Any idiot can create a Website.
Contents
It's OK Ma'am. I'm from the Internet.
Do it yourself? Anybody can.
What you see is what you get.
Design isn't just about using some page generator or somebody else's template.
What browsers do you know about?
Standards and Compliance.
Design isn't at all about what you think is cool.
Lastly, a fun but very useful resource.
It's OK Ma'am. I'm from the Internet
Are you considering hiring someone to develop your website or to fix a bad one? How do you know if you're getting a designer, or just another idiot using a page generator? Not every so-called web designer knows any more about this than you do. Many of them are just using the same tools and generating the same junk, and walking away with your money. Why? Because it's easy! Any idiot can create a website and call himself a web designer. The quality of your site and pride in their work is not why they do this.
If you're concerned about the quality of your presence on the web, you should know what you're going to end up with, and the ethics and professionalism of your designer.
Will he check your finished project with the w3c validator (see below)? Does he even know what the w3c is? Will he test your entire site with at least 3 of the popular browsers? Will you end up with a clean, reliable site composed of compliant code? Will he maintain it for you, or will you be able to update it?
Do it yourself? Anybody can. Just download some cool template somebody else designed.
It's easy, right? It must be so, because the web is replete with websites created by people who don't even know what HTML (HyperText Markup Language) means. All you need is Microsoft Word or Dreamweaver, paste in a template, paste in your content, generate or save-as, and there you go. Upload it and the world is suddenly your pearl. Life is good.
You use Internet Explorer or Firefox as your only browser, and your site looks fine to you. Then one day you look at your really cool website from work or somebody else's laptop, and damn, it looks like crap! Why?
I've corresponded with folks who want their site fixed, and they don't know why it's broken. They can't get images to look right. The content wraps (or doesn't wrap) around their multi-column black background funny (wow, all those tables looked really cool in Word). Their customers (those who don't hit the back button and are nice enough to offer feedback) say their site is hard to navigate, or they can't even read it.
I might ask why they want to use generated XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language) instead of standard HTML for a simple site. They say something along the lines of "I don't know what that means. I just paste into Dreamweaver" or they use Microsoft Word, lay out a bunch of tables and "save as".
This has to be the biggest problem with many people these days who want a website. They think they don't need to know anything, just use something that supposedly does all the work, put a huge "cool looking" Flash animation on their site, and somehow it's supposed to be magic.
The internet has been "dumbed down". Just because it's easy doesn't necessarily mean it's good. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should".
What you see is what you get. What about what you don't see?
The problem with these WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) page generators is that they ALL generate crappy code that is non-compliant, full of errors and not cross-browser compatible. To make matters worse, some of them also generate obscure javascript and style sheets (CSS) that are full of hard to maintain conditions, such as determining a visitor's browser version. If you write standard, compliant HTML and CSS, you don't need all that crap.
If you must use a page generator, you should know enough about what it's generating that you can get into your source (it's just text after all) and edit it by hand. If you can't do that, you must live with the knowledge that your site's code is full of errors and unnecessary tags and junk that will not work in all browsers, and will add to the time it takes your page to load.
Design isn't just about using some page generator or somebody else's template.
One reason why many designers (such as myself) don't do as much page design for clients as we did years ago, is because of the advent of these editors and online free webpage sites. Anyone can use them to create a web page. As for myself (an artist long before there ever was a WWW), I concentrate more now on graphic design.
While I prefer to work with graphics over page design, I enjoy page design, and love to do new things with this site. I do enjoy developing something new for someone else, but when I hear from someone who generated (or paid someone for) a crappy XHTML site and want to keep it but have it fixed, I cringe. How and why did they ever get to that point? Now they're ready to pay someone hundreds or even thousands of dollars to fix it or redesign it! The later and ongoing problem with that is, how is the guy going to be able to maintain it afterward? If he does what he did before to make changes, he'll just generate the same crap and break it again.
Personally, I don't understand why people want their website to look like someone else's. Templates are not original work after the first one gets published. Originality disappears along with quality. The bigger problem is when the design is a bad design to begin with. Why would you choose to copy someone else's poor design and bad code?
As a graphics guy, another problem I see is poor use of imagery. Of course, it's awesome to have graphics on your site. I'm certainly in favor of graphics. But why do people do things such as apply width and height constraints to an image to make it a different size, distorting the aspect ratio? If it isn't the right size, and you don't know how to do it properly, get a graphic designer. Learn about style sheets and inline style tags. Most folks don't know the how and why of when to use GIF versus JPEG, or coordinating content with colors that don't hurt people's eyes. Red or blue text on a dark colored background is not "cool" looking. It's stupid. It breaks a fundamental design rule.
