Think outside the TextBox
Over the past decade, the process of web site creation has become increasingly standardized. While this allows for rapid content creation, it has also led to the web becoming increasingly stale and newspaperesque.
In the 90s, most web pages were unique and only those well versed in server side includes had the privilege of templates. Sure, most people made overzealous use of blink tags and animated gifs resulting in lack usability and constancy , but content was always designed with the context in mind.
The pendulum then swung in the other direction. Throughout the 00s, web sites stared becoming more standard. The explosion of blogging, followed by the advent of hundreds of blogging and content management systems lowered the barriers of publishing even further. No longer did people have to worry about index.html files and FTP, an admin panel with plenty of text boxes is all that was needed. Websites became accessible with no effort because everything was generated automatically.
All this ease and convenience came with a price. The context became increasingly separated from the content. Web design became more about designing the perfect template that would frame regurgitated content from a database. This division inhibits holistic thinking. Instead of being a cohesive, contextual experience most sites simply became about the image inside the picture frame. Contextual customization, while possible was difficult and often ignored.
Over the last few years things have started to change. Spurred by the increased adoption of new standards like CSS3 and HTML5, more people are findings ways to bridge the gap between the stale and chaos. Designers like Jason Santa Maria and Dustin Curtis are using article specific style sheets and creating blogazines. On the other end of the spectrum, developers like Tim Lucas and Graham Ashton are making use of technologies like HAML2 and SASS3 to increase simplicity and flexibility while maintaining management over sets of content.
With the system managing this site, I’m attempting to eliminate most the overhead associated with managing a site while simultaneously creating a zen experience by focusing on content driven management. The notes are managed in a folder structure, facilitating management while maintaining the ability to override styles and behavior. Additionally, all the information about a photo is self contained using XMP4 data, eliminating any need for managing databases and keeping the backend simple. I’ve even gone to the length of eliminating form driven comments. By keeping the conversation on Twitter, not only will spam and general management be reduced, but hopefully the discussion will transcend this site. While this system is not perfect, I’m hoping to evolve it over time to accommodate most situations, allowing me maximum design freedom, with the lowest overhead.
Is this the best approach for all situations? Probably not. I just believe that these factors should be considered before choosing the defacto solution and shoving content through its strainer.
2 HAML makes HTML beautiful by making it less verbose and forcing you to use proper identation.
3 SASS makes writing CSS less redundant and manageable by adding features like variables and a more concise syntax.
4 Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is an Adobe standard for storing metadata about a file. I like it because you can define your own parameters and it’s easy to edit from Bridge.
May 09 2010