posted
Design is a profession that has evolved for many years and has undergone much study, with millions of man-hours by people with PhDs alone going into an understanding thereof. Whereas aesthetics are a matter of taste, design is not just about aesthetics, and those people studying it have a pretty darn good idea of what is and is not good design. I have related a few situations where you violate those constraints -- note I never said anything you made was ugly.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I read what people with PhDs write, and talk with others
And I dabbled in design briefly, now I just try to work closely with good designers. I've been part of a major online GD community for years now, which includes many highly paid, award winning designers, and I make a point of listening to what they say.
Plus I'm taking a Human Computer Interaction Design course at one of the top universities for the study of that in a scientific context -- this would be where I meet several people with PhDs in design and related fields.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Well. I didn't think that one plug would create a mass riot.
I do understand the comments of both dw and fugu in this discussion. Yes, some elements of dw's design are repetitive and somewhat overused. Yes, fugu, each company does want a unique package. But I also agree with dw that when a client is paying him, he does not want to lose that client, so prefers to do as the customer specified rather than attempt to facilitate every element of proper design.
An analogy: Hasn't anyone ever been told by a teacher something to the effect of: "Oh, you don't have to spell it just right as long as I can recognize it?" or "I don't care if you write this essay in perfect five-paragraph format as long as it's readable?" Anyone seeing what I mean, here?
Please note that at DW's request, I have removed the original link to his site.
Posts: 206 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:"Oh, you don't have to spell it just right as long as I can recognize it?" or "I don't care if you write this essay in perfect five-paragraph format as long as it's readable?"
Umm, well, no. Have I had teachers take 1% off the final grade for every misspelled word or misplaced punctuation? Often.
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posted
Well, I wasn't necessarily talking about Langauge Arts classes here...
Like perhaps in Social Studies, where "Poenician" might be accepted as a correct answer for a fill in the blank when it should be "Phoenician", etc.
Posts: 206 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
human 2.0---sorry I missed your earlier comments, I was reading through some of the other stuff.
Yes, I agree with the spelling and grammar mistakes thing. However, these tend to be unintentional and if no one lets him know about these things, he cannot correct them (not everyone can be a National Spelling Bee champion, you know). Inside links in new windows, yeah, that could get annoying. But the text/text/image thing may just be a browser conversion or resolution problem. I haven't picked over the site with a fine-toothed comb recently, but I haven't noticed it yet.
Posts: 206 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Dag, I think dw may have been referring to things like Tom's comment:
Yes. And your clients are wrong.
Technically, they expressed an opinion and cannot be "wrong" per se...
Just my take on that smidgen of discussion.
By the way, does anyone have a link to a page with all the ADA standards on it? Just curious to see them.
Posts: 206 | Registered: Jun 2005
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But I dont appreciate some of the others comments that arnt really constructive critisizime, I'm all for consturtive stuff but Tom saying he would email my clients and tell them to come to him is ... I dont appreciate that.
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posted
Dude, you can't spell, you're hazy on the principles of design, and you've called the ADA accessibility requirements "crap." Back in the day, I made a killing stealing away clients from people like you. Seriously.
This is not me trying to make fun of you. This is me trying to offer you constructive advice in a firm and unequivocal fashion.
You can't do web design as a hobby AND a profession. In the old days, people thought you could -- and it nearly killed the whole industry. I can't tell you how many webmasters I've run into who think that "design" means stealing someone else's design elements and source code and using their own custom colors.
It's one thing to make a few bucks designing sites for friends. But professional sites -- sites that serve a real purpose, that people pay real money for -- deserve a professional approach. And part of that approach involves a familiarity with design basics and a willingness to bend over backwards for browser and accessibility compliance. Otherwise, any monkey could be a web designer -- and, sadly, that ship has sailed.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Well, my main clients arnt webdesign, it is more motorsports related design where ada and spelling dont really count... it is more sponsor layout.
Posts: 18 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote: it is more motorsports related design where ada and spelling dont really count...