What browsers do you know about?
If you have a website, you should have on hand at least 3 browsers in order to view your site with all of them to be certain it works. It is not a good idea to assume that your visitors use the same browser as you do. If you build your site on a large monitor, look at it from your little laptop. See how bad it looks there. See my discussion regarding browsers. I like knowing that my site is good on all of those popular browsers.
Standards and Compliance
The World Wide Web Consortium (w3c) is the standards organization that defines how all code on the web should work, and how it should be written to conform to those standards. The w3c is not someone like me posting their opinions. This stuff is the rules. Standards and acceptable use of all code used properly on the web are defined by the w3c.
Want to see if your page is valid? If it is not, odds are it will not work in all browsers. The w3c has a wonderful and free online tool that will check your code. If you use a page generator such as Dreamweaver, I'll bet you the cost of your software that you have multiple errors.
Here is the w3c HTML/XHTML Validator. Just paste your URL into the box to validate your home page. Also run it on every other page (html file) on your site.
Want to see if your CSS is valid?
Here is the w3c CSS Validator. Just paste the URL into the box for any of your pages that use style sheets (or inline styles).
Compliant code (whether HTML or XHTML, whether you use CSS or not) will work in all compliant browsers. Many browsers are lenient, and may (or may not) render bad code. The authors of an invaluable reference book, HTML and XHTML, The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly), said it best: "The internet is replete with bad code rendered by lenient browsers" (paraphrased). Not long ago, all you had to worry about was Internet Explorer (IE) and Netscape. Now we have IE, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Apple Safari in widespread use. As time goes on, browser vendors are writing better browsers. We can't get away with sticking crap out here on the web forever. Learn about what you need to do, and do it right.
I use a standard text editor, and know exactly what every line and tag in my code does. Every page on this site is hand-coded HTML and CSS. I have complete control, and will never need to ask someone to fix my site. It is standards compliant, renders (works) in all popular browsers exactly the same, and I have one set of CSS definitions, and some simple javascript that doesn't worry about what browser my visitors use. Call me "old school", but I am detail oriented and am happy that I learned HTML years ago.
Design isn't at all about what you think is cool.
Of course, this site is replete with graphics. Some are large and animated. But, as I explain in my Intro page, this is a graphic site by purpose. This is my intent. My intended audience expects it.
Why do you have a website? Why do you want a website? What are you wanting to do? Sell a product or service? Who is your intended audience? What can you offer them? What about your site (assuming potential customers can find it) will have them want to stay and learn more? What about your site will make a visitor hit their "back" button instead? Remember, if a man from Mars can't know what your site is all about within 5 seconds, he will leave.
Do you really need Flash? Ask yourself, Why? Because it's "cool"? Likely, you don't know anything about it, but your WYSIWYG software generated it for you, so dang it, you're going to have it take up half of your home page, and you don't care that a potential customer had to wait 2 minutes for it to load. Yes, some sites make good use of it, and perhaps have a need for it due to their product or intent.
I have some Flash content, such as interactive demos and my portfolio. They're presented via links wherein I warn you that it is Flash, and offer a PDF as an alternative. I give you a chance to choose whether you want to view the Flash presentation.
Too many people have Flash garbage on their site. A big problem with that is that your visitors probably don't like it. The majority do not. Unless you just love Flash and must have it, don't use it. At least give your visitor a means of avoiding it. Most visitors (Customers) looking for your product or what you can do for them aren't likely looking for a Flash site. Visitors that don't have it and don't want to (or are afraid to) download the plug-in will just wonder what they're missing. That is, if they haven't already hit their "back" button.
Also keep in mind that what looks good to you when you're testing your layout (you do test your pages, don't you?) may not work for your visitors over their connection. Your cool animation that runs in a split second for you may take several minutes to download. That assumes that your visitor already has (or wants) the Flash plugin downloaded and installed in their browser.
Lastly, a fun but very useful resource
Web Pages That Suck is a fun, yet seriously good place to learn about what NOT to do, and why. This guy has been around a long time and knows what he's talking about. He has a lot of good resources and facts. Hopefully, no one will submit your site to his published list of "Web Pages That Suck".
This article is not intended to offend, or to insult your intelligence. These are facts, known issues and real experience of the sad state of the internet. If you feel that you are an idiot, well... Join the crowd.
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