Recomended Books On Web Design

Assuming 500ms ping time and 5.5K/sec that's an IDEAL time of 75 seconds... similar to Dan's results, which is why I real-world rounded up to two minutes...

No, CSS that works in all browsers.

A> that's what a CMS is for.

B> Clean semantic markup with little or no presentation is easier to update/edit for nubes since you can actually FIND the content.

No, but they notice when it doesn't work in ______ browser, slows thier browser to a crawl as it tries to parse it's way through invalid code, and when the sheer bloat of the page makes it agonizing to visit on broadband, much less dialup.

Much less OTHER browsing methods like screen readers, or non-visual 'visitors' like search engines.

 

get "Head First Html with CSS/XHTML" a great book, I purchased it a while ago I started reading today, it's really good if you have no or very basic knowledge of html/xhtml/css. So far I'm liking it because it's not too boring, and you really do end up keeping the stuff u learn in your head. The lessons are decent like they can be fun, I feel like reading more to be honest.. but I want to focus on designing aswell I worry if I get into xhtml/css too much I won't be brushing up my designing skills so I keep it on moderation..

Anyway you really should get it if your like me a person who hates to deal with learning to code, it really makes it a little fun to do..

 

I am fully aware of what the original poster wanted. Just to reiterate (for the benefit of others who may read this thread in the future), here it what the original poster wanted.

To which my reply was:

Actually, I never looked at the code. Everything I did was in the browser (turning off images, CSS, and stuff like that) on my dialup connection (my phone company is Comcast, the phone is in my landlord's name, and I don't want to pay an arm, a leg and my first born to Comcast each month for cable internet access). And yes, I would use a different technique. A technique that is part of the fundamentals of modern Web design and development: put the user first. The more people that can access and use the site, the better off they'll be (not to mention my bank account) at the end of the day. Furthermore, I did not criticize your Web site. If it appears that I did, I truely apologize for that was not my intention.

It also doesn't mean that it is either, but that's not the point of this thread. Both Jason (deathshadow) and I pointed out that your site can take a while to load. That's fine, as long as you have content there that people are willing to wait for (and the content in your site does load quickly, it's just the graphics that hurt the download times; fortunately the content ges loaded first, which gives them what they wanted while the page continues to load). And believe it or not, I was actually defending you against Jason's claim of two minute download times. In fact, I just did it again.

Now, as for your claim that my style does not infer a higher quality, I must respectfully disagree. The sites I code are accessible to anyone, rather than discriminating against some people because of the computer they use, or the mobile device or even screen reader they have to use. The more people that can access and use the sites we build (and yes that does include you), the better off everyone will be for it.

Tell that to the likes of Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Dave Shea, Molly Holschzlag, Cameron Moll, Joe Clark, Tommy Olsson, Dori Smith, Tom Negrino, Nicky Danino, Christopher Schmitt, Steve Krug, Elizabeth Castro, and all the others (too numerous to list here) who didn't like the state of the Web about ten years ago (look up "browser wars" if you need a reminder of how bad things were back then). Not only were they unhappy with the way things were, but they also had the courage and the fortitude to stand up to the plate, take their punches (sometimes multiple times) to the face, and give as good as they got. Nowadays we have a single box model for CSS, industry-wide support for the same browser standards, a (mostly) unified way of coding Web pages, more accessible Web sites that are easier to use regardless of what we use to visit those sites, a single object model (mostly anyway, Microsoft still has its head up its backside on some things) and so on and so forth.

The problem is, they didn't go far enough. Bad code is bad code no matter what it looks like after a few (dozen) beers or how pretty it smells after pouring a entire bottle of Chanel No. 5 all over it. Jason and I intend to finish what they started. When people stopped coding table-based Web sites and started using the technologies the way they were originally meant to be used, they failed to realize that these technologies are best used sparingly (and appropriately). What I mean by this is they traded nested tables for nested DIVs, seas of classes and IDs that weren't needed, and scripts that were so large that they could cause some browsers to crash.

Jason and I take what I've dubbed the "Minimal Markup" approach (Google it and you'll find the site we're developing on the first page of the SERPs). What this means is using the least code for the job (something he's been doing for over 20 years with traditional computer programming langauges, mind you). We've tested our approach, and the methods of teaching it to others on forums such as this one (and SitePoint) with great success. It's already having a snowball effect, but when that site launches, that tumbling snowball is going to cause an avalanche. Everybody will benefit from it. Standardistas, accessibility nuts, SEO "experts" and most importantly, the people who use the Web sites that you and I create.

Coding has nothing to do with design, actually, so I can understand how the instructor awarded the students who focused on the design. Had it been a "development" contest then the developers should have won, but it wasn't. Ironically though, designers and developers can't live without each other if they want to keep a roof over their heads unless they learn the skills of their counterparts.

