Submitted by
Users who Dugg This
marcochaoui yahya
4295 Followers
Glory Lund
-9 Followers
berobreoFeb 19, 2012
Oh, those <table><tr><td>times</td></tr></table> those were good times
spr0ketFeb 20, 2012
Sadly we still sometimes need to use these tags to work around the many shortcomings of CSS.
samthurstonFeb 20, 2012
No. No you don't.
CSS2 handles layout pixel-perfectly when done correctly.
Browser-specific style sheets ought to account for anything else.
There's absolutely no good reason to use tables for layout, and hasn't been for about a decade now.
spr0ketFeb 20, 2012
"CSS2 handles layout pixel-perfectly when done correctly."
If you mean with the 1023 hacks required to get things to work on all the browsers... then I'll defer to your expertise. We don't even notice all the work-arounds we have to do for CSS. That's the sad part.
"Browser-specific style sheets ought to account for anything else."
Or you could save some grey hair and use a table for layout since they universally work....
There are good reasons to use tables for layout religion aside:
1) They work universally in all browsers.
2) They perform better than CSS (don't believe me? try it yourself)
3) They are easy to debug. border=1 is all you need to view all the layout borders...
IMO CSS is a major fail because the W3 decided to combine style, layout and event handling code in one eye gouging spec.
samthurstonFeb 21, 2012
"If you mean with the 1023 hacks required to get things to work on all the browsers"
Tell me which of the browsers that have more than a 2% market share require hacks to get positioning working correctly.
"1) They work universally in all browsers."
Except they don't. Each browser does different handling of alignment, padding and spacing. Each browser has different rules for cell collapse. Older browsers handle table elements differently within the DOM.
"2) They perform better than CSS (don't believe me? try it yourself)"
That depends on your metric for performance. They require what should otherwise be contiguous image regions to be sliced, causing more http requests which is the single largest piece of page overhead. These cause slower load times and higher bandwidth usage. If you're working with a small site that's no big deal, but 1k per request x 1000+ requests per hour starts to add up pretty quick.
Tables also degrade poorly for non-graphical browsing situations, such as screen readers, and parse poorly for semantic purposes (search engines and third-party apis).
Most notably, tables cannot in any way adapt to different screen metrics for example handheld screen rotations etc.
So... they load slower, and are less flexible than correct markup. In what way do they "perform better?"
"3) They are easy to debug. border=1 is all you need to view all the layout borders..."
div {border: 1px solid #f00;}
of course there are a multitude of nice tools such as aardvark and web dev toolbar that permit you to debug properly laid out div's in a far more efficient fashion than simply seeing the borders.
Your solution of course assumes that changing the dimensions of the table by 1px at every seam will not break a larger table layout. Because that's another "lovely" feature of tables, you have to nest them to do any finite layouts at all.
"IMO CSS is a major fail because the W3 decided to combine style, layout and event handling code in one eye gouging spec."
You simply don't understand it. That's not W3's fault... the web is a complicated medium. There's a lot going on in there. CSS is the PRESENTATION layer. it is intended to handle all those things involving display and interaction with your information. The inability to separate those two things is, in my opinion, where the "major fail" lies.
But don't take my word for it... go find me the major site that uses tables for layout. I'll wait.
spr0ketFeb 21, 2012
1. Any browser since the 90's renders tables properly. The same can't be said for CSS in 2012.
I see a table in google - also, in bing.com. Microsoft even puts ""hp_table_layout" as the id of the table. Ya see? When you need to make s**t work - use a table. CSS is for lemmings like you.
johnnysoftwareFeb 29, 2012
The front page of the New York Times, one of America's most-read news papers has nearly 7 tables in it.
http://www.nytimes.com/
Some of the tables are used by Google ads code, the most popular advertising service on the World Wide Web.
Some of the tables are written to format the New York Times own material on the page.
The standards-makers are in no hurry to take an axe to the table element. The New York Times does not seem to have done any ethnic purging of table elements either.
Experienced web folks recommend using the appropriate element, and not bending one to do the work of the other. Knowing when to do which is a sign of experience and a lot has been written and said about situations where one is suited better than the other.
HTML 5.x did not deprecate or remove the table element, hence it is still in good stead with the powers that be.
