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Web Design Roundtable

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21:58 / 09.09.03

bump...

Picked up that Zeldman book, "designing with web standards," and I've got to say that it's probably the most informative and useful book I've got in my hands in a long time. A big recommend. Basically... we should all be trying to attain xhtml structure with css layouts since it'll help make the amount of work we put into sites more fruitful. Plus it's almost promised to keep our stuff looking good for another five years, etc. Some of the sites listed in the book even render their content nicely on an old Apple Newton. Crazy.

Now some links to resources and free code so we can all get this mighty ball rolling...

Real World Style
Blue Robot (prior mention)
The Noodle Incident (prior mention)
css/edge

nedrichards is confused

22:04 / 09.09.03

Zeldman really is the man. You'll get alot out of that book, his other one: 'Taking Your Talent To The Web' is also excellent, aimed more at old skool graphic designers who want to do web things.

Once you know that XHTML+CSS is the way ahead (a big jump in and of itself) I can't recomend anything more than getting yourself a really good text editor, teaching yourself how it works, downloading a hatful of browsers and going to a load of the sites mentioned in thsi thread, downloading their sourcecode and changing things to see what happens. Unexpected interactions are a great way to learn what happens in the real world of implementation.

22:44 / 09.09.03

I just finished that Zeldman book, too. Now I have to redesign all my sites, especially Jenny Everywhere which is getting so much hurtful --but valid, I'm afraid-- criticism!!

Re: what this guy says, I'd love to tap the local knowledge base about good user interfaces. Clearly I designed the JE comics pages post-JavaScript class, so I thought that was the latest and greatest. But I definitely see his points about not being able to bookmark individual pages, etc. Thoughts? Book recommendations?

Also: recommendations for text editors?

22:49 / 09.09.03

(I'm not actually "hurt," that's just my sense of humor. I'm really interested in talking about this stuff & taking it apart as necessary.)

04:41 / 10.09.03

BbEdit seems to be a pretty good hand-builder from my experience with it. Works nicely alongside Dreamweaver so you can start one way and still end up cleaner in the end. Don't know if you need a Mac to author this way though.

ASA JE is concerned... if you're looking at it from a usability standpoint, it seems that the post the guy had is on point. I didn't fret over it at all, but now I have this voice in my head adding that new level of critque since getting into standards a bit more. I guess, just continue to become more conscious of the decisions you make when considering how to please the potential audience and stick with it. Oh, and I like the juxtaposition of the bg to the layout. Good stuff.

Guess this is a good time to put one's money where their mouth is. Gonna put together some stuff and go from there. And also, to appease the flash geeks, another O'Reilly book, "Actionscript Cookbook," is a good recommend if you're trying to put the complexity of that language to good use. Helped me a little on a recent project as it gives a bit more guidance to the method of building clean code than focusing on its range of possibilities.

06:21 / 10.09.03

On the PC, I used Arachnophilia 4.0. Which is basically a glorified text editor that colour-codes the text, has a preview button, some menus and macros and stuff, and is entirely free. It IS available as a legacy download, because there's now Arachnophilia 5.0, which runs in Java and thus works on anything. It is also the suck. 4.0 can still be downloaded, and is great.

On the Mac, I use BBEdit Lite which is basically a decent form of Notepad, and am now using Dreamweaver - with all the fancy stuff turned off, so it's just a really, really good html editor. Having the O'Reilly books built in is also a great help.

11:55 / 10.09.03

I use Dreamweaver MX right now & then just go in & clean up. Do you have to buy BBEdit, or can it be downloaded free? I'm on a Mac too, btw.

Re: JE, Tommy actually asked me ages ago to add a "Next" button to the comics pages & I eventually didn't do it because I couldn't figure out how to make the JavaScript work. (Or Husb, as it was, who does the heavy lifting as far as code goes in our house. I should get him to join this thread.) But if I just do separate html pages, then it's easy as pie. Sometimes simpler is best.

I wish there was a place where you could submit stuff like "server-side includes" & it would spit back whether this was the equivalent of still listening to 8-tracks. Like an "Am I Hot Or Not" for web geekery.

12:19 / 10.09.03

BBEdit lite, which is basically a text editor, is free - google for it or for Bare Bones Software. BBEdit, full version, costs money, but it's more of a hardcore programmer's editor - useful for html, but if you're used to Dreamweaver it's not necessarily a good use of cash.

I am really impressed with Dreamweaver MX, even on a 12" screen; once I turned the crappy previews off, it becomes really handy - just take it down to that nice, single window. I'd love to try working on a new site from scratch with all its natty features, but as it is, it integrates quite nicely.