Again, I never said I was criticizing your Web site. I noticed a few areas for improvement and brought them to your attention while pointing out for the benefit of the original poster that the techniques used are wrong (which reinforced the concepts that are introduced and later reinforced in the books about Web design that I recommended). It wasn't done to the extreme of "Stay in school and earn a degree or else you'll end up like that man" (points at Al Bundy from "Married with Children", played by Ed O'Neal), but it was done nonetheless.

As is most of mine, but you need to remember that even 5% can equal up to 50 million potential visitors - that's a lot of people I wouldn't want to piss off if I could prevent it. It also makes the site easier and better to use for those of us (such as myself) who are stuck on dialup (especially those staying in hotel rooms on "business" trips). As for Flash sites, well, they have issues of their own, and most of them are short-lived anyway, so I won't go into that, unless you and the original poster want me to.

 

Sorry, it was someone else, my mistake (about showing the code). And yes, it was design contest, which is different from development and people did not understand it right.

I agree: my website would take a lot of areas for improvement of code itself and some people would say design itself (but this designs works best so far).

But what I just wanted to say is that it was easy to build it without using CSS. I am not against CSS - no way. But some people don't like working with it...

 

Instrument cluster dimmer switch
digital multimeter

I simply don't care how long it loads in dial up in technical terms. I accessed it through many computers and through many connections - it loads instantly.

CSS for all browsers? No, that's ok - I will stick with HTML simply because I have absolutely NO NEED for CSS in this particular case.

CMS? For some it might be easier, for others harder. Some would still prefer Front Page.

Invalid code? Not working in another browser? When I use FP and PS - it works in any browser with no "broken codes".
Since when HTML does not work in browsers if done correctly?
But people who mess with CSS (especially newbies) have problems with browser compatability too often.
Professionals don't, but I'd say there are mone non-professional designers (or I'd even say webmasters who design themselves) VS professional designers/developers.

 

Then do you care about server load and hosting costs? It effects those too. You don't care about what remains over 50% of the userbase out there, which in some places like the american midwest and southwest is unlikely to change any time soon. (no ISP is going to spend $500K to string a data trunk fifty miles to pick up ten customers - it's a miracle the phone companies did it all those years ago when it was still Ma Bell)

Sorry, but unless you are accessing from a T1, that's rubbish. 'real world' minimum for dialup users is over a minute - that's BAD... On my 3mpbs/768 dsl even at optimal pull that's going to be ten seconds JUST because of handshaking on a first view. (clocks in at 12.8 seconds here according to speed report)

It often does NOT work thanks to frontpage outputting dated and often INVALID HTML... HTML that makes the next person to maintain your sites curse you to the ninth ring of hell.

Ok, lemme put it this way.
http://battletech.hopto.org/for_others/cashinwebsites/template.html

The directory is unlocked:
http://battletech.hopto.org/for_others/cashinwebsites

So you can see all the gooey bits.

complete rewrite - took me about ten minutes for the html/CSS... I spent more time remastering the images into something PRACTICAL in size than I did the actual content.

Your original: 302k in 30 files, 21,433 bytes of that HTML. 'ideal' dialup download time 75 seconds+. Realistic dialup download time roughly two minutes.

My rewrite: 74k in 11 files, 7,862 bytes HTML, 6,961 bytes CSS. 'ideal' dialup download time: 16 seconds+. Realistic download time: 20 seconds.

(much of the difference relies more on handshake time than actual filesizes - though a 80% reduction in filesize is just as significant.)

As to 'quality' - mine works perfectly IE6 & 7, FF, Opera and Safari, and validates XHTML 1.0 strict (you have at least heard of validation, right?). It has proper header tags on the headers so that search engines and screen readers have some clue what they are looking at. All the lists are actually lists, again so search engines and screen readers can have a clue... It degrades nicely to images off with CSS on, CSS off images on, and CSS off, Images off.

Worst case with all your pages in place the CSS for all pages and the main page combined should STILL be less than the original HTML, and reuse 15k or so of the images... which would mean if they visit pages other than the home page even the CSS gets cached, resulting in even less server load... on average these types of optimizations can result in using 10-20% the bandwidth a site did before such techniques are applied.

