I’m currently learning CSS, Web Standards and this whole new way of thinking. I do admit that I still am trying to get my head around all of it.
Maybe after learning it so deeply I’ll ‘see the light’. Having said that it seems we have gone to the other extreme. Seeing the way we use <div>s and <ul>s today looks no different from the way we were using tables before.
If we will be honest with ourselves we must admit that SEMANTICALLY an unordered list was meant for a list of bullets in text, not a NAVBAR. (Admit it!)
Also, that whole line of thinking is flawed, “X element was never meant for design…” with that thinking we should all be writing research papers and military communications since that is what the Internet was built for.
I’m not saying lets go back to all those ridiculous tables within tables, but since when was following all the rules the best policy? In the article artists, writers and engineers are mentioned.
These things (built by artists, writers & engineers) would not exist under the current CSS/Web Standards ascetiscism:
Salvadore Dali
Jackson Pollick
William Faulkner
Stephen King (M-O-O-N, that spells web standards!)
A Clockwork Orange
Jazz Music
Watership Down (Rabbits we’re never meant to talk)
Frank Gehry (Buildings should be boxy!)
Apple Macintosh Computers
Hip Hop Music
Jimi Hendrix (Guitar feedback is NOT music; semantically speaking)
The list could go on and on…
If the goal is cleaner code, accessibility, and all that fine, but by any means necessary. Who knows what type of discoveries we are missing out on by forcing ourselves to only use the web as it was meant to be used. We should embrace finding new uses for old things. Otherwise all of us web designers should find new jobs because semantically the Internet is not meant for the work we do.
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graham stuart
The original article is without doubt one of the best I have read on the mental shift involved when moving from print based to web based design. With dual skills in copywriting and graphics I was coming to these conclusions but had not expressed them so clearly.
However, the tendency for coders to dismiss graphics as mere “decoration” and therefore ephermeral to content also needs to be challenged head on. Graphics is not about making things “pretty”, it is about visual communication. The medium directly affects the way the message is delivered and whether it is effectively delivered at all. So issues like layout and juxtaposition, the realtionship between text and graphics, as well as detailed styling all affect the way the way something is read and absorbed. Even issues as apparently “decorative” as color choice have solid psychological theory behind them which is used to shape the total experience and target particular personality types. Visual cues actualy “say” things to the human brain which affects the total perception of what is being said.
Don’t flame me about “accessibility”, I know well and accept that not everyone has access to these visual cues, so there are other cues that need to be used too for effective communication. Hence the advantages of separating out content from presentation, at least as a procedural exercise. But the point stands that graphics is not just about slapping a coat of paint on an otherwise finished project.
To use an organic metaphor for a change; writers inject flesh and blood into the project, engineers build the bones of the informational entity, but it is via the skin and the facial expressions that the message is actually delivered. This is where designers come in.
Yes, designers must be flexible and adpatable in their approach, able to get inside different kinds of skin (different user agent types). And yes, the design principles should serve the semantics and the content rather than impede them. But that should be a two way street. The separation of content from presentation is methodologically useful but entails the cognitive danger of thinking that content + sematics IS the message. It isn’t, any more than a living body is jsut a skeleton with muscles and nerves.
Unfortunately not all the currently available code tools are suited to the third partner in the information delivery process. I fully appreciate the desire for “beautiful” code, but coders must understand that elegant code does not automatically create elegant and effective layout.
This lack of understanding on the part of many code developers is probably why, as the prevous poster points out, we are having to bend inadequately constructed tools (floating divs, display: inline for menus, endlessly fiddled margins and padding to overcome unpredicatble “collapsing border” rules…) to do things that should be quick and straightforward and which are truly necessary for effective viusal communication. The web is not just a textual medium. It began as that, but like it or not it is now very firmly a MULTI-media public space and will become even more so, because that is how modern humans communicate.
Just because code rules may seem Platonically perfect does not mean that they are ideally suited to the real world. The synergy between content, semantics and design needs to work in all three directions. I’m gradually getting there from my starting point. Is anyone making the effort to move in the other direction?
If you cannot do the first option, you can consider this another option as well as hiring dedicated live chat operators from outsourcing companies in India. You can try out FREE 90 days “Auto Chat System” from http://www.EmailChatSupport.com
34 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticleRon Evans
I’m currently learning CSS, Web Standards and this whole new way of thinking. I do admit that I still am trying to get my head around all of it.
