Talk:Web design: Difference between revisions

Web Designers of the Century

Many web designers and hosting associates have marked their claims early into the century. Designers for the web have become more popular as time progresses and modern ventures become more appealing. Top web designers such as Stephen Cheung and other hosting managers such as Ryan Watson have introduced profound ideas upon modern times.

The first paragraph of 'Web Designers of the Century' is unintelligable English. Can someone decipher it? What are "hosting managers" anyway? Htaccess 04:02, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Web Developer

Why does "Web Developer" re-direct to this page? A Web Developer is certainly not the same thing as a Web Designer (I should know I'm a Web Developer). It is like saying the guy who draws the plans for a plane is the same as the guy who puts all the bits together!

By popluar (and my) demand I have implemented this at Web development and linked from the first paragraph.

BTW, do you guys know how to capitalise? Yes, "World Wide Web" and "Internet" are names! Avochelm 23:39, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Liquid web design

I believe my 1998 proposal of this idea predates Glenn Davis's: My Usenet post --robotwisdom 00:09, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's been removed. ¦ Reisio 08:59, 2005 July 26 (UTC)

Seven C's of Website Design

Unless someone can strongly defend this section, I'm taking it out soon. This simply isn't a wide spread means of looking at web design (at least not wide spread like the 4 C's of picking out a diamond). It sounds like it's one person's attempt to define all aspect of web design in a cutesy manner.

Plus it's just wrong, not every website needs to worry about commerce, many sites aren't meant to have a sense of community, and very few sites allow customizations.

- Lifefeed 14:40, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I suggest substituting a survey of design principles like the survey of design controversies, for things like "readability" that are universally agreed-on. Others, off the top of my head:

• platform-independence (page design should not make assumptions about what the surfer's browser is capable of)
• predictability (surfer should be able to guess what does what)
• avoid lost-in-hyperspace via simple, clear navigation --robotwisdom 16:37, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's a good idea. And to follow up this removal thing, I'm removing the following two links: Open-Source Web Design (because templates aren't about web design), and BD4D (By Designers For Designers) (because it's a small community and not at all authoritive). Also 2 other links over to Web Development.

- Lifefeed 14:26, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I agree, since we're talking design here, I don't think these things are quite inline. Things like easy navigation, content, and what the viewer is seeing when he arrives should probably be discussed.

Controversies: short vs long pages

One school of thought, led by Jakob Nielsen, argues that surfers don't (like to) scroll, so long documents should be broken up into many screen-sized pages. The opposing view is that long pages are more efficient for readers, quicker to scan and easier to search. --robotwisdom 16:06, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

External Link Spam

I re-added (again) the [] external link as it adheres to Wikipedia:External links (e.g., non-commercial, valuable information, not my private site). --uriah923 13:03, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

Value of OmniNerd content and quality of reference

The content and reference from OmniNerd article have been removed. A conversation is ongoing here. Uriah923 06:52, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

World Wide Web Virtual Library link removed.

I see that the link to the World Wide Web Virtual Library pages on this topic have been removed. It may be that the Wiki user who did this is not familar with the World Wide Web Virtual Library - "The VL is the oldest catalog of the web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web itself. Unlike commercial catalogs, it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert; even though it isn't the biggest index of the web, the VL pages are widely recognised as being amongst the highest-quality guides to particular sections of the web."--Daedelus 12:37, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps if...

1. the markup of the site validated
2. the links didn't utilize an SEO-optimizing script for personal gain
3. it wasn't hosted on a (poor) web design site
4. half the links weren't to w3.org pages
5. the remaining links weren't biased or just plain worthless
6. it didn't mention FrontPage as something worth using

...then it'd be worth including. ¦ Reisio 14:08, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Interesting new Wiki rules? I'm not going to get into a deletion argument but the basic issue should be the suitability and usefulness of the link rather than newly made up wiki 'rules'.

      1. the markup of the site validated

Its an interesting point - should links be removed from the Wiki if they display in mainstream browsers but you can see using - say Marc Gueury's HTML Validator in Firefox, that there are some invisible errors? You are right though that the WWW-VL should generally be making sure the HTML in their pages are validated.

      2. the links didn't utilize an SEO-optimizing script

I don't think that there is a rule banning counting clicks on pages linked to from the wiki. The site is to be judged by content and relevance. In fact if you look at an example such as links from the wikki Debian article sites like http://www.debianplanet.org/ have a very prominent linking to their commercial sponsor whilst perfectly worthy sites like linuxhelp.net and http://distrowatch.com are amply covered in commercial google ads.