Of course, I made some stylistic changes too both in layout (WAY too much white-space) and images... like actually anti-aliasing that 8px high font in the menu up top so it's SEMI legible (I'd probably increase that to a 12px minimum, but that's me) as well as adding 1px of height to the subtext embedded in that image with some AA - also to make it look less like crap. The heavy encoding on the .jpg did cause some saturation dip on the girl - if that's a 'big' issue use 15% compression instead of the 50% I did. (and STILL be 200k smaller than the original)

...and the HTML is so clean you no longer NEED some crap wysiwyg to pollute the site with nonsense like:
<b>highly</b> <b>profitable</b>

or even more embarrassing WYSIWYG telltales like:
<font face="Verdana"><b>
<font size="2" color="#095274">We do
research for you.</font><font size="2" color="#000066"> </font></b>
<font size="2">

If you don't know what's wrong with the above, or don't care - and can't be bothered to write VALID HTML... then 'quality' is definately NOT on your list.

Though looking at the content of said site, the word... scam comes to mind. The moment I see things like "It can get really frustrating after you buy a website on eBay and don't know what to do with it." or even BETTER complete manure like "licensed website developer" the hair on the back of my neck raises up and my scam sense starts tingling. (I wasn't aware anyone actually DID licensing - if so that's an even BIGGER scam)

Particularly enjoyed this section:

Since maximizing profits should also mean search engine rankings (which should be nonexistant giving the table heavy non-semantic non-validating markup), making the site as friendly as possible to as many users as possible (meaning screen reader concerns and reducing load times), and reducing hosting costs by not bloating the sites out to a third of a meg in size with so many tiny files resulting in high IOWAITS on your server.

Unless of course that's part of the hosting scam giving people bloated sites, offering to host them and then nailing them for needing three to five times the bandwidth they actually would need if the pages were written correctly.

Which is why I advocate going out and learning HTML and CSS PROPERLY, be it by a book or by reading up on the subjects of SEO, Semantic markup, and other MODERN techniques, than using some fat bloated buggy pile of crap WYSIWYG - especially the notoriously bad ones like frontpage.

--- addendum --- a couple handy links for comparison.
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.cashinwebsites.com/

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/...o.org/for_others/cashinwebsites/template.html

and I consider their numbers generous since they assume a 100ms ping time.

 

If you intend to stick around in web design/development, you better re-read all those articles posted about the benefits of CSS. Unless you stop visiting web design forums, you're going to get CSS kicked into your head when you start talking about code, over and over until you finally realize the benefits.

Everyone around you is starting to realize or have already realized the benefits of CSS. You're getting left behind because you aren't keeping up with technology. How does it feel to be stuck in 2002?

 

I'd have said 1997.

 

Getting back to the original question, I would have to recommend the following guide:

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird

(www. principles of beautiful web design . com) (Without spaces)

Highly recommended, and I hope you learn as much from it as I did.

 

I totally agree that if you are a professional website designer, you need to stick with modern design/development techniques.

But what I am trying to prove, but still can't, is that it's not always a case where you would need to learn webdesign completely to have a nice looking website. Especially if your website is small. For some people it would be much easier to design 10 page website in pure HTML then learn CSS and then try to troubleshoot it. And I know that it happens often. That's all I am trying to prove: there is no necessity.

Also, it was interesting to find out that my page loads 12 seconds on your PC, because everywhere I tried it (NO T1 CONNECTION!, just DSL and Cable with similar connection that you have) - it gets INSTANT load. Rarely it takes 3+ seconds. Very rarely. Then how long do Flash sites load on your PC? (just curious).

Honestly, I would like to care about server loads the same way ISPs and hosting companies care about their customers. Maybe in Europe you have great care, but I don't want to say that I have that in USA. (Example: I was waiting over 90 minutes to speak to support, then phone call dropped, so I had to start over)...

And finally, I would like to repeat it again: I am not agaist designing professionally, but in my case I just do not need it (for that particular website). I hope you understand the difference adn my point of view.

 

Then you can't say your website is high quality (nor is the design, btw).

 

And by the way, he's in New Hampshire, not Europe.

 

And where did I say it is high quality?

 

Ok guys, I am working on a tattoo website now and that one will be:
1. optimized for fast loading
2. built in PHP and CSS.
3. And be the professional style website.

I will show it to you when it is done. And for that website, I have a need for professionalism and CSS. That's why I am building it this way.

For my other sites, I simply do not need it.

By the way, any critique on tattoo site will be sincerely appreciated.

Dan Shulz, thanks a lot for taking extra effort on rewrite!

 

That would be Jason (deathshadow) who did that, not me.

 

Thanks Jason

 

Had to add this to the post. I was at Borders and was checking out Dan Cederholm's book, Bulletproof Webdesign. 2nd Edition. Looks like a good one.

 

The techniques (like the text one with keywords) aren't quite *bulletproof* though.

 

Ok, i'm gonna try to get through Ian Lloyd's book this coming month.
I also have Andy Budd's CSS Mastery Advanced Web Standards Solution.