May 29 2009 at 10:25pm

Universal IE6 CSS and memories of NS4

There was been a lot of controversy last week over Andy Clarke’s proposed Universal IE6 CSS. Most of the arguments against it seem to revolve around the level of IE 6 usage and clients’ needs to maintain their brand image. Valid points, in many cases.

However, as Zeldman notes:

No hammer fits all nails, and no solution, however elegant, will work for every situation. But if we’re open minded, Andy’s proposal may work in more situations than we at first suspect.

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May 07 2009 at 3:28pm

Beautiful is more usable

I finally got around to reading ALA’s In Defense of Eye Candy article from a few weeks ago. Yes, I’m behind! Anyway, while I somewhat disagree with the author’s use of the term “eye candy”, the bulk of the article is very interesting.

I first read about this in James Kalbach’s Designing Web Navigation (p. 45) just last week. The point is that people have better experiences with visually attractive things, making them easier to use. Emotions are a central part of any user experience:

“When you felel good it is easier to make decisions, brainstorm, and be creative, for instance”

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Mar 09 2009 at 12:38pm

Is Dreamweaver Are static web pages dying?

I just stumbled upon an article about the increasing obsolesence of Dreamweaver and tools like it. The point is that websites are becoming increasingly dynamic. Building static html pages with a tool like Dreamweaver just doesn’t cut it anymore.

In the relatively near future every website will be a dynamically-generated web application and all of today’s sites built on multiple static pages will be ripped out and replaced.

I was trying to explain this to people in a meeting a few weeks ago. Static files clearly can’t handle the demands of todays websites. Even attempting to build in your own functionality by coding your own php is fraught with problems. Why should you do it yourself when you could just use (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, your CMS of choice)?

Will there become a time when nobody publishes static html files anymore? Will new designers jump right into WordPress instead of building static websites first? An intersting topic to ponder.

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