I understand what you're saying. But if you're really making "thousands" from this, I suggest you take me seriously: someday the market for which you're designing pages will mature, and they will expect spelling and ADA-compliance. The first site to offer those things will do noticeably better than the other ones, and the other ones will, no matter how unsophisticated they currently are, catch on. So it behooves you to design fully-compliant, spell-checked pages now, so that you can tell people when they ask that, yeah, you've been making standards-compliant pages for the last five years.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I do spell check them, but when my clients send new PR's and stuff they dont always spell right... Also i'm learning css and stuff so I can make my sites faster loading and more ADA compliant.
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posted
Well, good. Despite the harsh welcome, we're all a bunch of really pro-web-design geeks here -- especially fugu -- and are always glad to see someone working to make a living in the industry. If you ever want to talk shop, drop on by. *grin* And I promise not to savage you TOO badly.
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posted
Scott -- I'm serious, btw, that if you link to some examples of sites and layouts you like, there's a good chance I'll be able to work up some prototypes.
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posted
Fugu-- I appreciate the help. I kind of want to go about the design on my own, because I think website design would be a useful tool. I'm not looking to be an expert, and Heaven knows I'm not looking at making a business of it-- but it is something that interests me that I want to learn more about.
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posted
Feel free to post your efforts early and often, there will be plenty of constructive criticism
I suggest not worrying about what CMS you will eventually use, instead start with the design. You will later template-ize that design to work with your chosen CMS, but by having a "pure" form of it around, switching CMS's and testing design changes will be easier.
Also, depending on what you consider "the design", if you continue to not want to do coding directly in HTML (though I encourage you to try it), you might consider making a graphical mockup of what you want, then posting it here for someone to make a working version (that's more than just sliced graphics). Well-written HTML will make it far, far easier to integrate into a CMS, and what Dreamweaver or other applications make is at best adequate HTML when in full GUI mode.
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posted
What are the benefits to doing the design in HTML, rather than letting the design program (Dreamweaver, Frontpage, Arachnophilia, etc) make the HTML code for you?
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posted
Well, for one thing, you learn HTML. For another, you know that every single piece of code on your site was added for a reason. And for small but complex sites, it can even be much faster.
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posted
Also, you'll have a darn hard time adapting HTML generated by Dreamweaver or whatever to the templating system of a blog (for instance), whereas its relatively trivial for well-written HTML.
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quote:Also, you'll have a darn hard time adapting HTML generated by Dreamweaver or whatever to the templating system of a blog (for instance), whereas its relatively trivial for well-written HTML.
I don't have that problem, but then perhaps it's because of the specific program I use for blogging. I don't use a CMS either, but I don't really have enough content - other than the blogs - to worry about it.
Just saying. I mean, you obviously know what you're talking about and I'm just a mini-wannabe-HTML-geek. . .
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
It will also be dependent on the complexity of your design (behind the scenes; it may look simple but not be). And the more things you need to adapt it to, the more likely it will be something will be troublesome (and Scott's likely to use several disparate bits of software to construct his site).
Other benefits of crafted HTML include accessibility, which I'm a huge proponent of -- sites should be accessible to the hard of eyesight (a particularly relevant disability), and the best way to ensure that is with hand-crafted HTML.
Plus, sites with hand-written HTML have just plain better code, which will be an issue if you ever want to stop using software program X.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I'd make the first site in HTML, because then you will know HTML. Dreamweaver is fine for doing things faster sometimes, but I still tweak it all the time. The other people in the office who use Dreamweaver have me fix their pages all the time because they don't know HTML.
If you have a yen to go crazy with the features, I'd suggest making a family web page that incorporates every frame, blinking text, and rollover out there, just to get it out of your system. It's not classic design, but they are really fun. That way you get practice, your family gets a site, and it's immune to criticism because personal sites don't have to unassailable.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I'm going to throw another comment in here. I use Dreamweaver - came over from the darkside of FrontPage. While I'm no HTML guru, I do at least understand the basics. I know why most HTML tags are on my website. The only ones I don't understand completely are the ones that are Fahim-code specific, ie his blogging program or his commenting system or tagboard.
I probably could do handcoding by now - to a limited degree. I do tweak things in codeview. Dreamweaver has the ability to see the page in codeview, design view, or both at the same time, and by default, I tend to have both visible at the same time so I can learn better what's going on. And sometimes, it's much faster to correct code by hand than to do it through design.