Server-side includes... hmn, they're still in use. I think. They might be analogous to Minidisc, say. I used to use ASP for similar purposes, entire fudge - one line of asp to integrate a second webpage. Sledgehammer, nuts, etc.

nedrichards is confused

23:51 / 10.09.03

SSI's still out there and can be very useful if you control your server. Apache is a god and httpd.conf is my friend. If you're writing a big website though you should seriously be thinking about a CMS or templating solution, no matter how lightweight. Movabletype is deceptively powerful in these circumstances but there are a load of things out there. Hand updating vast chunks of code across a complex site is a mugs game, even if you have a fancy programmers text editor that does code refactoring etc.

Good text editors (for that is what you will need), I'll only deal with free/open source ones since somebody else has mentioned Dreamweaver. For Macistes out there (cool OS X kids obviously) SubEthaEdit (newly name changed under threat of leagal action) is rather good. Very lightweight with good syntax highlighting for XHTML and CSS and interactive web preview using an embeded copy of Safari's KHTML engine. It also has a really cool colaborative editing feature but I'll leave that to the side for now.

Linux users should look no further than Quanta Plus for a very decent editor with a very decent GUI. It's sort of like Dreamweaver only more free and a bit less good. On Windows TextPad's a bit of alright but to be honest I use the platform so rarely that it's usually Notepad. There's a whole different category of text editors that crazy people like me tend to use (emacs, vi etc.) and they're great and all but try this selection first.

Oh and interactive previewing in an embedded browser is utterly brilliant when you're trying to work out CSS quirks in a mostly completed design. Great stuff.

02:28 / 13.09.03

BBEdit (full) is the absolute business of code editors, but it does cost significant quantities of money. You can, though, get money off if you already own BBEdit Lite, which is, er, free (though they don't distribute it any more). They also do something called TextWrangler, but it's not that much better than BBEdit Lite for HTML. Taco HTML Edit is a great freeware product and may do everything you need.

On the PC, I've used and still use EditPlus, and it is excellent. Shareware, costs $30 for a licence but it's well worth it. Really, it does everything I want to do, sometimes easier than BBEdit. I understand HomeSite is a good HTML dev environment too but that's pricey.

With an X11 server on a Mac, or on Linux, Bluefish is pretty good. You could also look at JEdit, which is a pure Java editor that of course runs on anything.

I hate Dreamweaver.

14:25 / 08.10.03

Anyone want to chat at me about meta-tags?

Currently I use keywords, description, copyright, author, robot, and revisit-after. I'm not sure that these are all valid, though.

nedrichards is confused

09:34 / 09.10.03

if you're going after google ranking don't bother as it ignore meta tags. I think most modern search engines (apaprot from perhaps altavista) do as well due to frequent abuse.

08:40 / 12.10.03

Yup. Best way to do well on Google is to use proper semantic code like h1's h2's p's and ul's. Also using title tags and decent link text is valuable as well.

11:17 / 30.06.04

...bump...

OK, so for some reason I got it in my head to move from Print Graphics God to Web Design Noob. I'll be getting the CS Creative Suite, MX Suite, BBEdit, etc., but I'm not stupid enough to think that software will turn me into a Internet Hero overnight.

So I've been giving myself a headache with CSS and XHTML ("No, man, tables are like SOOOOOOO '97. And stop with the imagemaps.")

I really don't want to have to learn Pearl, JavaScript, or PHP, but I do want to make a living. Are these scripts generally downloadable/modifiable? Is there hope for me? Or am I doomed to maintaining Aunt Millie's Precious Moments fansite?

Is there anything I'm forgetting?

19:40 / 30.06.04

I wouldn't worry too much about scripting/programming if you're trying to do design and production of the front-end and static sites. By building it in standards, content is easily changed, added, and manipulated even if it isn't dynamically generated. I'm not suggesting that you don't pay attention to it, just know how about it generally and how your work communicates with it. You'll also find designer-friendly scripts and methods from links in the thread.

ASA the tools you mention, that should pretty much do it. You'll get used to the MX and CS quirks before you know it.

A lot of good learning tools are spread about throughout the thread, so start looking there if you haven't already, and add to the links if you find anything useful that hasn't been covered.

00:39 / 01.07.04

Thanx for the advice. I've been scouring the css links, and I'm releived that it's not just me that doesn't fully get positioning.

02:33 / 01.07.04

It's a big jump going from table-based design to something a bit more loose looking XHTML-wise but ultimately structured. To be honest, I don't feel that I've quite gotten it all down either, but I still see the improvements when a client asks me to do changes that end up being much more simple. Or on the otherhand, when I hand over materials and a client can update their own templates without needing an outside opinion.

What's interesting on top of this, is when the approach starts making sense, you try to sell your next client (or on top of this for a personal example, an ad firm looking for an interactive person) on it. After all, you know that despite the learning curve, the benefits outweigh the trouble to follow at the end of doing a project when doing it the "old way". I've even brought older HTML 4.0 sites to the new standard quitely when I worked on established sites that are up.

