I’ve been critical of web design zealots for years now and have gotten into some pretty heated battles over what I would consider to be overly zealous interpretation and adherence to the all not-so-mighty Web Standards.

I don’t want to argue the issue again, but in a nutshell: I always felt it unwise to ignore the practical realities of the browsers actually being used in favor of the Web Standards. I argued that the Web Standards, though noble in thought, were not reflective of the reality on the ground. As such, I advised web designers (years ago) to pay much more attention to browsers that people used, rather than to the Web Standards and the W3C validator.

Heresy!!

“… When people start surfing the Web with the W3C validator, I’ll start testing my sites with it. In the meantime, I will test with IE and Firefox since that’s what people use!”

The forward compatibility myth and the Web Standards

One of the big arguments put forth by the Web Standards zealots was that if you follow the Web Standards, your pages would be “forward compatible” … your web pages would more likely render properly in web browsers that have yet to be created.

Well, recent evidence is showing me that these academic shills were wrong once again.

The PS3 web browser prefers tables!

Being a hardcore nerd, I went out and bought the best blu-ray player on the market: the PS3. One of the reasons I got the PS3, is that it is equipped with a web browser. Yes, I like to surf the Web on my big tv.

Anyway, what I’ve discovered is that the PS3 browser screws up only on ‘forward compatible’ Web Standard compliant web sites. Whereas with old school table based layouts – never a problem.

It seems to me that the fine people at Sony (like so many others) realized that there are hundreds of millions of pages that are built with old school techniques and that they better support them. One thing academic nerds can never understand: pragmatic business decision making. Instead, they are defenders of the faith and thus, are very dogmatic in their decision making.

… Reminds when IE7 came out and it broke all these ‘forward compatible’ websites because they were using CSS hacks rather than safe and sure (non standard) IE Conditional comments. Man, many CSS books had to be corrected and reprinted!

Conclusion

I think this post is best summed up by what one my assistants (and formally Web Standards zealot) said when he started actually having to produce web pages in the real life:

“It’s hard to believe that these zealots are actually building web sites!? … When you’re trying to follow the strict standards in real day to day work … it simply isn’t always practical.”

Happy new year!

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

Now that we are entering into a recession, potentially the worst economic crisis since the great depression (!!), web designers are probably wondering if their jobs are safe?

… This all comes down to whether or not companies will be spending money on web design? The answer:

- Short term: they will spend less.
- Medium term: they will spend more.

My reasoning is based on my 18 years experience as a business owner and on my observations of the current market.

The Short Term

People are nervous now. They hear all the negative news and so they pullback on spending and wait to see what will happen. The REALLY nervous people out there load up on gold, guns and dried fruit … while most of us just rent a movie at Blockbuster and cut back on trips to Vegas.

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If you’ve been struggling with CSS based page layouts (as apposed to using tables) and you’ve been smacking your head against the wall to get things to work … believe me, you’re not the only one!

No, you’re not stupid … CSS for page layout is.

What?! CSS is flawed?

Indeed. CSS for page layout sucks hard because the logic behind CSS page layout is weak at best, and perhaps, even flawed. I can say this with experience in other languages like Java and even VB. Not that I am saying CSS is a programming language.

Anyway …

For web designers used to the craziness of CSS layouts, they would be flabbergasted at how easy creating layouts/views/screens are in VB or even Java when compared to CSS.

What’s the main problem with CSS?

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With the new (and hot) Apple iPhone on the market, web designers might be considering what they should do to accommodate the fast growing audience of iPhones users.

In a nutshell: probably not too much.

The iPhone web browser, is Apples’ Safari and it reads any web pages – even table-based websites! Gasp! Web standards zealots around the world are eating crow now.

Anyway …

It will come down to what kind of site you are running; I think that most websites will not be the target of iPhone users while on the go. My guess, is that it will be limited to:

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I’m very busy with things (video games, movies etc …) so it is not uncommon for me to outsource some programming work these days.

Side note: I have to tell you, as an old-school web nerd who likes code, it was really hard at first to let go and let others do the work. Fortunately, it’s getting easier with every project!

Anyway, I do have my assistants here at killersites.com, who by the way, are a tremendous help. Nonetheless, sometimes I get outside help for whatever reasons.

Crazy quotes from Java nerds

I decided recently that I wanted to contribute back to an open source project that I have used in the past … by throwing the people involved in that project, some work. I also agreed to release the additions/modifications back to the community.

Anyway …

The modifications I wanted were relatively simple – a couple of filters, some rearranging of the UI etc ..

So I get back the quote for this project. I want to mention that I could do it myself in say two days – and my Java skills are rusty! The point is, this was not a big project.

… And yet in the quote, we had a project manager budgeted in and crazy time devoted to testing. For example:

For a button that took the user to a screen/view that already existed … just a button: 8 hrs of testing!

??

Now we all know that Java guys love to over engineer, but this is crazy! When will Java nerds learn that you don’t need an aircraft carrier to move a rocking chair.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com