If you are defining layout to strictly mean not doing what table was intended to do, then yes, you should not use tables for layout. Conversely, you shouldn't use CSS to do what tables are uniquely suited to do.
samthurstonFeb 21, 2012
I just turned on "outline tables" on web developer toolbar and had a look at google.com (which uses one table for its search result autocomplete listing) and microsoft.com (which uses one table for its content slider)
Neither one of those sites is using tables FOR LAYOUT. I didn't say that the table tag was evil and never to be used. It is not, however an ideal way to do layout.
I guess I'm a "lemming" for using technological improvements (that work fine) from the last decade.
Can you give me one example of a site that YOU MADE (since you are obviously an expert web designer/coder) that uses tables in such a way that couldn't have been done better with css?
spr0ketFeb 22, 2012
bing ---- learn to read
samthurstonFeb 22, 2012
zero tables on bing.com.
I mean man what I don't understand is, here you are arguing that propellers are better than jet engines.
Sure, some airports can't handle jet aircraft. But most can. Some applications, such as helicopters, aren't suited to jet technology. But it's a technological advancement.
So fine, if you want to crawl back into your cave and knock rocks together to spark a fire (i heard rubbing sticks together may be more efficient, I don't know if it works with every stick though) that's great for you. But don't try and argue that it's better than living in a modern home with electric lighting and gas heat.
And look I may be a little condescending since tables for layout has been a No-no for almost 10 years now, but you're just being plain insulting, and that just shows how weak your position actually is.
johnnysoftwareFeb 29, 2012
CSS 2 blew and didn't catch on. No browser maker implemented it (outside of W3 at least) just like no browser implemented HTML 3. The official recommended versions went: HTML (de facto 1.0 basically), HTML 2, HTML 3.2, HTML 4 and 4.01, then HTML 5.
CSS went CSS 1, CSS 2.1, CSS 3.
IE has long had extremely serious problems doing layouts pixel perfect-wise due to it not following box layout rules regarding margins/spacing/padding. Microsoft claimed everyone else and the spec was wrong and it was right, but relented in the past year or two and fixed IE.
But not everyone updates to the latest IE because it only works on certain versions of the OS. Some people want visitors to their site to be able to buy products or see articles/ads even if their web browser or system is more than a few years old.
Glance at the quirksmode.org web site:
http://www.quirksmode.org/
Historically, browsers have not implemented things the same way as each other, made incompatible changes going from one version to the next [way more so than the specs!], and usually ship "with support for HTML x.y" or "CSS m.n" for many years before they really do completely support said specs.
I agree tables have been misused before but tables are also appropriate for their original intended purpose.
Tabular data with an indeterminate width which needs word wrapping works great in HTML tables. In document languages that lack a similar system, there are major problems handling such situations.
HTML tables have a constraint-solver built into them. DIVs and other fixed/floating blocks do not.
Using tables for non inherently tabular things, agreed, is usually a bad idea. But so are outright declarations that tables are always bad.
drcrankFeb 19, 2012
This article is the journalistic / web equivalent of an old man sitting on his porch with a shotgun full of rock salt, telling those damned kids to get the hell off of his lawn.
berobreoFeb 19, 2012
How can http://norvig.com/, which is painful to see be a reference of web design ...
trythinking1stFeb 20, 2012
Agreed. That norvig site looked like someone puked up Times New Roman and Hyperlinks on his new white shirt.
berobreoFeb 20, 2012
Dugg for "puked Times New Roman"
bookantFeb 20, 2012
It's not, that's the point . . . .
"I value content more highly than aesthetics. The websites and pages that I like tend to be as underdesigned as they are cognitively loaded."
Content rather than design; substance rather than presentation. I'd agree that the norvig site goes *too* far in that direction, but overall agree with the sentiment that most of the web is getting to be *over* designed . . . way too much style and flash getting in the way of or substituting for real content.
pyroclastic_vikingFeb 20, 2012
Wow, I was typing this exact comment and saw yours. This is so very true.
jmack523Feb 19, 2012
Being involved in the study of web design, this gives me a chance to see how both sides think in terms of the pros and cons of aesthetics. It seems as if the author is correct in some cases of designers overloading pages to the point where the visitors to the site want to seek shelter from the glare. But I can see where aesthetics can and should be an important ingredient in a well constructed page. We as designers should have the good judgement to tell if content on a single page is too much. But I totally disagree with Mr. Naughton's opinion of Peter Norvig's page. Too much text also makes me want to turn around and run. It's rather obvious as to why Mr. Norvig is head of research at Google and not design. Content is king, Mr. Naughton, and the real reason graphic designers would be ruining the web is whether or not the design has been thoughtfully and tastefully applied.
ereneeFeb 19, 2012
like the simple, but not that simple. like design, but not overloaded with scripts that it takes so long to load, or so many inadvertant ad links that if your cursor moves over them on the way to something else, suddenly some annoying ad pops up. I really hate that, since you have to take the time to chase it down and close it, if you can.