For a look at sites that have these qualities (on the average though there's a bit of flash in there, but not necessarily a bad thing), here are some portals to look at:

Newstoday
K10k
Design is Kinky

02:15 / 04.06.05

Ehh.. how do I design for 800x600?

14:39 / 08.07.05

depends entirely on the style of your design,innit.
you can size things by percentage but that's gonna look arse if your text field is too big and overlaps.
you could always make it 600 by 800 and just let it float in the middle of larger screens. that seems to be a fairly common approach, if a little crap to look at on a big TFT.
there is of course always the option to have two sites, one for huge and one for small monitors... i reckon thats just silly, though.

oh, and i have one...
i am cuurently involved in designing a site for a cafe/gallery space.
it will have to be fairly large and i want it to be extremely functional, and i was wondering if anyone had seen anything similar.

their current site is WhereTheMonkeySleeps.Com

the new one will have to be better in a few ways, but mainly i am trying to foser a sense of community and create some consistency throughout the site.
i willprolly use some CSS(like, as soon as i actually know how to...) and will try to keep flash, etc down to a minimum.
i was also hoping to try and include some easy uploadable elements, so that staff can be given the task of updating shit like customer of the week.

any ideas greatly appreciated.

01:00 / 09.07.05

Well to start, I would say that there's no cohesiveness to any of the current site. I'd make a list of features and a sitemap to figure out what ideas are there that can be housed in general sections and what out of that you could tie to a basic structure. From there, you should be able to identify what's important and what you can toss aside. Keeping things simple is by far the best way to go. Sites have a tendency to grow and overflow while you're working on them, regardless of how well you may plan.

But since it seems you're starting from scratch, you're probably in a bit of luck. If you can work on the logo and branding of the site, you can extend key concepts from there that will determine the look and feel of the site. I have a tendency to either work with a total redesign or another artist (fro direction / sympathy) to ensure that I'm extended the amount of control necessary to successfully render my services.

You mention using CSS (once you're on top of it, of course), so I'd say you're off to a good start. If you're thinking of creating a site that's easily updated, the work you build into your style sheet could be easily used in a php/mysql environment to produce a tight user experience that's easily managed. I think that I've mentioned OnLamp (a part of O'Reilly's dev net) and places like A List Apart, etc. up-thread... they should help you on your way to building these kind of places. If you're not ready to look into a cms and back-end for a site, at least you have templates to hand off to the client so that they can upload their own stuff. Not quite the same, but within the abilities of most people.

If you need specific advice, drop me a pm... I've been involved in some recent projects that have shown me quite a bit and I'm looking to give back a little. Best of luck...

12:54 / 21.07.05

wicked!
thanks for the help.
sorry i didnt thank you earlier... i sorta forget about the AFD forum sometimes.
that and i am a procrastinating shithead.
i will prolly PM you soon about all sorts of silly shit, but for now i am trying to forge ahead into the wildernes.
thanks again, dr banshee.

00:46 / 05.08.05

Ugh, I've been away from designing websites for not even a year & I feel like I know nothing. I'm doing a crash course, I thought I'd share--

Starting with The Web Standards Project:
What are web standards and why should I use them?

Learn the standards:
Accessibility
CSS
DOM
Scripting
HTML
Graphics
XHTML
XML
Other Standards

Also, a link to the CMS thread in Conversation.

Questions:
* Is there any reason to really get into HTML anymore? Isn't it all going to be XHTML from now on?
* Is XHTML a kind of XML, or is XHTML eventually going to be replaced by XML?

04:31 / 05.08.05

As I understand it, XHTML is an outgrowth of HTML, though it is stricter in what you can and cannot do. For instance, no capitols in your tags, all tags must be closed. XHTML has predefined tags like HTML, whereas XML dosen't. The <barbelith> tag would be meaningless in XHTML but perfectly valid in XML.
Plus, I don't believe XML is actually used in web design, not the front-end stuff anyways. I think it's usually used to interface with PHP, SQL, Javascript and other scriping languages.

11:21 / 05.08.05

What I read is that XHTML is a reformulation of HTML as an XML application. I did my last site in XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I want to know if I can leave off learning HTML, which I never properly did, and if I can make XHTML my new starting point. Could somebody just starting web design start with XHTML?

If you do <barbelith> --is that a namespace? Can you do namespaces in XHTML 1.1?

05:09 / 06.08.05

Tbh, I'm not so sure.... I'm fairly familiar with XHTML right now, but I haven't deviated from best practices when I build sites. I imagine that leveraging the power of XML would allow you to build things outside of the standard web language, but it has to be recognized (as far as I know) with-in the DOM and web browser.

