Sickdesigner

In the past years, web design as a profession has grown immensely from a wee toddler to a field well into its adolescence. We now have standards and recommendations, best practices and various ways of testing the rigor of our work.

Web design is growing ever closely to the rank of more traditional, elite professions. Yet, unlike traditional professions, web design is not subject to a standard practice model. We each build websites according to what we think is the best, or sometimes the fastest, approach.

Perhaps you read some books when you started out with web design that explained certain methods of the building process, I know I have. And, perhaps, like me, you too, disappointingly, found that most of these books derive solutions that are either contrived, redundant, illogical or do not withstand the test of time.
In this post, I’ll try to express what I believe to be a healthy candidate for the title of Website Building Standard Method. I call it the Solar Method (of building websites).

As the name implies, my Solar Method is derived from solar systems, more precisely, from the process of forming a solar system. Daunting as it may seem, it’s time for a little bit of cosmology.

The Cosmological Background

For objective reasons I shall use our own solar system as a basis for my theory. This in no way affects the methodology of the proposed theory. Also note that this is a very brief description of the history of our solar system and is meant to provide insight into the background of the proposed method.

Our solar system began its life as a piece of a giant molecular cloud, known as a pre-solar nebula. Upon gravitational collapse, this fragment of the nebula condensed into a proto-star surrounded by debris, known as a solar nebula.
It is from this solar nebula that planets began forming, through the process of accretion. Further down the timeline, through collisions and attractions, the solar system stabilized into the structure we see today.
Snoozing already? Don’t worry, it gets better.

Identifying Parallels

At the center of any website lies the all mighty HTML. It’s the main ingredient we feed browsers and it powers the better part of the web. HTML is the single most essential component of websites. Without it, most other web technologies are useless. In other words HTML is our Sun. And technologies such as CSS, Javascript, PHP, etc. are planets revolving around our HTML Sun.

While there are well founded reasons to claim that technologies such as Java or Flash are equal in importance to HTML, this method is aimed at web designers, not Java or Flash designers, so I’ll refrain from pursuing this line of investigation.

The Solar Method

Terms such as progressive enhancement, a clear focus on accessibility and semantics as well as a clear separation of markup, styling and interaction are driving factors in today’s web environment. These factors are also the driving factors behind this proposed method.

Q: what is the most simple solar system? A: a sun.

Delivering content to the lowest technological denominator is the starting point of this method. We find this lowest denominator by eliminating all non-essential web technologies: a browser that has disabled CSS, Javascript, Flash and Java, reading a website set on a server that does not allow for anything other than simple HTML delivery. It is in this harsh environment that we must first place ourselves.

This method tries to provide the necessary mindset through which we can build websites that manage to overcome the many obstacles of this desert environment and yet achieve our goal of delivering meaningful and complete content.

So let’s look at a very clear way of determining the steps one should undergo in building websites with the Solar Method:

1. HTML
   First, create the HTML content without any images or other media. This is, by far, the most crucial point in developing a website. Clean, semantic & meaningful HTML means your job later on will not only be easier, but also more satisfying.
2. Media & CSS
   Add any necessary media (images, sound, animation etc.) to the HTML code and also CSS styling to match the design.
3. Javascript
   Add Javascript interaction if needed.
4. Programming
   Add any necessary programming (PHP, Ruby, ASP etc.) code.
5. Flash
   Add any necessary Flash code.

At each step remember to make the website functional and meaningful as if no other technology would be added.

At this point you might be saying to yourself: “but this isn’t that complicated!“; and you’re right, it is not. This method is not meant to be complicated, it is meant to guide you in a logical way to building websites. Adding orbiting technologies around the underlying HTML base like planets around the Sun is, or should be, a natural impulse driven by reason and the aforementioned key factors in modern web design: progressive enhancement, accessibility, semantics and separation.

My explanation for the Solar Method may seem overly complicated, considering its easy to follow guidelines. The lengthy preamble was a conscious decision, of course, and it is meant to underline the importance of our work as web designers.

Our craft has grown and so should we, as it’s practitioners, beyond the proverbial “code monkey” and realize that our work is of great importance and we are fortunate to be able to call ourselves the builders of the Internet.

by Radu Chelariu