Website Design
If you wonder why the website looks the way it does, or
why my HTML is "inside out" (a comment I've received before), this is
the right page to read. It's not long, but it sets out my fundamental
philosophy of web design.
I've organized it as a question-and-answer session,
much like the F.A.Q., because that works
well.
Why don't you have many graphics?
Because I feel that it would be inappropriate for a site about books. Also,
I'm still pandering (at least somewhat) towards people who have slow connections
to the internet. The site works well over a modem, and you don't need to wait
five minutes for the page to load.
In fact, the main pages only have one constant graphic: the banner (which,
right now, is just the author's signature). I change it every time a new book
comes out. On the front page, there's also a picture of the latest book. On all
the pages that are about a specific book, the cover is there. That's
it. There aren't any graphics aside from those.
What about Flash?
I'm not a big fan of Flash. And for those who don't know, Flash is the name
of a program by Adobe (although it used to be owned by Macromedia, which is when
I learned it — Adobe acquired the entire company... um... sometime); I'm
not saying that I dislike flashy things. The purpose of Flash is to create
interactive graphical environments or animations without using a lot of space.
The problem with respect to this website is that there's no place I
could use it where it would feel appropriate. I could put up a Flash-based
introduction page if I wanted to, but it would only get in the way of the rest
of the page.
That's not to say that Flash doesn't have legitimate uses. It's just that
there are no legitimate uses that would provide an advantage for this
website.
But you use CSS. Why is that okay but Flash isn't?
I use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) because compared to Flash, CSS is very
easy to edit. I suppose I could achieve many of my website goals with Flash
instead, but I wouldn't be able to edit it in eight seconds using a generic text
editor.
You also don't use frames. Why not?
Because on some deep level, I hate frames. I really do. I want the website
to not only have pages that are consistent with each other, but consistent
within themselves. And while I understand the utility of a menu bar that's
always in one place and never scrolls, it just doesn't appeal to me on an
aesthetic level with regards to this site. At all.
Why is all your text black on a bland background instead of something cooler?
Dark text on a light background is easiest to read. There have been studies
done showing that other colors (white text on black being the main alternative)
cause more eyestrain. I don't know how trustworthy those studies are, but they
sound right. I've tried other ways and this way looks the most calm.
Also, this is a site about books. Books generally use black text
on a white background.
Why does your HTML look inside out?
That question probably makes no sense to people who have never made a
webpage by hand before. But those people who have made a webpage by
hand usually spot the issue immediately: Each line (or most lines, anyway) start
with >< instead of just <, and most of my lines lose the > at
the end.
The answer is really quite simple (if nerdy). If you have an EOL that isn't
inside a tag, you get an extra space. This will sometimes create "tails" on
pictures, cause things to not center properly, and generally make things go
nuts. So I try to have every EOL either fall inside a block of running text or
inside a tag. And the easiest way to do that is to take the > from the end
of every line and just drop it down to the next line.
I apologize to anyone who didn't understand a word of that. I did
say that the answer was nerdy.
So you really write everything by hand? Why?
Yes, I do. I use a program called BBEdit, which is a text editor. True, it's got
a lot of very powerful and nice features, but when all's said and done, it's a
text editor. I've used other programs in the past, but they've all been simple
text editors. And yes, that does mean that I've written webpages with
vi.
As for the why of it, it's because I'm a control freak. I don't
want a picture to be near the center of a page. I want it to be centered to the
pixel. I want the text to align perfectly. And I also want the
HTML to be straightforward, simple, and clean. I want someone to be able to look
at the raw HTML and say "Yeah, I can see what he's doing."
But with a lot of HTML-creating programs, exactly the opposite is the
result. The pages are a mess of tables (most useless), extra spacing elements
that accomplish nothing, mysterious meta-tags that have no apparent function,
and a lot of legal bafflegab that implies that the company that made the HTML
editor may possibly own your soul. Or something. Frontpage is notorious for that
kind of thing (to use just one example).
And yes, the HTML-creating programs have gotten better. But that
doesn't mean they've gotten good. What I do works for me, and if I did
it some other way, it would probably stop working for me.
Are you really this arrogant in real life?
I'm not actually as arrogant as you might think. I do have some
strong opinions with regards to websites, but I've been writing webpages for
more than two decades now — about as long as websites have existed
— so when I say that I believe such-and-such about web design, I usually
feel that I've got enough experience to justify it.
Yes, it might be arrogance of a sort, but at least it's
well-informed arrogance.