Viewing Design Philosophy

Design Philosophy



User: Roddy 11 years ago
Comparing EasyWeb with iWeb is kind of ridiculous since iWeb is dead.

Web design has changed dramatically since iWeb was created and EasyWeb needs to encompass all the new developments.

Lets forget about all these PNG images and make use of the advances in CSS (and the fact that certain browsers are actually becoming compliant) to create faster loading, more efficient websites.

Flash is dead and good riddance. We need to be looking at CSS transitions and Keyframe animations if we want to be part of the future. Plugins like QuickTime are history and the new HTML5 audio and video tags are so easy to implement that they are beginner level.

More people are using fingers than mice now so user inputs need to be sized accordingly. Don't bother with any slideshow that can't be finger swiped. They are not beginner level but need to be made so.

I hope the suggestions for new features for this app will be based on the future and not the past. EasyWeb needs to be an app that a beginner can learn the basics on easily but has enough features to take them to intermediate level.

Web design isn't about filling up acres of space anymore - its about giving viewers more info on smaller screens. EasyWeb needs to provide the tools to do this.

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Roddy

Website: http://everwebwidgets.com
Contact: http://everwebwidgets.com/ewWidgets-home/contact.html
NOTE: I am an EverWeb user and NOT affiliated with EverWeb! Any opinions expressed in this forum are my own.
User: Paul-RAGESW 11 years ago
The goal for EasyWeb will be speed and compatibility. You are completely correct in what you are saying unfortunately so many people use browsers that don't support many modern CSS features.

Can you imagine the outcry if we don't support early versions of IE?

That being said we have been doing a tremendous amount of research into creating proper websites that are both compatible with older web browsers and use modern technology so they take advantage of Mobile features.

We will be implementing all of this the best we can. Unfortunately we cannot forget about compatibility with older browsers and browser bugs that need work arounds.

We can do conditional CSS and certain optimizations to make sure the websites load fast and only use workarounds in older browsers and ignore them in newer browsers.

One thing we are excited about is making retina websites with little or no work to the user.

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Paul
EverWeb Developer
User: Roddy 11 years ago
Have you thought about using css3 media queries ...

http://code.google.com/p/css3-mediaqueries-js/

and/or modernizr...

http://modernizr.com

It looks like we are going to be stuck with people using lt IE 9 for a while so it might be worth considering...

http://code.google.com/p/html5shiv/

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Roddy

Website: http://everwebwidgets.com
Contact: http://everwebwidgets.com/ewWidgets-home/contact.html
NOTE: I am an EverWeb user and NOT affiliated with EverWeb! Any opinions expressed in this forum are my own.
User: Paul-RAGESW 11 years ago
Hi Roddy,

We have considered all those modules already.

Keep in mind that the way modernizr and html5shiv provide support for a lot of these features in old browsers is by creating the same PNGs and other images you want EasyWeb to get rid in java script which makes the site even slower on these older browsers and adds lots of extra code and parsing to newer browsers.

Ideally we'll have better optimizations where, for example, we tile 1 pixel images for gradients or use better fallback mechanisms for older browsers.

Right now serving PNGs is much more efficient than having java script create them.

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Paul
EverWeb Developer
User: Roddy 11 years ago
I don't see what's wrong with using CSS gradients so long as you provide a fallback color which will look OK in browsers that don't support them. I usually use a color number that's half way between the two and check that it shows the text clearly. Providing a fallback image is an extra step which I don't bother with for a minority of visitors who can't be bothered to update their browsers.

I'm sure these same visitors won't miss the lack of rounded corners!

I've only once had to provide a fallback stylesheet for IE 8 and that was a total pain. I don't have the facility to test back further than IE 8 anyway.

I design mainly mobile sites and media players so the older browser thing doesn't really come into it. Desktop users are served up with the traditional site.

Its a lot easier to create a separate mobile version of a site and I think a "one size fits all" design is probably way beyond most beginners. Mobile designs need to have far less extraneous content and the focus needs to be on it being finger friendly.

Using media queries and display:none, its easy enough to reduce content for smaller devices but its not so easy to get all the content balanced for all devices. I notice that the responsive designs for Wordpress fail badly in that respect. Even if the template designer gets it right, the end user seems to manage to screw it up.

Doing this kind of thing isn't as easy as it looks...

http://ezmacwebdesign.com/folding-navigation/sidebar.html

... and I think it would be more sensible for beginners to stick with a single column mobile version of their site and copy over the essentials from the traditional one. The above design depends on the appropriate amount of content being placed in each block in the aside div. We've all seen these thousands of skinny Wordpress sites with nothing much in the sidebar so its fairly obvious that the creators haven't much of a clue about balancing content - or maybe don't look at their finished web pages.

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Roddy

Website: http://everwebwidgets.com
Contact: http://everwebwidgets.com/ewWidgets-home/contact.html
NOTE: I am an EverWeb user and NOT affiliated with EverWeb! Any opinions expressed in this forum are my own.


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