      3. it wasn't hosted on a (poor) web design site

Is this a new rule about forbidding commercial hosting of sites linking from Wikipedia? WWW-VL sites have traditionally just been subdirectories off someone elses site

      4. half the links weren't to w3.org pages

Is there a reason why a section on Web Design Standards should not refer fairly heavily to w3.org? Again if we look at an example like the debian entry in this wiki we will see multiple links into debian.org - which for the same reasons is only natural. Nevertheless I'm sure that there are other links that would be highly valuable?

      5. the remaining links weren't biased or just plain worthless

I think you'll find LAMP, PHP, osCommerce etc worth reading up on before deciding that they are "biased or just plain worthless" - unless you are purely Microsoft oriented. I can see a lot of room for expansion in terms of it linking to proprietary resources, but basically open source resources listed in a web design index seem fine. Likewise if you are at high school a list of forthcoming web design conferences are pretty useless - but for professionals I imagine that as long as they are kept updated they a useful resource.

      6. it didn't mention FrontPage as something worth using

I don't think that it did mention (or recommend) FrontPage as something worth using. I can only assume that Frontpage was mentioned because of its popularity. It would be a pretty uninformative (and uninformed) site that talks about Web design in 2005 and refuses to link to sites that even mention FrontPage or Dreamweaver.

Anyway I can see where you are coming from - and this isn't a big deal - I'm not going to mess with the links - but why not find a better site to replace it with? --Daedelus 22:20, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

but the basic issue should be the suitability and usefulness

That's what I addressed.

should links be removed from the Wiki if they display in mainstream browsers but you can see using - say Marc Gueury's HTML Validator in Firefox, that there are some invisible errors?

The point is that a resource for web design made by people that aren't very good at web design probably isn't that great a resource.

I don't think that there is a rule banning counting clicks on pages linked to from the wiki. … In fact if you look at an example such as links from the wikki Debian article sites like http://www.debianplanet.org/ have a very prominent linking to their commercial sponsor whilst perfectly worthy sites like linuxhelp.net and http://distrowatch.com are amply covered in commercial google ads.

Neither of those two sites use covert SEO-specific linking such as this.

forbidding commercial hosting of sites linking from Wikipedia?

Wikipedia has always been (afaik) rather anti-commercial (see WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_propaganda_machine), but the notion here is once again not wanting to link people from a web design article to a page whose host is a web design company that isn't very good at web design.

Is there a reason why a section on Web Design Standards should not refer fairly heavily to w3.org?

None at all. The point is that going to w3.org directly would be smarter than going to a page with a bunch of links to w3.org, and that we can (and already do) link to w3.org from this article.

I think you'll find LAMP, PHP, osCommerce etc worth reading up on before deciding that they are "biased or just plain worthless" … I can see a lot of room for expansion in terms of it linking to proprietary resources, but basically open source resources listed in a web design index seem fine.

Then where are the links to Perl, Ruby, Python, Java? Where are the links to PostgreSQL and SQLite? Apparently MySQL and PHP is the only way according to these guys.

I don't think that it did mention (or recommend) FrontPage as something worth using.

I think being mentioned at all is promoting its use.

It would be a pretty uninformative (and uninformed) site that talks about Web design in 2005 and refuses to link to sites that even mention FrontPage or Dreamweaver.

Ah but it doesn't mention Dreamweaver (or any other WYSIWYG editor), just "Front Page" (with an alien space inserted into its name).

why not find a better site to replace it with?

I think the current links to http://alvit.de/handbook/ & http://w3.org/ are more than sufficient. ¦ Reisio 19:54, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Blink tags are phat

XSLT is listed under server side

Isn't this semi-misleading? While it can certainly be parsed server-side, it's originally intended to be rendered by the browser.

Mentioned in UserFriendly

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051212 -- Might explain the "Blink tags are phat" :) -- 69.181.90.49 05:21, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia

Would it be useful to add to each issue, the point of view Wikipedia has taken? e.g. Wikipedia uses CSS layout on all pages except the front page.--Joris Gillis 21:35, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so, not particularly. It doesn't help that Wikipedia actually uses tables inappropriately on so many pages (every page with a TOC, and tons of pages with box-looking templates and infoboxes). ¦ Reisio 22:16, 8 January 2006 (UTC)