BTW, think that's what happened to MySpace. and FB is well on its way there too.
samthurstonFeb 20, 2012
The there are "designers" and then there are Designers.
"designers" do design for design's sake.
Designers do design to serve the purpose of the page or site as their primary objective. Form derives from function rather than the other way around.
That's the key difference.
stubearFeb 19, 2012
Norvig's site is a table based steaming pile of s**t. Sure, you can find information there but it's all given the same relevance and the section headers are difficult to see being black against a medium blue tone. I don't know how this author can claim it's easier to navigate then other, well designed sites but I'm guessing he's using his own personal experience with the site as his data for such a claim.
Oh, and i lives his comment, "You can see this for yourself by switching on the "view status" bar in your browser;". Ummm...my browser doesn't show this information in the status bar, I need to load the developer's kit to see what assets are being loaded. I'm guessing his browser doesn't either unless he's loaded an add-on that shows this information.
surgeon62Feb 20, 2012
Guess what a good designer could do?
Redisgn Norvig's site while still using a text only layout and make it significantly easier to use and navigate.
The answer is usually not at either extreme, but somewhere in the middle.
wolfingFeb 20, 2012
I agree with the author. To me, content is king. When I go to a page looking for a recipe for apple pie, I don't want to wait for an animation of a book opening a recipe and then having to 'turn the pages' until I find what I need.
Design is important, but that doesn't mean a page has to be 'beautiful' or 'look cool'. Design (to me) means presenting the information you want, in a practical and pleasant way (which doesn't mean I want it to be 'cute'), basically it means that it follows standard UI guidelines.
One recent design trend I specially don't like is the carousel thing. Instead of presenting me with 10-20 options in the page, I have to click through 8 sets of 3 big images that animate left and right. Total waste of time.
cowicideFeb 19, 2012
Correction:
Programmers who THINK they are also designers are ruining the web.
iprintallFeb 20, 2012
I'll digg that. I once had a programmer ask me why his site design didn't look nice. It was full of crap stolem and borrowed from here and there. I tried to explain to him that most people don't like to view information as a wall of text, which I got a puzzled look and a "it loads fast" comment. Oh well, I wound up helping the page out and between the two of us found something in the middle.
mogwuyFeb 20, 2012
There was a saying back when I was doing web development in high school, that I think all web developers should go by. Which is "keep it simple stupid".
Anymore all web pages out there are over complicated and people lose track of what there looking for. The flashy stuff on your sites might look appealing to the eye, but is it worth it if users can't navigate your site properly?
PresidentCamachoFeb 20, 2012
LOLOL " Engineers fume at the appalling waste of bandwidth involved in shipping 679kB of data to communicate perhaps 5kB of information."
Oh s**t!!! noooooooooooo!!! a whole f**kin' 679 of kBs!!! f**k me! That s**t will definitely bog down my 20Mb connection!!
"Photographers love the way their high-resolution images are now viewable on Flickr and Picasa"
Duhhhh. So lets not do that!! f**k them. All this bandwidth we have should only be used for text only websites!!! John Naughton's (funny how naught is part of his name) outlook is retarded. We all have the bandwidth, it is not dial-up anymore dumbass. This line of thinking is almost like going from the 20's to now in automobile technology and capability but still insisting we all drive at 20 mph because we just don't need to drive 70 mph because we might miss something. Or like we have color TVs but should still film in black and white because it is more basic and elegant and uses less data when broadcast. Stupid. Nothing wrong with appreciating the past, but MOVE ON!
If you don't like the interwebs in all their glory use lynx and stfu.
johnnysoftwareFeb 20, 2012
Everybody's connection speeds have not gone up. A lot have but I have spoke to people who live in areas where high speed broadband is not offered now and likely won't be in the near future either.
If you read the latest articles that came out in the past month or two, you will learn that there are large swaths of the US that do not have broadband yet.
