A Short Discourse on My Philosophy of Web Page and Website
Design
In Classical Design Theory Less Is Always More, Pt. 1
It was conveyed to me recently that the previous webmaster to a site that I completely redesigned after the original website was abandoned, said the new design, "Looks like it was made by an old person." Well, I do resemble that remark. So it was right on its face. But far off the mark in its intent. Yes, the website in question was designed by this here old person, who can barely hold his bladder in the morning.
And, let me clear here: I wear my Old Fart Badge with Pride.
Let me tell you what this old guy brings to the table that you naive sniveling little Rug Rats just can't get. Us old folks bring with us the Wisdom that comes with surviving all that came before in our lives and in our culture. In my case, the Particular Wisdom that I bring to Web Development is forged from real world experience helping plain ordinary folks master Internet skills from the time the Internet first hit the Mass Culture.
So put that on your battery and vape it!
So many of today's websites seem to be designed not for ease of use for the visitors, but simply to impress other web designers. To that point, no one gives a ratzz azz about colorful spinning boxes. Cascading, drop down menus, that are often so poorly coded, only get in the way of the website visitor getting to the content that brought them to the website in the first place. Eye candy that is not relevant to the Master Plan of the Website Owner is wasted bandwidth. And, again I say, such elements do not seem directed to the website visitor, but more to any potential new clients of the webmaster, or maybe the webmaster's perceived competitors.
I do not know what the Master Plan of any one website might be until I sit down and discuss with the Prospect what is their goal for their website. What is the objective of the website? For the website mentioned herein, the owner wanted it as Plain As Could Be Made. Plus, there had to be no sense of stress, conflict, or emotive content of any kind. To me, the owner's description of the idea sounded like the Internet before Mosaic. In fact, it took some convincing on my part for the owner to accept any visuals beyond text and a small portrait image.
One more problem with modern web design is the notion that each individual webpage must fill the entire width of the screen. Modern web programming techniques allow for the webpage to form and fill the screen based on the size of the individual monitor. That a webpage fills the entire monitor screen stands in stark contrast to the theory in classical design known as "Negative Space;" also known as "Ma" in classical Japanese Zen artwork.
Just because some Technical Feat Can Be Done Never Equates to It Should Be Done.
In a short essay on the Subject of Negative Space in art and design, "How Artists Use Negative Space to Say a Lot with Nothing," author Sara Barnes, expresses well my design philosophy about the use of Negative Space in any Design Project,
Positive space and negative space work together to achieve balance in a composition. Without them, a work might overwhelm the eye or not activate the layout at all (how dull!). To ensure that a drawing or painting is in equilibrium, you must always remember to plan the areas of negative space as much as you do the active space.
I rely on Negative Space for real impact in my webpage designs. A common writing style is to compare and contrast two or more items to make a larger point than simply discussing the items. Positive Space juxtaposed against Negative Space forces the viewers' eyes onto the main subject, which occupies the Positive Space. Positive and Negative Spaces are used together to create "Compositional balance." [Ibid.] Now, I learned this concept not in any art class, per se. I first learned about the practical application of Negative Space in any visual presentation in my High School Photography class, circa 1970. In fact, it maybe all I remember from High School, except how dreadful High School was. Thank you, Mr. Mellencamp, and your Tres Cool Karmann-Ghia, wherever you are.
Clearly, any webpage that uses PHP and/or WordPress to build the page on the fly to fill the screen by definition cannot take advantage of the visual impact Negative Space offers. Whether the elements on a page are contained within Tables or Divs matters nothing at all to a website visitors. Furthermore, extremely fast broadband connections have now made load times into moot arguments. There isn't an authentic human websurfer capturing and comparing the difference in milliseconds between websites' load times, unless that's their job. And just a word on WordPress. The only web application hacked more often than WordPress is any iteration of Java.
I build webpages the old fashioned way. I use Microsoft Expression Web 4 as a WYSIWYG editor to lay out the basic design. And then I fine tune that HTML and CSS code by hand. I think much of "the build the page on the fly" techniques are often simply demonstrations of laziness on the part of some developers.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Gerald Reiff