Challenge 5: Building A Better Web
March 17, 2006 8:34 AM Permalink
It's 1998. I'm attending Clackamas Community College in Oregon City, Oregon, and studying journalism. I take a web design class because it sounds mildy interesting. The teacher is like 70 and semi-retired. Dude doesn't really know much about web design, and neither do I. My first website has 4 frames, a black background with white Times New Roman font, and orange graphics with green glow drop shadows. I think it's awesome. Others know better.
It was the land of tables and font tags. The land of terrible splash screens. The land of ridiculous flash intros.
Now it's 2006. We're six years into the new millenium, and websites all over the Internet are still littered with junk like deeply nested layout tables, font tags (I'm looking at you, Google), gratuitous Flash intros, and inaccessible code. While the Internet holds great promise as a decentralized mass communication medium with low barriers to entry (anybody can publish for free!), we're still learning how to build it in a manner that is simple, foward-thinking, and easy to use.
The web is moving toward a place where it can be accessible to everyone regardless of device or browsing style. Are you a blind user "viewing" web pages with a screen reader? A businessman using a Blackberry to browse? A person with limited mobility using speech commands to control your laptop? Or even a graphic designer with 2 30" Apple Cinema displays? These are all questions that should be taken into consideration when building websites. If we construct a more careful and thoughtful web, the benefits will be myriad. We'll find that information will be easier to archive and search, access will become democratized (in the sense that a broader swath of the earth's population may be able to use websites), and gosh, websites might even look a bit nicer as well.
This is why my area of expertise (web design and accessibility) is important. Many web designers are still considered solely with the visual appeal or "look and feel" of the page. While these things are certainly valuable, I believe that they should be secondary to a more immediate function: to communicate clearly and efficiently. Of course, each site will have its own goals, context and audience, so an experimental Flash site may not be as concerned with coherent communication as, for instance, Amnesty International's website. But generally speaking, we use the web as a tool for information retrieval, sharing, and dissemination, a structure for communication between groups and individuals, and to organize. It's a massive chaotic beast, but that's partially the beauty of a place without a center or a hierarchy of control. And within the entropy we can start to arrange little communicative systems and communities (such as URBAN HONKING!) to help ourselves and others deal with life, art, culture, technology, and information in a personal and perhaps more human way.
"I'M BORED! GEEK! A-HOLE!" is what you are saying at this point.
"I'M SORRY!" is my response. "BUT NOW I AM GOING TO TEACH YOU HOW TO BUILD A SIMPLE WEBSITE!"
"THANK YOU!" you say. "BUT ISN'T IT REALLY HARD? WITH ALL THE CODE AND STUFF?"
"PERHAPS AT FIRST. BUT IT WILL GET EASIER OVER TIME. HERE, I WILL PUT MY HAND ON YOUR HAND ON THE MOUSE AND GENTLY GUIDE YOU THROUGH IT."
CLICK HERE FOR MY SIMPLE WEB PAGE BUILDING TUTORIAL
I decided to host the tutorial on my own site because even though it is relatively simple, it is long. Quite long. But if you are interested in learning how to build a simple web site with XHTML and CSS...GET IN, AND GET DEEP.
By: Alex M. | Challenge 05 | March 17, 2006
I want you to lay out my senior thesis for me. It will get me an A+ with your design help.
I think that this is the best video anyone has made so far. Awesome job. So funny.
Finally got a chance to watch the video--that's superb.
If puppies love web designers, I've got a lot to learn.
And if I can follow your tutorial? Well, then a master you are indeed.
THANK YOU for posting this on YouTube. For some reason, that's the only video hosting site I can get to work on my computer. So you're the only video presentation I got to see!
That said, maybe I don't share everyone else's sense of humor, but I thought the video was a trifle trite and not so interesting. But I also think that I may not share the same sense of humor as the boys at UrHo and some of the other contestants.
So, just my opinion, take it or leave it.
3:32 AM on 03/18/0610:25 AM on 03/18/06
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