PresidentCamachoFeb 20, 2012
"Everybody's connection speeds have not gone up"
Of course "everybody's" hasn't yet! Lots of rural areas are on DSL and dial up yet and they will never get broadband brought to their home. Especially as new and faster wireless tech is evolving which they will use instead. I don't think anyone needs to read "the latest articles" to know this.
So because of this, we should still design the interwebs with them in mind? No, that would be silly. The whole concept of not taking advantage of the medium you have to work with is limiting if not backwards thinking and that was my point.
samthurstonFeb 23, 2012
"a whole f**kin' 679 of kBs!!!"
When you run a high-traffic site, and pay for bandwidth, it's not the end-user's connection the engineers are worried about. It's 1) keeping the pipes open for you the next time you request a page and 2) keeping the bandwidth bill down to save overhead and increase profit.
PresidentCamachoFeb 29, 2012
All of what you discuss has more to do with efficient site design, if you make a profit or not depends on what your audience wants not your engineers!!! For example, I don't care how low bandwidth your site is and how many cents it is saving, if your customers want bandwidth intensive content it is probably going to cost you profit to think like an engineer as you say. Do you want to make sales $$ or save bandwidth $$? I would go for both myself and find the most profitable point which brings me back to f**k the 679 kBs. Depends on your business of course, which you are not accounting for.
samthurstonMar 1, 2012
Right, if you're running some low traffic business with a high profit margin, it doesn't matter.
If however you're running a major site that carries traffic loads in the 1000's of hits per hour, well, i'll let basic math do the talking:
720 hours in a month
* 679kB
*1000 hits per hour=
488 880 000 kB, or almost 500 TB per month. At the rates of a typical dedicated server, this trivial difference would cost you only $150,000 per month.
Now, if you've got some penny-in-the-pond site on an "unlimited" host, sure it doesn't matter to you.
For some perspective, in early 2010 twitter was clocking about 600 *tweets* per second. that's more like 36000 hits per hour (just for posting) and could easily cost you in the 7 figures PER MONTH. This kind of cost has to be covered with something, usually in the form of advertising which everyone likes to bitch about, or "handling costs" in the case of physical product sales.
My point, far from having anything to do with "engineering," is that 679kB might not seem like much, but it *multiplies*.
I'd also like to address this little gem:
"Do you want to make sales $$ or save bandwidth $$?"
IF the increased bandwidth leads to (proportionally) increased revenues, then why not? Only multivariate testing could tell us for sure. The problem is that there are designers who understand the engineering and financial aspects of the web and design with the issues of scaling in mind and multivariate testing in their process, and then there are those who think like you: "what's 679kB matter?"
It's the latter kind that's s**tting up the web.
PresidentCamachoMar 2, 2012
YYYAAAAAAWWWWWNNNN!!!!! you are not getting anywhere. I clearly said:
" Do you want to make sales $$ or save bandwidth $$? I would go for both myself "
There is a balance out there to be struck. f**k your basic math, it is not working for you. Quit concentrating on the numbers, it is the concept that is wrong. You should always be as efficient as possible in what you do but that has nothing to do with whether or not you should use s**t tons of bandwidth. Those are two different topics and they are getting lumped together here. Efficiency needs to be managed everywhere, restaurants, factories, website design, whatever. I will try one more time with you:
1. Bottom line, people don't want to look at s**tty text websites. Especially when they are buying products they want to look at and stuff like that.
2. If company A has s**tty looking text website that uses 8 bytes of band-with designed by super engineer efficiency man and company B has nice graphically intense website with crazy animations and is designed by a designer who actually did marketing research to see what the customer wanted and it uses s**t tons of bandwidth. Company A makes no sales and goes out of business while company B remains profitable even though they had identical content and sold identical product.
So lets make a s**tty text website!!
The perspective the article is written from is clearly not from giving others what they want or running a business, he is bitching about high resolution photos being on the internet for christ's sake! why would you defend this line of thinking?
samthurstonMar 2, 2012
" people don't want to look at s**tty text websites. "
I never suggested they did. Of course not.
You've suddenly shifted your argument so that you agree with me, while trying to make it look like you don't.
In the post you're replying to here, I very explicitly state that if that "extra bandwidth" is actually useful to the design, in terms of selling capacity, then it SHOULD be included. (provided of course that the selling capacity difference covers the cost of the bandwidth)
The only point you made that I disputed is that the 679kB doesn't matter. It does matter. It costs money. Is this a less boring way to frame the argument for you?
