The Foundations of Web Site Design
Lesson 1
by Jeffrey Veen
Embrace the Technology
The heart of web site design is communication: defining a problem and creating a solution that balances pure information with an aesthetic that gives the message voice. The tension between form and function is the starting point for our exploration of Web site design. Almost immediately after the first graphical browsers shipped, a division appeared between what we've called the "structuralists" and the "presentationalists." HTML was designed in 1992 specifically as a semantic markup language, with few layout capabilities. The underlying philosophy was that you could mark your content with descriptions - this is a headline, this is a quoted passage, etc. Then any machine in the world could interpret those tags in an appropriate way, leading to the universality of the Web as a way to distribute content.
But then the Web got really popular.
As soon as HTML began to enter the mainstream, people (notably browser companies) began to extend the language in proprietary ways to accommodate designers accustomed to having control over web site design and layout. They wanted control of color, fonts, and images. Solutions like the <FONT> tag, for example, gave designers control, but eliminated any semantic meaning from the content. This weakened the language, according to the structuralists.
Some designers, like Studio Verso's David Siegel, shook up the early Web by encoding entire pages into large graphics, sidestepping HTML, and making a valid point: The Web will not be an effective medium until it has the graphic power of other media.
Other designers and technologists have taken different approaches. Notably, those who've developed emerging technologies like Cascading Stylesheets, dynamic HTML, embedded fonts, and XML. These technologies are offering a future that doesn't depend on traditional approaches to web site design, but rather translates centuries of web site design heritage into the native language of the Web.
As these technologies mature, we can be optimistic that form and function will converge in a way that will make both the structuralists and presentationalists happy.
