, what’s with the new design at Wired News? There are some great touches like the text size selector and the fact that the fundamental layout didn’t change, but the new colours are so, well… so 1983. I expect to click a link and get a big “Frankie says SURF!” slogan or something. Not to mention the clash with the enclosing Lycos colours…
Many people
have weighed in on the question of CSS now that the issue has become a “live” one in the weblog world. A representative opinion on one “side” of the thing (if sides here makes sense, which I don’t actually think it does) is that of Matt Bridges in CounterProductive. He wrote, “When a designer uses CSS to mimic what can be done with tables, separating content into different boxes that are placed at specific parts of the screen, they tie that content to that layout. This completely defeats the purpose of separation of style from content.”
It’s a perfectly reasonable statement, and having worked on some CSS layouts I do see the drawbacks alongside the advantages. The problem is, however, that most people seem to have the foundational principles wrong. And their error leads in ugly directions.
CSS is about style. But there’s something much more important than that. Implementing CSS also returns structure to HTML. And that is where the value is – it’s not about separating content from style – that’s what a CMS is for. Rather, it’s to return the third variable – structure – to its rightful place in the mix. So that not only do you have the flexibility to do anything you want with the content (in the CMS), and to redesign that site as you like, but there’s also a fully degradeable version at the heart of the human-readable, “published” version that any device can read, as long as it can interpret HTML in some rudimentary way.
I just came across
tvgohome for the first time tonight. As a friend described it, “As Monty Python is to the Smothers Brothers, tvgohome is to The Onion“.
The FAQ has a particularly funny bit: “Why use a JPEG for the listings instead of text?
Because I want precise control over the layout. And because it seriously annoys “real ale” Internet users who do all their browsing on text-based hand-held calculators, and that arouses me.”
Eric Costello has really
progressed with his CSS layout techniques page at glish.com. More good stuff there than you can shake a stick at.
I’m in deep juggler mode
at the moment, which is a really fun spot to be in. In theory I’m looking for work as a product/project manager for a web concern or something like that. In fact, I haven’t been looking much – I’ve been waiting by the phone for an offer that I will take. And in the interim – I’m learning, playing, and developing projects at a fever pitch.
I’m doing a lot of playing around with CSS box-properties layouts, which has been good, if a little frustrating. As well, Aaron and Luke pretty much convinced me to roll my own tools to manage content for montrealstories.org (although an interim solution will be deployed sooner) – so I’m playing with XML, PHP and some other stuff to get that going. I have a bit of a background in scripting, though with a different kind of tool, so I’m feeling pretty confident.
As well, though, I’ve just now figured out the next project, which could be pretty neat. I’m not going to say more so I don’t jinx it, but it would be a different sort of thing, and terribly interesting to develop.
Bottom line: what I really need isn’t a job but a patron, sort of like a renaissance-era painter, or maybe a poet in Paris in the 20s. All that said, I am still excited about the job on the horizon too. It’ll just cut into my personal research time