PresidentCamachoMar 3, 2012
@samthurston
Did you even read my first comment? or any of my others? I did not change my argument at all LOLOL. This whole time I have been saying that it is stupid not to use the bandwidth that we have available to us.
I have been saying that this perspective is stupid not to put high def photos and such on the internet. You took the 679kBs and ran with it. You must be a numbers guy because you ignored all the words.
There is not even enough detail provided to tell what context that 679kBs is used in which to argue about it!! You made up all the transaction scenarios and the expensive math!! Nowhere in the article does it discuss this type of thing!! an image can be 679kB and the word that describes it could be 5kB. This article is more saying that it is now a waste to transmit that picture, because the same info could have been communicated as 5Kb of text. This is the tone and context of the article, not wasted transactional overhead in data transmission.
I just said f**k 679kBs of data to make the point that it is not significant to my internet connection now like it would have been 10 years ago and this is still true no matter what spin you try and put on it.
I should have used this quote instead: "From 2003 to 2011, the average web page grew from 93.7kB to over 679kB" It would have been more appropriate. Then could I say f**k the 679kBs?
I have been saying things the whole thread such as:
" if your customers want bandwidth intensive content it is probably going to cost you profit to think like an engineer as you say."
You know like the guy that wrote the article we are discussing who references s**tty text websites as a good example of what a site should be like.
and
"All this bandwidth we have should only be used for text only websites!!! John Naughton's (funny how naught is part of his name) outlook is retarded"
and
"The whole concept of not taking advantage of the medium you have to work with is limiting if not backwards thinking and that was my point."
and I already told you the topics were different here:
"All of what you discuss has more to do with efficient site design, if you make a profit or not depends on what your audience wants not your engineers!!! " (very true by the way)
Then I say it all one more time and all of a sudden I am changing my point of view to agree with you?? Seriously??
I certainly have not changed my point of view and this article is still a bitch fest about using bandwidth and how many items are on a site etc etc. I am still saying f**k that we have bandwidth and we should use it. What has changed?? Basically I explained this concept to you in more detail:
"I don't care how low bandwidth your site is and how many cents it is saving, if your customers want bandwidth intensive content it is probably going to cost you profit"
And when I did you said that you agree with it, so I guess you have really agreed with me this whole time so why are you arguing? Please explain where my argument shifted??
PresidentCamachoFeb 20, 2012
Hello dumb ass!!!!
"From 2003 to 2011 the average web page grew from 93.7K to over 679K (see Figure 1), over 7.2 times larger"
So has everybody's connection speeds! DUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH.
This is called change and technology progression. It happens. It makes sense. Get over it. It is going the right direction!
Completely lame attitude for someone involved in the tech industry. I understand when my dead grandma had this attitude, but this guy?
"And yet it's highly functional, loads in a flash and contains tons of wonderful stuff"
NEWS FLASH!!!! You can actually make an attractive website that is pleasing on the eyes do the same thing information wise and the end user won't notice a difference in load times. Wake up and get with the times!!!! Sounds like an excuse to not learn anything new or grow professionally to me.
johnnysoftwareFeb 20, 2012
In my area the broadband speeds rose without the price because the phone company tore out the copper cabling, presumably to sell it, and installed faster -- and for them more economical -- optical fiber cabling.
But I talk not infrequently to people whose bandwidth lower; coming across much slower old fashioned copper or low bandwidth RF connectivity that exists out in rural areas.
There are a full spectrum of bandwidths in use. The author made that point in his article and gave examples.
Also, if someone is coming into the site over 3G they are coming in with a fairly slow connection and they are paying for data transfer. So extra baggage clip clopping along with each page request not to mention each minor UI action on JavaScript driven Ajax sites is costing them extra money.
So in a lot of cases, for SOME people, the designers really have jumped the gun with their design/architecture. If they designed the site to work in a low bandwidth way and the full speed way, people would not object. But when they do cut that corner, people do object if it makes the site work poorly for them.
PresidentCamachoFeb 29, 2012
Hello!!! That is why you have bandwidth detection and make different site versions for different clients and different connection speeds. Stop trying to make excuses, it is not working.
abohannonFeb 20, 2012
Bottom line: No matter how flashy, if a website is more difficult to use/navigate after a designer is finished with it, then they are a poor designer.
theredwhynoFeb 20, 2012
No, *advertisers* have turned web pages from simple sources of information into bloated showcases.
onedeepFeb 20, 2012
I tend to associate the term "graphic designers" with folks who design primarily in print, in which case, yes, those folks suck at web design.
