What is this?
Well, technically this is going to be collation of my web workings; whether it be my personal projects, freelance jobs or general thoughts and musings about the world of web coding. I have a few personal projects and business interests which are all built with a general coding theory and forward-thinking attitude which expands into my freelance projects. Most of this boils down to the major 4: usability, substance, style and usability.
Coding Design
We all to readily separate coding from design in the current world of web design, due to the fact that each is a very separate skill, each occupying even different halves of the brain. However, to truly advance forward with web design, citing revolutions like AJAX form submitting, extensive libraries like jQuery are built on a creative outlook to coding. Creativity in code makes for a revolutionary application.
Usability
In the beginning of the web world everything was so complex to navigate, because this was the era of true creativity. Every idea was new, links with underlines and a different colour. Such conventions come so naturally right now that if text is both underlined and a different colour from the content text we instantly assume its a link without having to think about it. This is followed with the W3C guidelines which dictate that a link should no longer herald the infamous text ‘Click here’, and more a description of the link that the user is being taken to, as the user will assume its a link based upon its style not text. Usability has become a focus of designers and coders have been relegated to the realm of the typing drone, however one of the major aims of this blog is to push forward the idea that coders should be involved in the creative process. Build websites on the theory not of what is definitely possible but what could be possible.
Substance
In the modern era of website design, a simple saying of substance over style may sound rather obvious however if we look at social networking, a relatively new phenomenon, the idea of style over substance is really brought to light. MySpace was the leader of social networking, the creative idea that started it all. It quickly established itself as a way to meet new people and also new music, along with getting in touch with the artists and bands. However the popularity of MySpace was short-lived, as Facebook quickly overtook it in leaps and bounds, despite offering less features at face value and a terrifically clinical and frankly boring design. Facebook, however, offered up to date backend coding, using ajax to process everything making it fast and responsive, and also the revolutionary ‘friends feed’, collating the activity of all your friends across the website.
Style
Standing out from the crowd is simple when the crowd is small, however on the internet no matter how small the target market, hundreds of people will be having the same idea and creative processes, and the crowd is almost infinite in size. Take this website for example, two days after putting it live as a test area I saw someone in the library browsing a site with a very similar design structure. The style of the site must still be as new and innovative as possible. Often sub pages are neglected, with the content of their pages left to wither using the left over bits of code from the major pages, however bringing sub pages to life is as important as the main page. Apple are fantastic for this, with each page having its own flair and interest.
Creativity in code is as important as a creative design, and the design process does not stop with the websites style. The feel of a website comes from its usability, which centers on the code it is built upon. To condemn coders to the pool of monotonous drone-like coding inflects so harshly upon the finalised website I implore those who are skeptical to invite their coders in with the creative process, giving the opportunity for something fantastic. As we are upon the eve of HTML5 new techniques for usability and opportunities for creativity will increase, and as browsers become more compliant of standards, yes that means you internet explorer, the resources available are becoming greater and greater. Hopefully the future of the internet will yield even more intuitive and creative websites where back-end and front-end are married together with both design and code.