Degrees of Separation
Degrees of Separation
Degrees of Separation
15 Oct 2003 — 0 Comments
Friday's post detailed a portion of my journey away from HTML visual editors such as Dreamweaver to a heavier reliance on hand-coded, semantically-correct XHTML and CSS. While Dreamweaver MX 2004 makes a bold leap forward with richer support for structural XHTML and presentational CSS, seeing as how I'd just use it as a bloated text-editor, I'd rather spend the extra upgrade cash on SSX 3 instead.
Regardless, I am convinced that designing websites with structural XHTML and CSS will make you a better designer, whether you choose to code by hand, or go it with a refined visual editor. This is simply because the presence of structural rules reminds you of the importance of certain design principles that have been largely forgotten over the last fifteen years. While the Macintosh and PageMaker opened the door to Desktop Publishing, it also lowered the bar for design standards. Visual editors like Dreamweaver and GoLive historically have had the same effect on web design by allowing users to spit out seemingly advanced design without understanding the need for foundations below.
My mother's degree was in illustration and photography, and during high school and college she was involved in a variety of design projects which, at the time, required compiling and editing content, marking the raw content up by hand, and sending the content to a typesetter for final layout.
Careful attention was given to margins, type, kerning, and even crazy stuff like character counting. This was to insure that raw content, when arranged by the typesetter, would end up looking slick. Without properly structured content however, the typesetter would be stuck, and the resulting design could be a disaster. Moreover, the duplication of that design with different content would be increasingly difficult.
Sound familiar? This is not much unlike the problem facing the web today. Structure and presentation are tied together, and if one drowns, so does the other. Those who have followed Yellowlane for a while will note that in the past, there were usually many weeks and months in-between site updates. This is largely because the design was tethered to the structure, which in turn was tethered to content. This created a royal pain in the patootie to update.
By separating the design from structure, it is now a breeze to update. And I'm a better designer for it. XHTML and CSS require you to think before you jump and remind you of the importance of good planning in design. We're making positive steps here.
Yesterday, Douglas Bowman explored several other facets of the necessary separation of content and presentation, specifically reminding us of the third degree of separation that takes place in separating content from the structure of XHTML. This can be accomplished in a professional setting with a database-driven Content Management System, or in a smaller setting with a publishing system such as MovableType. Or you can manage it by hand. Timely and challenging, Bowman's latest offering will take you even further down the separated road of content and design.
And where does this leave us? Does the presence of structure lead us to stale design? The answer, most definitely, is no. But it's time for lunch with my wife, and seeing as how today will go down as one of the Top Ten Most Beautiful Days of the Year here in Fort Worth, it's time for me to go. More tomorrow.