My theory for this is that the print medium is inherently usable. The method from moving from story to story in a magazine is literally just turning pages, and it is exactly the same from magazine to magazine. So print designers just focus on the aesthetics.
Web design is inherently not usable - at least not in its modern form. Moving from story to story usually means clicking a link, which could be anywhere, and look like anything. And what you have learned on website A will probably not transfer to website B.
As such, a site designed by someone who is mainly a print designer might be beautiful, but will be nearly unusable, because they are only focusing on how it looks, not how it works. Their experience just doesn't let them think about that sort of stuff.
pragmaticstatFeb 20, 2012
As retired a graphic designer and a marketing communications manager, I value the importance of communication by properly integrating the right amount of graphics that support the information the words explain. Also, a good design can help to reassure visitors that they have reached a site that is worth their time and interest. When properly balanced, there is no better form of communication.
However, as per web site design, the design must enhance the ability of the site to function as a searchable site in search engines. Check out my current web project, http://myreadingmapped.blogspot.com, it is a well designed site that communicates well. The Google Maps of historic events on this site are in top 10 search engine listings because of the content, images and the number of external links to information out side my site. For example, search for "interactive map of Stanley", or "map of sunken ships."
One of the resources that gets me the most referrals are the images on each page. Images like abandoned ships with Google Map icons indicating the location of the ship, or a Google Map image showing the location and size of the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch. When properly titled with valuable information, pictures become a valuable resource to attract visitors.
trythinking1stFeb 20, 2012
excuse me, but why is it that you think your website is well designed? It's butt ugly, has no clear purpose, and has so much content on it, that it's hard to figure out where to go or what the site is about. Oh and the space theme makes it look like a 90's MySpace reject.
johnnysoftwareFeb 20, 2012
I don't think MySpace existed in the 1990s.
pragmaticstatFeb 20, 2012
Considering it is a web site designed for a small audience of those who appreciate history and reading, and designed within the limitations of Blogger, my site has had 22,194 visitors, who made 47,009 Google Map counted views in only 11 months. I didn't start out with 65 Google Maps of historic events, they were created over the 11 months. When I redesigned my site to its present form, my traffic picked up substantially. As for what you call a space theme, I guess you were not smart enough to figure out the space view of the Earth relates to the 65 Google Maps involving satellite imaging. As for your figuring our where to go comment, my Google Analytic's traffic flow stats indicate people are moving around just fine and people have stuck with the site to the 12th level of interaction. As of it being so '90s, I tried Blogger's new dynamic templates and did not think they communicated well because I had no control over what images and copy the software chose to create the home page directory, so I stayed with the tried and true. As the person who wrote the article above implies, design should never overcome the purpose of communicating.
pragmaticstatFeb 20, 2012
I also noted that you did not have a complaint about how searchable my site is. From this morning's Blogger stats I see several of this article's readers got to my site via the searches I suggested they try in search engines. Thus, for such a poorly designed site my Web Master Tool stats indicate I receive 4,004 Queries, 75,000 Impressions and 700 clicks. Which gives me a 17% Query-to-Click Ratio and a 0.9% Impression-to-Click ratio. I average 100 Query Clicks per day. In addition, I have 19 pages of Google Listings. I know that much of what I stated here, when compared to larger sites, is insignificant. But for Bloggers like me, I am off to a good start and have a long way to go.
trythinking1stFeb 22, 2012
I wasn't saying that it was bad, just that it was not that exceptional. Given the user stats you mention though, the site is catering to the needs of your user community and I applaud you for that.
As to your "smart enough" comment, well, that's just ad hominem, so I will let it slide.
johnnysoftwareFeb 20, 2012
Thanks for posting that site of yours. It does look interesting and probably took a while. I have done some work with KHTML myself. I can imagine what you had to do and I appreciate it.
sonicgardenFeb 19, 2012
Graphic designers: You NEED a blue bar at the top of your website!
