Category Archives: Web Design

Everything about web design. Markup, style, standards, accessibility, etc.

Web Standard Templates

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One thing I’ve been meaning to do is create a set of standard templates for use on new sites. By templates I don’t mean similar to those found on Template Monster. I’m talking basic layout templates for 1, 2 and 3 column layouts, etc. Ones that are compliant with the different web standards.

Have you compiled a set of your own? Or do you use layout generators to create them?

Hack-free Standards Design?

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With all the hacks created to overcome browser inconsistencies and inadequacies, how easy is it to design a hack-free web standard design? In trying to create one, are you limited to using a basic design or can a complex (relatively speaking) design be accomplished?

Share your thoughts!

Google Code: Web Authoring Statistics

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In December 2005 we did an analysis of a sample of slightly over a billion documents, extracting information about popular class names, elements, attributes, and related metadata.

Some interesting things I picked up from the study are:

  • A whole slew of people are specifying the xml:lang attribute, which will have absolutely no effect (no HTML processor will look at that attribute; it’s an XML attribute).
  • Of the top twenty most-used attributes on body, fourteen are purely presentational.
  • The br element is a simple one, yet used on so many pages that it is the 8th most-used element. It is used more than the p element. There are very few legitimate semantic places to use this element (addresses and poems are the canonical examples), which means that most uses are probably presentational.
  • In our data sample there were twice as many pages that used the table element but didn’t use the td element
  • The script element was used on roughly half the pages we checked.

Google Code: Web Authoring Statistics

Call yourself a Web Professional

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Plenty of people have been talking about whether or not those that refuse to adopt web standards in web design should be entitled to call themselves web professionals.

While I agree that those who design should be looking to learn web standards, I also feel that not everyone has the same learning curve when it comes to standards. Some people need more time to learn than others. I especially didn’t like one particular quote from John Oxton (certain words censored):

What I want is HTML that kicks up a royal f*****g stink if it isn’t treated properly. HTML that takes no s**t, with a built in big flashy message (GO AWAY AND LEARN ABOUT ME!) for people who refuse to take the time to learn this super simple language and who refuse to refine their understanding.
I think some people seem to forget that it’s not a ‘super simple language’ to everyone. That quote is like a typical ‘RTFM’ response you’d get on a forum. Don’t slate someone just because they don’t know as much as you. I’m sure you wouldn’t like the same response from someone who knows more about another topic than you.