*chaser* wrote:
...
How did you peoples learn writing sites? els, brucie, Andrew Urquhart
and rf specifically.
Not to discount anyone else's contribs to this forum.
As Kris said: "doing all the stupid things I now tell people not to do."
It took me 4 years after becoming a user of the web before I attempted
to write a web page. I started off with Frontpage 2.0 in 1999 because I
didn't know a thing about HTML and wanted a quick way to learn. With
Frontpage I could create something in its design view and then see how
it was implemented in HTML in the 'source' view. A few weeks later I
knew enough to write basic HTML in Notepad without it and then only used
Frontpage to create tricky table layouts.
Next I took to javascript and created a horrendously complicated
frames-based site with all manor of bells and whistles and used Visual
C++ to write my pages because it had syntax highlighting and some nice
editing features. At about that time I started reading
and learned quite a bit about javascript and
the nuances of browsers. 6 months after first opening Frontpage I
ditched the font tag and switched to CSS for font styling. At the time
CSS for layout was much more troublesome than it is today and I
persevered with tables for laying out information on pages. Around this
time it began to dawn on me the barriers that I had unintentionally
created to other web users through my own ignorance. I began to turn
away from ideas such as 'best viewed with Internet Explorer 5.5+', 'you
must have javascript enabled' and 'your browser doesn't support
frames' - it took a little while to sink in.
I think it was early 2002 when I made my first all-CSS site, probably at
the same time as I upgraded my server-side capabilities. Suddenly I
could use server-side includes and ASP to build a templating system. At
some point I digested
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/all-properties.html and used it as
my main CSS reference. I can't remember the websites I may have used as
guides in order to build this first all-CSS site (maybe MeyerWeb was one
of them, I probably took it apart), but I remember that I didn't use
books or HTML newsgroups to do it. In 2003 I bought Cascading
Stylesheets 2.0 Programmer's Guide by Eric Meyer and that has been a
useful reference. More recently I've picked up some useful points from
the HTML and stylesheet newsgroups and no doubt there is still more to
learn.
Between Spring 2002 and the end of 2003 I worked in the WWW department
of a largish publishing company. The sites were table-based, very
complex, very slow to load, difficult to modify and maintain. This
experience somewhat horrified me and pushed me into ensuring that my own
site was accessible, easy to maintain and hopefully not too slow to
download.
...
How do you write pages? Notepad? I don't mean to start a war,
really. But I'd like to know how real designers do it. I have dw4.
I guess its ok. Seems like if nothing else it would save a lot of
redundant typing like the doctype and other things most pages have.
Today I use Textpad 4 with a custom syntax highlighting library that
highlights xhtml and ASP JScript. When the purpose or page/site has been
established I tend to draw a graphic design of it first to get the
difficult inspiration bit out of the way. Then I create an unstyled page
that works well for screen readers and search engines (strict, semantic
(x)HTML). I then look for the HTML elements in that page that I can
attach CSS to, such as a list of navigation links, the main content
area, etc. and give them meaningful ids or classes where needed. Bearing
in mind the graphic I created earlier I then write some basic CSS layout
rules to arrange the blocks. For example I might style the #menu block
to become a horizontal bar rather than a vertical list, etc. I choose
CSS that allows pages to scale well and respond to different
environments, measurements are in % or ems, but px units are used for
certain margin/padding effects where there are background-images. Then I
go back to my page graphic, cut it up into various parts and add some of
the pieces as CSS background images to some of the blocks. Finally I add
the remaining font suggestions and colours.
After that I test it for markup and CSS validity, run it through an
automated accessibility testing tool and carefully evaluate the results.
Test in Opera set to emulate a text browser, then as a GUI browser,
sometimes also using Operas small screen mode, looking to see how usable
and how accessible the site is. I then test for different canvas sizes,
different user font sizes, without script, etc. Such things have already
been designed for by this point, but it's just a check to see how well
the site really copes in a variety of situations. Then I perform some of
those tests again for Firefox and IE6.0, 5.5 and 5.01 (all windows
versions alas). I also check with an online service that allows me to
look at the site as Mac Safari users see it. At work I had access to
more browsers on more platforms, so at the moment I'm a bit restricted
in my testing. However, all this testing is just for my own site. A
significant site needs more comprehensive testing with a variety of real
users, test plans, incorporating user feedback, analysing how they use
the site, etc. What I've not mentioned are the many snippets of
information acquired through experience that are considered during the
development process.
I don't consider myself a 'designer' because I feel that implies I know
something about graphic design. My last job title was 'web programmer'
and that is the label I'm more comfortable with.
Cheers,
