"Too many web designers spend too much time on 'UI considerations, information architecture, maintainability of code, and much more' and very little time on making sure the damm thing works and that the content on the pages is actually acessible."
Hmmm...if a designer is spending time on UI considerations, information architechture, maintainability of code, etc...then their sites *should* work, and the content *should* be actually accessible. That's the whole point of taking the time to think about things like navigational structure, global navigation, breadcrumbs, etc. I guess I'm a bit confused as to how *not* taking these things into consideration would result in easier to use pages?
Granted, there are thousands of self-professed web designers out there (and some working for large companies) that don't know the first thing about what they're doing. They may not be using Frontpage, but it's the "we have a tool to do that" mentality that leads to this mess of bloated web sites.
As for the increasing number of "bloated, slow, horrible sites", I'd be willing to bet those in that category are *not* using CSS and XHTML to their advantage. Have a look at the source. You're sure to find deeply nested tables used for layout, a page littered with deprecated font tags, spacer gifs galore, and other telltale signs of bloat.
2004. Actually, it was cleaning up some pages created with FP 2003. Removing tons on inline styles and putting them in an external style sheet (which is cached, thus improving performance and decresing file sizes), removing IE-only non-proprietary junk, fixing invalidly nested tags, and the list goes on.
Sure, many of the tools have improved dramatically. Still, that doesn't mean you can forget about learning the how's and why's of web design.
"With Microsoft products like Frontpage and IIS anybody can become a web genius."
God, I hope you were kidding. What a ridiculous statement! With products like Frontpage, anybody can churn out incomprehensible, invalid, bloated crap that only works (and barely at that) in one browser. Sure, anyone can make *something* with programs like Frontpage, but that doesn't mean it will be good, or even usable. How many sites have you seen with incomprehensible navigation (or no navigation to speak of), with such horrible design you can't even read the content, with....the list goes on.
There's a hell of a lot more to becoming a web designer/developer than cobbbling together some html. There are UI considerations, information architecture, maintainability of code, and much more.
Does picking up a copy of Quicken make one a CPA? If so, a lot of high-prices CFO's are out of a job!
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"Too many web designers spend too much time on 'UI considerations, information architecture, maintainability of code, and much more' and very little time on making sure the damm thing works and that the content on the pages is actually acessible." Hmmm...if a designer is spending time on UI considerations, information architechture, maintainability of code, etc...then their sites *should* work, and the content *should* be actually accessible. That's the whole point of taking the time to think about things like navigational structure, global navigation, breadcrumbs, etc. I guess I'm a bit confused as to how *not* taking these things into consideration would result in easier to use pages? Granted, there are thousands of self-professed web designers out there (and some working for large companies) that don't know the first thing about what they're doing. They may not be using Frontpage, but it's the "we have a tool to do that" mentality that leads to this mess of bloated web sites. As for the increasing number of "bloated, slow, horrible sites", I'd be willing to bet those in that category are *not* using CSS and XHTML to their advantage. Have a look at the source. You're sure to find deeply nested tables used for layout, a page littered with deprecated font tags, spacer gifs galore, and other telltale signs of bloat.
2004. Actually, it was cleaning up some pages created with FP 2003. Removing tons on inline styles and putting them in an external style sheet (which is cached, thus improving performance and decresing file sizes), removing IE-only non-proprietary junk, fixing invalidly nested tags, and the list goes on. Sure, many of the tools have improved dramatically. Still, that doesn't mean you can forget about learning the how's and why's of web design.
"With Microsoft products like Frontpage and IIS anybody can become a web genius." God, I hope you were kidding. What a ridiculous statement! With products like Frontpage, anybody can churn out incomprehensible, invalid, bloated crap that only works (and barely at that) in one browser. Sure, anyone can make *something* with programs like Frontpage, but that doesn't mean it will be good, or even usable. How many sites have you seen with incomprehensible navigation (or no navigation to speak of), with such horrible design you can't even read the content, with....the list goes on. There's a hell of a lot more to becoming a web designer/developer than cobbbling together some html. There are UI considerations, information architecture, maintainability of code, and much more. Does picking up a copy of Quicken make one a CPA? If so, a lot of high-prices CFO's are out of a job!