Hitting The Nail On The Head..
Mar 17 2010
The last few weeks has seen the whole web design world up in arms in debate about some of the key issues facing designers/developers right now. Some of the biggest guns in the industry have been shedding light on the various hot topics that we grapple with every day. Whether it be web designers who can’t code, designing in browser, or the eternal thorn in the side that is IE6.
Whilst I don’t for a second put myself in the same company as the likes of Elliot Jay Stocks, Trent Walton or Meagan Fisher, I do however think that a humble beginner such as I could contribute in some small way to the heated debate.
From what I have gleaned from my short time in the industry it seems that there are no set rules for a good or successful future in web design. Some designers code, some don’t. Some people still worry about IE6, some don’t. Some designers do everything in photoshop and then try to mimic that in the browser, some do it all in the browser. I guess my point is that you have to tailor the way you work to suit you because, after all first and foremost you need to enjoy your job.
For what it’s worth I personally do most of my designing in the browser. I start of with a rough mock-up in photoshop then do the lions share of the design in notepad++ and firefox. I guess this is why I enjoy the coding side of web design as much as the actual design part because for me they are intrinsically linked. I am also a great believer in degrading gracefully, if people make the effort to have modern browsers like firefox, chrome or safari then they will benefit by seeing designs in all their glory. I don’t believe in hindering progress by pandering to IE.
Even though I am no fan of internet explorer in any of its incarnations I believe that most people don’t use it because they prefer it, they use it because they don’t know that there are better alternatives. So it’s up to us as an industry to educate non-savvy web users and channel our frustration and anger into ridding the world of IE6.
So after all that the real point of this post was to highlight some recent articles/sites that for me have really “hit the nail on the head”. Firstly Trent Walton’s blog post entitled “Position absolute” really summed everything up far more eloquently than I am able. Secondly the site dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com wrapped it up in a nutshell for me. And lastly, this article by David DeSandro showed a lateral way of approaching the IE6 dilema that I enjoyed.