Tonight I had the opportunity to hear
Shaun Inman, one of the more prominent names in the industry, speak at his mind on the state of web design. I'm not sure where I first learned of him, but I have been reading his blog for years and was excited for the opportunity to know his thoughts on CSS and AJAX.
Shaun Inman on CSS
Shaun's recommendations for CSS somewhat took me by surprise. His philosophy as I came to understand it was that at a fundamental level every site looks essentially alike, and by setting up a base coding template (if not literally, then in the consistent mark-up) the rest can be done with CSS. This approach is often criticized by validation-ites and mark-up purists, because it the results are not the tightest code possible. What is the result is a commonality that will allow all the designers in the firm to be able to jump between projects without a massive learning curve to the initial creator's stylistic tendencies.
Shaun also spoke of the upcoming IE7 release and how to prepare for it. According to Shaun, according to IE developers themselves, they are encouraging the use of conditional calls to the style-sheets. A main base that works properly in Firefox and the good browsers will be the foundation, and then IE will be provided a one-off version, and other browsers or versions of browsers as necessary. This is a methodology that most people who are familiar with CSS Hacks seem to be steering away from, so it would seem out-of-favor if IE itself wasn't saying to the web development world "This approach will work best with our new browser."
Finally, in CSS, Shaun recommended un-styling everything to begin. Setting at the top of the base style-sheet a series of calls to all the major HTML tags that essentially reset everything to zero, and start all the browsers on a level playing field. This way every choice and every variance was the result of a direct intention, not the combination of default attributes combined or accommodated for in the CSS.
Shaun Inman on AJAX
Shaun was much briefer in his description of AJAX which was a bit disappointing, as it was by far the hotter topic in the room. Most people there were familiar with CSS, and were more intrigued with what a major designer would say about the hot technology.
Shaun went through a series of appropriate and inappropriate scenarios to use AJAX. Included in the good was in-form validation as the user moves from field to field. Amidst the bad was an example of a DVD selling site that the whole site was build in AJAX. Anything in excess is probably excessive. Those are my wise words, not Shaun's.
The one major note I took away from AJAX that can be a mental barometer of whether I am pushing the envelope too far is that Indexing spiders typically don't have JavaScript enabled. This means any aspect of the page or site that requires a bit of DOM or AJAX scripting to move to the next area or navigate through is not usable or index-able by Google and the like. That's a very strong reason to take the extra time to make sure the scripts can degrade gracefully.
And the Rest
A few random thoughts:
- The Holly 1% height hack sounds rather useful
-
ICEWEB in Iceland sounds like my type of Web Conference
- Shawn specializes in academia websites, that niche surprised me
- He recommends for text starting with a percent and growing with EMs (I typically do the reserve).
- He's a big fan of any use of AJAX being done by 37 Signals. Not only is it sharp, but it's becoming a standard convention worth repeating.
Overall, Shaun seemed somewhat lacking confidence in his presentation while in front of the room, possibly consumed with the topics not matching the level of skill or interest in the room. On multiple occasions when he seemed a bit off his game, he threw out the question whether he was moving too fast or too slow or if he was going over something we already knew. Typically he wasn't, and when he was, it was interesting to hear his take.
Thanks Shaun for coming to Baltimore, and thanks
AIGA for bringing him in.
I love these new Mac commercials. I shouldn?t cause I made the switch to PC five years ago, and haven?t regretted it, it has been a significant boost for my career. Yet still, I watch Mac sticking it to PC and just fill with pride. With the latest moves including the Intel chip and the Bootcamp OS, maybe it is time to go back to Apple.