On web Design

Tao in the 90 's as Zen in the 70 's. Every detail is a way of being, or a way of pushing. Web design, although small, but through the moral sutra, we will still find that it contains profound truth. Tao is philosophy, like Buddha, is a way of life and society, from the ancient "moral sutra", this 81-chapter obscure scripture covers the experience of mankind, but it always tells a theme, harmony.

Over the years, either good or bad, my life is related to Style Sheet, I write software, tutorials and guides for it, answer countless questions through newsgroups or emails; through the WEB standards Project by extension. Slowly, I have a completely different understanding of WEB design and see the connection between design and Tao.

What I see is a tense relationship between the real web and the ideal Web, between the existing media, the print media and the web. Now is the time to comb the two, and the time to let the Web go its own way.

Old-fashioned new media?

"On De Tak, is to have virtue." It is the virtue of virtue. ”
38th chapter of the Sutra of Morals

Have you ever seen an early television show, which is a descriptive picture, when the television is aptly referred to as "the broadcast of the picture." Many television programs are in the form of popular radio programs. The nightly interviews, or news, that are now ubiquitous, still carry the shadow of the old media in the early days of television.

The same is true of early music television, where the band simply simulates its performance in front of the camera.

But a new media from the old media development, it can be understood by some of the old media, but could not be used for reference, otherwise the new media is a kind of restriction, the so-called "de without losing virtue." As things have changed, the new media will have its own form and discard what is unreasonable.

If you have seen the early dramas, they are the same, the radio plays need someone to explain the audience can not see the picture, the early TV series are often explained, explain what the audience see themselves, this is the old media into the new media is easy to appear problems.

The web is new media, although it comes from printing, printing skills, design and conventions that have a huge impact on the web. However, web and printing are too Shaw, and those "killer sites" are often tamed by the wildness of the web, making the pages behave as if they were paper-like web sites, the desktop print edition. This is a natural fashion, "de tak de", but we need to move forward to make the web its own media, we need to discard the print media "de", so that the web has its own nature.

We do not mean to discard the hundreds of years of printing, and the wisdom of thousands of years of writing. But we need to understand what these things are good for the web, those are just "Germany" that binds the web.

Don't dominate your Web page.

Sage "... All things are not resignation, but born without them.
2nd chapter of the Sutra of Morals

Take the time to go to those Web design newsgroups or mailing lists, and you'll find that you've been saying it over and over and over again, asking a lot of questions, like, "How do I get my pages to go together on all platforms?" "How do I make my fonts exactly the same as on Mac and Windows?" ", or" how to control the user's browser? ", the word control is very high frequency.

Behind all this is the belief that the designer is the controller (think of the meaning of the pixel mechanic). The designers want to drive the user's awareness, hoping to use their visual experience to drive the user's choice (for example, using a fixed font size). Designers do not consider the difference in the platform due to the different logical resolution (such as Mac 72dpi and Windows 96dpi), they know everything, they can not tolerate in different browsers have even one pixel difference.

Of course this is a bit exaggerated, but the basic facts. One of the best examples is the disappointment of Web developers when they understand that CSS is not a desktop printing tool on the web. If you are a MAC user, you will find that there are a lot of very large sites to prevent the page font ambiguity and refused to use CSS, they are likely to use PX as the font size, and the implication of this choice is the idea that "designers are also masters."

Where is the root of this thought? I think it comes from printing. For printing, the designer is God, printing is a huge industry based on WYSIWYG (WYSIWYG), and many Web designers are rooted in this and believe in the industry's "de". As Web designers, we need to rethink this, give up control, and look for new relationships with Web pages.