The way of 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.

Why would you do that?

"The fragility of life, its death strong." All things are soft and brittle, and their death is withered. Therefore the strong die, and the weak are the apostles of life. ”
76th chapter of the Sutra of Morals

The inability to control a Web page may seem a limitation, or a flaw, and from the beginning of the WYSIWYG world we have this idea, and I admit that I thought so at first. But now I no longer think that it is a limitation, but the power of the new media.

In fact, our control of the paper media is the real limitation. Think about it, we can fix the size of the text, or the size of the text can not be changed, or, you may say, the size of the paper is also in control.

But this is not necessarily a good thing, especially for readers. If a reader has poor eyesight, your fixed little fonts are hard to see without a magnifying glass, and if the reader is in a cramped space, such as a train or plane, the wide newspapers are too large, and there is little that users can do about them.

The control we gain in printing is in fact a flaw and should not be inherited into Web design. We know that the WEB has no such limitations, so it should be designed on the basis of elasticity, in which we need to "do all things without resignation".

Adaptability is accessibility

"Good if water, water good things, but not war." The evil of the people, it is almost a word. ”
8th chapter of the Sutra of Morals

Some people think that the Tao is destiny, the shallow reading will feel that people should do nothing, wait for the arrival of things and passive reaction. In my opinion, we should not preset the future for distant goals, instead, we should have adaptability rather than Chang.

"See Xiao Yue Ming, keep soft yue strong." With its light, the resurrection of the Ming, no body, is called learning often. ”
52nd chapter of the Sutra of Morals

The so-called elasticity that I have talked about so far is "adaptability". The summary above is: Make your Web page adaptable. Make your Web page accessible, what browsers, what platforms, or what screens. This means that in any screen size, any screen color, the pages are legally available (and remember that people may print these pages, or use the Read-screen software and the Braille browser to access them). This means that the Web page needs to be adapted to its visitors, whose visitors may have poor eyesight and want to use larger fonts.

Designing an Adaptive Web page is designed to be an accessible Web page, a goal that is not achieved by COSCO, and an important idea of the World Wide Web design, which is an urgent mission to be used in future Web pages that may require universal access.

This sounds unlikely, and universal access, in the face of today's not-so-bright browsers, is an ideal in front of a variety of immature mobile devices that can access the WEB. But we still have a lot to work on, and we can lay a good foundation for the future of adaptive web design.

Translation PostScript

A list Apart is a magazine that is revered by all Web designers, and John Allsopp's "a Dao's web design" is a web designing essay that is recommended for reading by the magazine and has been translated into a variety of text, but not in Chinese. Since the "Moral Sutra" comes from China, there is no reason why so many Web designers at home can chew and understood the original English language. Of course, or the old saying, this is a technical essay, not to be handed down the humanities works, translation is only a letter, and bewildered Guya and Tatsu. This is the first part of this article, see Part Two.