Maybe after learning it so deeply I’ll ‘see the light’. Having said that it seems we have gone to the other extreme. Seeing the way we use <div>s and <ul>s today looks no different from the way we were using tables before.
If we will be honest with ourselves we must admit that SEMANTICALLY an unordered list was meant for a list of bullets in text, not a NAV BAR. (Admit it!)
Also, that whole line of thinking is flawed, “X element was never meant for design…” with that thinking we should all be writing research papers and military communications since that is what the Internet was built for.
I’m not saying lets go back to all those ridiculous tables within tables, but since when was following all the rules the best policy? In the article artists, writers and engineers are mentioned.
These things (built by artists, writers & engineers) would not exist under the current CSS/Web Standards ascetiscism:
Salvadore Dali
Jackson Pollick
William Faulkner
Stephen King (M-O-O-N, that spells web standards!)
A Clockwork Orange
Jazz Music
Watership Down (Rabbits we’re never meant to talk)
Frank Gehry (Buildings should be boxy!)
Apple Macintosh Computers
Hip Hop Music
Jimi Hendrix (Guitar feedback is NOT music; semantically speaking)
The list could go on and on…
If the goal is cleaner code, accessibility, and all that fine, but by any means necessary. Who knows what type of discoveries we are missing out on by forcing ourselves to only use the web as it was meant to be used. We should embrace finding new uses for old things. Otherwise all of us web designers should find new jobs because semantically the Internet is not meant for the work we do.
graham stuart
The original article is without doubt one of the best I have read on the mental shift involved when moving from print based to web based design. With dual skills in copywriting and graphics I was coming to these conclusions but had not expressed them so clearly.
However, the tendency for coders to dismiss graphics as mere “decoration” and therefore ephermeral to content also needs to be challenged head on. Graphics is not about making things “pretty”, it is about visual communication. The medium directly affects the way the message is delivered and whether it is effectively delivered at all. So issues like layout and juxtaposition, the realtionship between text and graphics, as well as detailed styling all affect the way the way something is read and absorbed. Even issues as apparently “decorative” as color choice have solid psychological theory behind them which is used to shape the total experience and target particular personality types. Visual cues actualy “say” things to the human brain which affects the total perception of what is being said.
Don’t flame me about “accessibility”, I know well and accept that not everyone has access to these visual cues, so there are other cues that need to be used too for effective communication. Hence the advantages of separating out content from presentation, at least as a procedural exercise. But the point stands that graphics is not just about slapping a coat of paint on an otherwise finished project.
To use an organic metaphor for a change; writers inject flesh and blood into the project, engineers build the bones of the informational entity, but it is via the skin and the facial expressions that the message is actually delivered. This is where designers come in.
Yes, designers must be flexible and adpatable in their approach, able to get inside different kinds of skin (different user agent types). And yes, the design principles should serve the semantics and the content rather than impede them. But that should be a two way street. The separation of content from presentation is methodologically useful but entails the cognitive danger of thinking that content + sematics IS the message. It isn’t, any more than a living body is jsut a skeleton with muscles and nerves.
Unfortunately not all the currently available code tools are suited to the third partner in the information delivery process. I fully appreciate the desire for “beautiful” code, but coders must understand that elegant code does not automatically create elegant and effective layout.
This lack of understanding on the part of many code developers is probably why, as the prevous poster points out, we are having to bend inadequately constructed tools (floating divs, display: inline for menus, endlessly fiddled margins and padding to overcome unpredicatble “collapsing border” rules…) to do things that should be quick and straightforward and which are truly necessary for effective viusal communication. The web is not just a textual medium. It began as that, but like it or not it is now very firmly a MULTI-media public space and will become even more so, because that is how modern humans communicate.
Just because code rules may seem Platonically perfect does not mean that they are ideally suited to the real world. The synergy between content, semantics and design needs to work in all three directions. I’m gradually getting there from my starting point. Is anyone making the effort to move in the other direction?
Ankur Patel
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Ankur Patel
If you cannot do the first option, you can consider this another option as well as hiring dedicated live chat operators from outsourcing companies in India. You can try out FREE 90 days “Auto Chat System” from http://www.EmailChatSupport.com