get things to work … believe me, you’re not the only one!
No, you’re not stupid … CSS for page layout is.
What?! CSS is flawed?
Indeed. CSS for page layout sucks hard because the logic behind CSS page layout is weak at best, and perhaps, even flawed. I can say this with experience in other languages like Java and even VB. Not that I am saying CSS is a programming language.
Anyway …
For web designers used to the craziness of CSS layouts, they would be flabbergasted at how easy creating layouts/views/screens are in VB or even Java when compared to CSS.
What’s the main problem with CSS?
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September 2, 2008
Hi,
You may have heard that Google just released its’ open source browser – Chrome. So, should web designers be freaking out about it?
Short answer: no.
Why not, you say … why not!?
Simply speaking, Chrome uses the same rendering engine that Safari, Adobe AIR, iPhone, and Android use. Something called ‘Web Kit’. So as web designers, we don’t have to worry about another annoying engine that can screw up our code.
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August 20, 2008
I recently got a call from someone wanting to know what I thought about various image editing programs in terms of their abilities to make buttons:
“Stef, what program do you think I should use to create buttons for my websites? One buddy tells me he likes Corel Draw and another guy is big on Adobe Fireworks. What do you use?”
My answer to this question is simple:
Web designers should not be making buttons.
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August 4, 2008
I’m very busy with things (video games, movies etc …) so it is not uncommon for me to outsource some programming work these days.
Side note: I have to tell you, as an old-school web nerd who likes code, it was really hard at first to let go and let others do the work. Fortunately, it’s getting easier with every project!
😉
Anyway, I do have my assistants here at killersites.com, who by the way, are a tremendous help. Nonetheless, sometimes I get outside help for whatever reasons.
Crazy quotes from Java nerds
I decided recently that I wanted to contribute back to an open source project that I have used in the past … by throwing the people involved in that project, some work. I also agreed to release the additions/modifications back to the community.
Anyway …
The modifications I wanted were relatively simple – a couple of filters, some rearranging of the UI etc ..
So I get back the quote for this project. I want to mention that I could do it myself in say two days – and my Java skills are rusty! The point is, this was not a big project.
… And yet in the quote, we had a project manager budgeted in and crazy time devoted to testing. For example:
For a button that took the user to a screen/view that already existed … just a button: 8 hrs of testing!
??
Now we all know that Java guys love to over engineer, but this is crazy! When will Java nerds learn that you don’t need an aircraft carrier to move a rocking chair.
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
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July 15, 2008
This article is targeted at web designers and business owners who are considering an investment in social networking.
Let me just first say, that I have invested in it personally, where I created a video sharing system to help distribute my own content.
… I had other ideas beyond that, but I soon discovered that:
1. It would require a huge investment (millions) in capitol to just get it off the ground.
2. That most user contributed videos are just terrible. I deleted most of them.
You can read the rest in the magazine.
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July 2, 2008
Hi,
I just released a 10 minute video blog talking about the three critical aspects of a web site.
So what are the three critical aspects of a web site?
- Content
- Ease of use
- Design aesthetics
I go over what each mean and I also give you a few hints and examples that you can use in your own web design work.
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com
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June 23, 2008
From the killersites.com magazine:
In a nutshell, webslices are an IE8 specific feature that allows the web designer to tag part of a webpage as a ‘webslice’. By tagging sections of a web page, users of IE8 can then subscribe to it, much in the same way that they can subscribe to an RSS feed.
Read the full article about webslices.
Thanks for reading,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com
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May 11, 2008
I can’t tell you how many times that my programming experience (in Java, PHP etc) has guided me in my web design work … and strangely, even in other aspects of my life not at all related to topics ‘nerd’.
… Ah, nerd wisdom prevails in all aspects of life.
🙂
Anyway, here yet again, is another example where programming guides me: this time, it’s all about web design and code.
–
Over the last few years, the consensus in the web design community has been to streamline code. In real terms, that comes down to:
- collapsing html
- collapsing css
- … and consolidating css code into one file, to minimize the number of server hits.
… The idea is to speed up web page load times and to reduce web server loads.
This is an important goal and something all web designers should be concerned about. The problem is that if you are concentrating on optimizing your CSS or HTML to speed things up, you are concentrating on the wrong parts of your websites.
The fact is, that most of the optimization opportunities is actually found in your images, Flash movies and other multimedia content – not the code.
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