In a nutshell: This is a great book for web designers with some experience.
The book’s content is organized into what they call ’secrets’. A typical ’secret’ may be few paragraphs to at most, a couple of pages.
This makes it a handy desk reference, as it’s packed with very useful snippets of information that are presented in a concise manner - the author gets to the point quickly.
What does the book cover:
- The ‘tools’ that a web designer can choose from.
- Usability - how to make your websites easier to use.
- Website project management - this chapter was a little boring for me.
- Scripting - but many of the sample scripts are little weak.
- CSS - good discussions of the practical use of CSS.
- Making websites accessible.
- XHTML and HTML - again dealing with the questions people have today.
- and much more.
When it makes sense, there are good examples with each ’secret’.
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I highly recommend this book for active web designers.
The short answer: These days, the line between a scripting language and a programming language is blurred. As such, in practical application, the differences are meaningless. So the answer is: no.
Some details … what a nerd might tell you: Scripting or writing scripts, is programming within a program. Traditionally you would write scripts to automate certain functionality within another program. Traditionally scripts would have very specific task like for example: reading a text file to extract all the email addresses.
Why use a scripting language?
- Easy to learn - compared to traditional programming languages.
- It takes much less code to do something with scripting than when using a traditional programming language.
Continue reading ‘Scripting vs. programming: is there a difference?’
The web design world is going through major changes, changes I think many web designers are just not aware of.
It comes down to 3 things:
- Blogs/CMS software: these are turn-key template driven web sites. This is not just a visual component - Blogs/CMS systems have built-in functionality (’engines’) that makes maintaining a website trivial.
- Web site templates: purely a design template, whereas Blogs and CMS offer both visual and functional aspects.
- Pod Casting: the emergence of audio and soon video content on the web at levels never seen before.
These three developments I believe are changing the face of web design, in a way that we have not seen since the first web design software came out years ago.
The days of building websites from scratch will soon fade, and become something very specialized - there are just too many advantages in using a CMS/Blog or a website template.
THE POINT:
As a web designer, you should jump at this opportunity - begin to learn about how you can use web templates and Blogs/CMS to build your own killer websites faster than ever before.
XML is another one of the big buzzword these days, it is an important technology that is widely used, but that doesn’t mean you should look for ways to use it.
Technology is there to solve problems, so if the problem warrants the use of a particular piece, then by all means use it, but not just for the sake of using it!
HOW KILLERSITES USES XML
I use XML daily for application server (web servers on steroids) configurations and for simple data storage.
Typically you wouldn’t use XML directly in a web page unless for example, you wanted to create an RSS feed - RSS is not really meant for human eyes, though it is human readable.
You can check out the killersites forum’s RSS feed if you’re curious about XML.
Continue reading ‘Do you need to use XML is your web pages?’
When you think your website is done and ready to launch, it’s time to go over this checklist.
I always look for these elements in web sites:
- Clean easy to update design/structure.
- Good usability in the design - and all that implies.
- Fast loading ‘light’ pages.
- Intelligent use of technology - using Flash when it makes sense not because you want a ‘cool’ intro!
- The website’s ability to convey the meaning/message of the website quickly if not instantly.
THE DETAILS
1. Clean easy to update design/structure:
Just a few short years ago the web was full of dancing mice, spinning globes and animated construction workers, things have now changed where design principles are now actually put to good use … amazing!
A problem with many websites, is that the design is not flexible. Websites constantly change; if you find that putting in a new navigation button is going to take a lot of work, you have to reconsider your design.
You should be able to freely and add and remove elements from your pages with little to no trouble - that only makes sense.
Continue reading ‘The web designer’s Pre-flight Checklist.’