Personally, I don't find many reasons to build HTML 4.0.1 layouts except if I'm interfacing with an old school programmer or that kind of structure. I still use stylesheets and the regular method, but I make sure that the presentational markup is still outside of the document. Just a mix of both worlds and waiting for people to catch up..

I think that as soon as IE7 gets it's act together, we can build sites fully within XHTML standards and not have to worry about bugs, etc.

07:18 / 06.08.05

What I read is that XHTML is a reformulation of HTML as an XML application.

Yes.

I did my last site in XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I want to know if I can leave off learning HTML, which I never properly did, and if I can make XHTML my new starting point.

Yes. I would.

Could somebody just starting web design start with XHTML?

Yes, and I think it would actually be easier and more useful, because you won't get confused by looking at so many examples of bad HTML coding that still works, and you'll also be getting experience that will be more useful for dealing with XML in general.

If you do --is that a namespace? Can you do namespaces in XHTML 1.1?

<barbelith> itself isn't a namespace, namespaces are a way of differentiating between different definitions... I think... uh, I'll be honest and say that I couldn't give you a really good definition of precisely what a namespace is right now.

XML *is* used in web design (I know that the designers at the company I work for now use XML and XSLT, and they're not particularly weird) though I couldn't say how common it is overall. The only major site I can think of off-hand that obviously uses XML is the Telegraph - check the URLs for the articles - but you never know what other sites are doing behind the scenes.

11:52 / 15.08.05

Hey all, WestCiv is starting one of their free courses this week: HTML and XHTML for CSS.

12:20 / 15.08.05

Well, not all. It's a very basic course.

20:00 / 15.08.05

<barbelith> is not a namespace, it's an element. http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml is a namespace.

Essentially, a namespace is an 'abstract container' where the vocabulary for the XML file is stored. All the elements of valid XHTML exist in that namespace. <barbelith> does not, so it isn't valid XHTML.

Adding a <barbelith> tag makes it invalid XHTML. XHTML is HTML that follows the basic rules of XML: correctly nested elements, case-sensitive elements (which are all, in the case of XHTML, lowercase), all elements must be closed, all elements must exist in the namespace.

Does that help at all?

As a webdesigner, you need to be starting with XHTML, but it's almost identical to the HTML you'll know. Most of the problems you'll have will be related to closing tags that you're not used to, or closing single tags (eg <br /> rather than <br>

. Not only is it the way forward - and, with any luck, forwards-compatible - but it makes more sense, and is a lot more consistent, semantically.

Regarding XML: you need to know it exists, and have the vaguest idea of how it works. The most common place you'll encounter it, at the small/personal site level is RSS or Atom. You're probably not going to need to know stuff like XSLT, or XPath, unless you get more into web programming rather than design/layout.

If any of that was unclear, just ask - and hopefully, I won't have gone too far over your head.

02:58 / 16.08.05

I think I get that. I understand more what the browser (?) gets from http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd & not really what it gets from http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml --I mean, it just looks like an ordinary webpage. I don't suppose that I need to know that right now, though.

09:24 / 16.08.05

Really, don't worry about it. The DTD is more obvious because it's a physical thing: a practical explanation of the vocabulary. The namespace is much more abstract, and even I don't really get it. All you need to concentrate on is writing it well, and marking up your DOCTYPE, DTD and namespace correctly in the head.

21:15 / 08.12.05

I was doing WestCiv's HTML & XHTML course & then in September they got busy, and they stopped for, like, three months. They're finally started up again & the last two weeks have been the most basic stuff about doing links. For three months I waited for this?

But, question: like when you have a PDF on your site, it says that you don't use the http protocol & you use the ftp protocol. Really? Like if I have a PDF on my site, I just link it like this & it works:

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/mydocument.pdf>">My Document</a>

But it says you're supposed to do:

<a href="ftp://ftp.mysite.com/mydocument.pdf>">My Document</a>

I have never heard this before & I was wondering if anybody else was familiar with this?

19:11 / 09.12.05

I can't say for certain, but there is a logic to this. I've noticed that non-browser-compatible files are often parsed by browsers as html. Using the ftp protocol would tell the browser to download rather than interpret, yes?

20:22 / 09.12.05

I think that would be the case.

As far as I've seen though, placing links to pdfs in "http://" brand of urls has never really been an issue for me. The Tiger version of Safari is especially slick since it renders the pdf in the browser for you.

Like all things, even standards, there are deviations like code hacks, real world solutions, etc. After going to the most recent (and first) AnEventApart conference, I'm wondering and worried about IE7 though. Hopefully the move to better support by M$ won't end up breaking all of our existing sites.

22:19 / 09.12.05

But what if you have a spreadsheet, say? Then ftp is better, right?

What did they say about IE7?

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