RovereFeb 19, 2012
There's plenty of over designed websites out there, but the web now has many original and beautifully designed websites, and is a far different place from what it was in the past. As long as the design enchances the website and doesn't detract from it, I have no problem with skillful graphic design.
ophelloFeb 19, 2012
This guy has it wrong. It wasnt necessarily the designer's idea to make websites look good. When businesses realized the value of design to sell a brand, they hired designers to craft their websites. This guy clearly doesnt understand that websites are not just transmitters of information: they are TOOLS. And tools that need to be interacted with by a human being have to be tailored to that market. This means being more intuitive and interactive than a f**king HTML table this dumb troglodyte is pitching for a return to.
This guy sounds like a crotchety old geezer. I wont be surprised if he never makes any money through the internet.
AlosyGonzalezFeb 20, 2012
nice...
agmlauncherFeb 20, 2012
Wow, this article is f**king stupid.
The author is linking document size and number of objects with design and aesthetics???? Let's take a closer look at one of his examples, the Daily Mail. He claims that the Daily Mail has 344 items that need to be loaded. But you know why? It's not because of CSS or anything like that, it's because the page is simply god damn huge.
Seriously, go there and look at how small the scroll bar is. The page just has an absolute ton of stuff on it, and in fact it's POORLY designed. And in fact again, web designers (the good ones) actually strive for the opposite of that: limiting the number of elements on a page to the bare minimum to accomplish that page's primary function.
If you want to blame anyone for the bloat on Daily Mail, blame the analytics team that thinks the best strategy for the Daily Mail is to put as much s**t on the home page as possible in the hopes that at least something on it will grab someone's attention. Designers are balking at the Daily Mail as much as Peter Norvig's page.
The goal of a GOOD web designer is not about aesthetics, it's about function:
1. Organize information into easy to scan "buckets"
2. Create a unique identity for an organization, or reflect an organization's existing identity
3. Provide a simple and easy experience for users by guiding them through the use of contrast, white space, weighting, color, interactive feedback
4. etc, etc, etc
So yeah, this guy has it all wrong.
jamboidFeb 22, 2012
He should install a text only web browser such as lynx.
jamboidFeb 22, 2012
Build a web site with zero style. You won't get many visitors though.
poyanpFeb 20, 2012
To take this author seriously I have to assume this guy has a 28.8kbs dialup connection and is running Internet Explorer 5.
maestrohFeb 20, 2012
I suspected he was a hater right from the first paragraph... but he gave himself away when he cited norvig.com as an example of how information should be presented on the web.
^^That was my non-graphic designer criticism of the article. My graphic designer critique would go something like, "blame MARKETERS not US"
gbreedFeb 20, 2012
Bulls**t! Point Blank! For many many years non designer have create crappy, uninteresting sites. The web and tech need these designers. Just shut the hell up.
caffienemanFeb 20, 2012
hear hear!
illinestFeb 20, 2012
Poorly considered article. A web page is more than a store of information. A web page is a presentation of product. Sometimes the streamlined approach is appropriate but sometimes the web page is important in engaging the reader. As an example:
http://wechoosethemoon.org/
I'm early in my sophomore year of a web design course and although I do prefer the minimalist approach myself I think that little good comes from a blanket judgement such as the one made in this article. I also think that the page he provided as an example of what the web could be is a failure even according to his own modest metrics. You could significantly improve the readability of that site just by changing some fonts and colors. It wouldn't increase the size of the file at all. Readability isn't your enemy.
skinturtleFeb 20, 2012
Well...not sure what the problem is that some people have with aesthetics...it's all around us and an important part of life. Sometimes it makes the information presented more interesting. What kind of boring person would think otherwise? We're not all a bunch of scientific nerds with no sense of style.
It's like saying, "Interior decorators have turned homes from white walled rooms for the simple purpose of existing in....into bloated areas of comfort and style!"
What I don't like is when people get a pure programmer to design a site...and the site ends up looking a piece of crap.
yescandoFeb 20, 2012
what a bizarre article! must have been a slow news day. Of course, the origins of the Internet are all about dissemination of information but times have changed. Today alongside the informational aspect there's also the sales and marketing of your business, big or small - and you need pictures and great design to show off your product or service well.
Broadband speeds have increased so much recently that there is no longer a need to minimalise page size, but if you're trying to sell to the African market you'd be crazy to load a website with huge images.
