The New Era of Web Designers and Developers
Posted by admin | Filed under CSS, Code, Design
I’ve been meaning to make a post about tables and the good and evil use of them for some time now, and a talk with Mike G. (my love bug) the other day inspired me to get writing.
After a discussion over something, I think it was jQuery, but I’m not sure, he brought up a good point. He mentioned how there is a new era emerging with web designers and developers that have never dealt with tables before and he thought it was funny how all of these new designers/developers will have to pick-up/fix-up all these shitty table based websites. I laughed with him for a bit, until I realized - that is exactly what I have been doing for the last year. At that point, I got a bit annoyed.
And so, “the new era of web designers/developers” that have NEVER dealt with tables before is not just emerging, but it’s already here. Yes, that’s right, it’s not just around the corner as it may seem, it’s right here - starting with me.
Now, do not get this confused with web trends and web standards, etc. I am not talking about seasoned designers/developers that have adopted the table-less design, but rather specifically about those that have NEVER even seen tables in use for website layout.
Let me take you back a bit and give you a little of my background before I continue on this rant of the new era within the web world.
When I decided to pursue and education/career in the graphic and web design world, I have never before opened or used Photoshop, Illustrator or any of the other programs we all use daily. On top of that, I did not know a lick of HTML and had no clue what CSS was. To say the least, I dove head first into the deep end of the pool not realizing how deep it really is and how much of learning I would have to do. Thanks to my drive and motivation and a HUGE learning curve, I managed to learn it all in just a few short months. Now - I am not a seasoned expert, but I can say I am a professional web standards advocate.
I remember walking into my first xHTML/CSS class, not knowing what either one of those languages really do or how they work and just after the first week, walked out with a 100% on my first hand coded (on a piece of paper) xHTML quiz. The CSS came the following week, and a couple weeks later came a fully functioning 3 column xHTML/CSS website that I managed to do all on my own. I was so proud of myself! But enough of that, let’s move on with the point of this post.
What is the point of this post? I already got sidetracked and forgot.
Yes, I have a super short attention span and on top of that, I suffer from, as my boyfriend calls it, “premature optimization.” Actually, I was just recently diagnosed with the “premature optimization” syndrome. I’ve been dealing with it for years, and finally learned the proper name for it. I hear it is quite common.
And so, let’s swing back.
Yes, the new era of web designers/developers that have NEVER dealt with tables before is already here. It’s not just around the corner, like I said, it’s right here - starting with me.
Over the last year, I’ve worked on several different sites all of which were build using tables. It has definitely been a great learning experience as well as a very painful one. It’s been painful and frustrating as I have never worked with table based design before and I was totally lost in the code. The best part came when I first tried to organize and clean up the tables in an attempt to make it easier for me to find my place. Unfortunately, in many cases, that was a horrible idea as that resulted in shifting of the layout on the actual site. At that point, I thought to myself - if they don’t care enough to spend a couple of months on re-building the site to optimize and clean up then why should I?
Using table for layout is absolutely the messiest thing I’ve ever seen! Not only is it messy, but the decision makers behind the companies with table-based websites have no clue how horrible their code really is and on top of that, most of them are not even willing to consider a re-build of the website. It is our duty as web designers/developers to educate and steer towards the better and the best; however, how does one do that when table-based website owners don’t even want to hear us out? To them, the sites work just fine the way they are and bring in enough business to satisfy.
I think the main reason behind that logic is just a simple fear of change and perceived loss of time if a reworking of the website was to take place.
Tables can be great when managed and organized properly for their intended use - as tables to display tabular data. When used for layout, the code just gets super messy, confusing and elaborate - I’m constantly getting lost and can never find anything. I use TextMate as my text editor, and thanks to it’s “find” search option, I can find my way around those messy tables.
When one thinks of a table in terms of information it means simply means some sort of organization of random information in a comprehensive manner. As my favorite look-up website describes it, tables in general are:
- An orderly arrangement of data, especially one in which the data are arranged in columns and rows in an essentially rectangular form.
- An abbreviated list, as of contents; a synopsis.
Roger Johansson, from 456 Berea Street, wrote a marvelous article about the proper use of tables a while - while back. It is a great read, just like any other article he writes. If you’ve never visited his site, I suggest you take a peak every now and then.
Getting back to the messy tables. I once interviewed/trained for two half-days for a company whose website was just an absolute mess of tables within tables and more tables inside of that. The reason I was open to working with them is the fact that they were really open to a re-design/re-build when we talked about it during my interview. However, after two half-days of trying them out, things proved to be completely different (I sort of expected it).
The best part, the part that made me walk out the door and not look back, was when I was asked to use the visual view in Dreamweaver to update the website. Yup - you read right, no joke! The person training me asked me to actually leave the code view and edit the site in the visual view of Dreamweaver. He was actually testing me, to see if I knew how to use it and used that as a leverage for placing me. I can’t remember the last time I used the visual view in Dreamweaver. I’m not a huge Dreamweaver fan to start with, I mean - it’s a great piece of software, but I just prefer my simple text editor. Nonetheless, I was extremely shocked and quite offended, and decided that it just wasn’t worth my time. It felt like backtracking a few years.
The even more shocking thing was that the person training me was an old era developer without any willingness to improve and change. He was one of those fully satisfied where I’m at developers and I just could not believe it. He was familiar with HTML/CSS and web standards, but didn’t care for that at all. I was so frustrated after finding that out. Why wasn’t he willing to grow, educate himself and the people he was working for? How could he call himself a web developer when he spends his days hacking sites together?
And so, as times change and technology evolves it is up to the individual to stay on top of the cutting edge technology and techniques within their respected field. Web standards have been around for a long time, but only as of late, have the table-less designs really started to shine through. With all the efforts to standardize the web today, there are still many websites being built using tables. There’s many reasons as to why that is so, but one thought creeps in; could it be the old era web designers/developers are not willing to change, educate themselves or stay up to date?
I wonder - are the old era designers/developers better and right because of their experience, wisdom and authority, or does the eagerness and willingness to learn of the new era web designers/developers make them who are right? How long will it be till the table based layouts become obsolete and if we have designer/developers not willing to grow - will that time ever come?
∂ meow
Tags: CSS, html, tables, web standards
