On Mar 18, 2007, at 4:20 PM, Laurens Holst wrote:
> I don’t know… In Backbase, there is one designer guy whose main IDE
> is indeed photoshop and who makes the design for all graphics
> (including the product’s UI looks, PDF documents, the website, and
> their illustrations). However, he has basically nothing to do with
> HTML or CSS (other than having a global view of what’s possible
> with CSS and what’s not, because he’s been told so many times :));
> when he’s finished a design, the markup is then created by web
> programmers who slice up the images and produce the code.
This is the way Forum One works; however the markup is often created
by junior programmers who aren't yet experienced enough with HTML+CSS
to create table-free, semantic designs. The pressure for them to go
the easy road is exacerbated when budgets get tight and the client is
viewing the site in IE 6.
Also, most designers I've worked with are not as well-informed as
yours. They implicitly design things in their head based on their
experience with table-based layout, rather than a design that is easy
to render with semantic markup (e.g. uniform-height columns), even if
they don't do the coding.
By default, our CMS generates compliant, fairly semantic HTML, but
implementation is always much messier in the real world of budgets
and a limited supply of properly-trained-and-experienced programmers.
I think you can safely assume that as long as shortcuts exist, they
will be taken unless the "right" way is actually easier, or when the
advantages are so compelling that people are willing to require it
and pay the difference.
--
Sandy Smith, Manager of Technical Development
Forum One Communications, Inc.
ssmith@forumone.com
tel. 703-548-1855 x28
http://www.forumone.com/