Keep the design but use common sense to keep your intended target happy too! Certainly no need to get grumpy about it all!
k9000Feb 20, 2012
dugg down. this guy obviously has no idea of what good design is or what good designers do.
pyroclastic_vikingFeb 20, 2012
Also, he claims to be a minimalist... does he not realize that an often universal goal of a web designer is to be able to strike a balance between aesthetics and functionality? i.e. minimizing the flashy content on a website?
sebassisFeb 20, 2012
Personally I blame the marketing departments for the bloated home pages we get these days :-)
heinrichlFeb 20, 2012
Two things that makes me believe the author really doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes down to design - 1) I believe graphic designers work with PRINT and web designers design for WEB, simple really (quite misleading to have a title such as "GRAPHIC designers are ruining the web) and 2) Peter Norvig's page is just horrible with it's outdated code and overall look. Lazy if you ask me.
lorem1000Feb 20, 2012
In other news, extra large clothes are making people overweight.
trav7777Feb 20, 2012
The Norvig page is a great design in terms of accessibility of links and information - the user doesn't need to click on anything to have them revealed, it is all laid out in front of them. There is no navigating drop down or slide out menus, nothing has to be discovered. I think this is what the writer is trying to get at in the article.
Where the website is terrible is it's stylisation. Graphic design such as typographic hierarchy and use of basic colour and shape needs to be used to turn the page into less of a wall of text and more of a shell to clearly define links and information on the page. This can easily be achieved without losing the design of the site in terms of organisation.
Norvig's web page is a great design in usability, but is terribly stylised.
berky93Feb 20, 2012
I think the author of this article isn't getting the point. A good graphic designer is someone who does more than make a web site look good. Web design is about making information accessible. The reason Peter Norvig's page would make a designer sick is not that it has a lack of pictures and animations. It's because the page is cluttered. Looking at the page is disorientating, it's hard to find information. If the website was designed "properly" then a user could look at every page and immediately know where to go to find what he or she is looking for.
And there's a difference between minimalism and lack of design. My entire website has only four image files associated with the design (excluding my gallery, but it's a design portfolio site, after all) but it's still easy to navigate and find information. Norvig's, however, has neither images nor design. That's why it displeases graphic designers - it wasn't designed with users in mind. It's just a dump of everything Peter wants to be on the web, without any thought put into how others would perceive or navigate it.
enthalpic0Feb 20, 2012
http://www.frequentupdates.com - Design is key, dude, it's called a image, everybody's got one...you may like banality, but I prefer something juicy....
PanjeeFeb 20, 2012
Folks could learn a lot about GUI design & usability, by listening to experts such as, Jakob Nielsen :o)
enthalpic0Feb 20, 2012
The web was banal... then Graphic designers made it pleasing to the eye, F*^K this guy, F^*Kn NERD!
sndsFeb 19, 2012
Web design, like any field has its good and bad apples. I understand where the author is coming from but if he had actually done his homework instead of, as drcrank said, being "an old man sitting on his porch with a shotgun full of rock salt, telling those damned kids to get the hell off of his lawn" then maybe he would have had a point to take under consideration.
Designers these days, much like their counterparts, the developers, need to be jacks of a number of trades. They need to not only understand how a site is built but they need to understand visual structure in the vein of print design (something that html was based upon) and how a user will interact with the site independent of the device in question. If you're talking about marketing sites whose sole purpose is to sell you product or market a product/service/media to a consumer, then I'd say I agree with Mr. Naughton, but that is more a function of the client's need for that project and not so much the designers work. It's likely any designer at an agency has been brow-beaten into submission to deliver exactly what the client ordered. There's not much to be done there. But to damn the entirety of web designers based on things like Norvig's antiquated site and LOLcats? I think that's missing the boat there.
The things you use everyday, Google, Facebook, and Digg even, they all make an extraordinary effort to keep the users focus on the content, not the design. Even marketing sites like Apple's own product site places content above design, yet it's simple, striking, beautiful even. It may not be the pinnacle of web design or methods but the thought on all levels (UX, print, development) are all there.
Naughton needs to put away the rock salt and read into what makes web design what it is today before passing judgement on something he clearly knows so little about.
abitcynicalFeb 19, 2012
If this writers employer applied the same logic to its own site (http://guardian.co.uk/), this piece of editorial would have never seen the light of day. This is because the average user would burn through their 5 seconds of attention trying to figure out what the hell they're looking at. Click... On to the next. He should be thanking the competent designers that assist him delivering this BS in a sensible fashion.
Although he did remind me of the total inspiration I feel every time I visit Craigslist!
johnnysoftwareFeb 20, 2012
LOL, Craigslist