In other words, even if you go with a program like Dreamweaver, there's still a lot you can learn about HTML coding, and if you haven't done it before, it can be an easier way to get started.
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posted
Dreamweaver can be an excellent program with which to create hand-written HTML.
Also, since you're learning from scratch, now would be an excellent time not to learn how to do everything with tables, which is an all too common affliction.
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posted
The last statement is a matter of opinion. Don't let fugu scare you off from tables.
Tables used to be a problem because of longer loading times, but that's less of an issue. They aren't always perfect, but the tradeoff of ease of implementation and their ability to adjust to the width of the user's screen often make up for it.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Its a matter of an opinion shared by those people writing the HTML standards, and by those people writing the accessibility standards, and by those people doing research in maintainability
And while tables certainly are easy, CSS-based designs have no issues adjusting to screen width, and can even do crazy things like having lines of block level elements wrap as the screen gets smaller (such as images+captions in an image gallery), or making it possible to completely change the location, size, and/or shape of things on your page without touching the HTML.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Nice try. I realize it is an opinion you strongly hold, but it's still an opinion.
There's a tradeoff in rejecting tables, and CSS often offers a great deal less flexibility. For some things, that's great, and for others, it sucks.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
*laughs* Well, sure, but I'm curious about the intellectual side of this.
I use tables because I find them easy to manipulate. If I didn't use tables, I'd have to, what, use divs? Learn CSS? I'm in the process of learning bits and pieces of CSS, but I'm not quick about this stuff - don't know why.
So, I don't know, what would someone like me do instead of using tables?
(And katharina, a special thanks to you because I don't feel like quite as much of an idiot after reading your posts as I do after reading fugu's. )
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Holy crap, that was either a testament to my communication skills or else the most back-handed compliment I've ever read. O_O
I'm going with testament to my communication skills. I'm a teacher - if my audience doesn't understand me, then I have failed.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Benefits I've discovered since (mostly) going to CSS/div-based layout:
1. Flexibility. I can move the menu column to the right without touching the HTML. Why is this good? In dynamic pages, changing the HTML can introduce programming errors. Changing the CSS can't. Also, on static sites, it would allow global changes instead of changing each page.
2. In developing dynamic pages, proper separation of elements will allow complete flexibility with layout (at whatever granularity you implement with your divs). Allows programmers to basically ignore layout considerations and designers to ignore programming considerations.
3. Easy creation of printable versions, handheld versions, etc.
4. Order that information is streamed to browser is not totally tied to order it appears on screen. Allows screen readers to work well.
5. Much, much, much easier to change the layout later. Much.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I have to wonder what thing you can list that tables can do in a design that a more CSS based approach cannot do, assuming I read what you meant by flexibility correctly.
I didn't say it wasn't an opinion, I said people who are important to consider share my opinion .
As for the arm wrestling, you'd kick my butt; I don't exercise nearly enough while you seem to have been keeping at it of late Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
katharina - I knew that was going to blow up after I posted it.
What I meant was that as fugu's talking about tables being oh so bad, and I use tables, I'm thinking oh no! I must be an idiot! Then I see you defend them, and I think, Oh, I'm not so bad after all. And then fugu says more about tables being bad, and I think D'oh! Idiot! And then you post and I think, Oh, not so bad.
So, uhm, I'm mostly talking about my own insecurities here, and how . . .
Is that enough? *eep!*
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Tables aren't some horrendous sin or anything; I just think, and have evidence for my position, that if you're going to learn how to design learning CSS-based design will yield benefits in the long run.
If you just want to put up a quick website you're not going to change much, and know tables but don't know CSS, sure, tables. It'll be faster for you. But the more people who use CSS designs the better, from my perspective, particularly as I hold it to be very valuable that sites are highly accessible.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Man, I hate when a thread I dismissed as irrelevant to me gets interesting halfway through. I missed all the fun, and now all the good stuff is edited/deleted (except for Dag/fugu/Tom's responses).
Ah well. I'm glad I don't know anything about web design. Much better to be aware of your ignorance, I always say.
Actually, that's the first time I've said it, but I think I'll put it in the rotation.
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