Month: August 2010

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Your clients don’t know HTML

After doing many websites, sheer experience tells us a lot can be done just using XHTML, CSS and Javascript. If you are doing it for yourself and maintaining the site yourself, it’s easy, but if you are handing it over to your clients who do not know HTML and will be updating the site using a CMS, things can get a abit tricky on how you go about on your XHTML and CSS.

Clients (the normal kind) do not know HTML and they usually manage content of their website via WYSIWYG editors in the CMS. The common WYSIWYG editors that are used by popular CMSs are like TinyMCE (used by WordPress, Joomla, Squarespace, Interwoven, Umbraco and more) and CKEditor (used by MailChimp, DotNetNuke, FatWire and more).

The following are the most common stuff your clients will do:

  1. Add headings – Titles, subtitles
  2. Add paragraphs of text – with bold, italics, underlines, links + sometimes different font colours for highlighting text
  3. Add images – left and right align and sometimes with links or captions. upon click, some might even launch a larger view
  4. Add list items – ordered and unordered
  5. Add Tabular content – for displaying data, not meant for layout
  6. Highlight Quotes – to highlight specific catchy phrases
  7. Maintain Definition lists – glossary like content, but used rarely
  8. Create Forms – rarely, but maybe

So we need to ask ourselves, if our clients don’t know HTML or CSS, will they be able to achieve the layout we proposed? Jason Santa Maria’s articles are beautiful. They are what I call handcrafted pages. I’m sure your clients won’t be able to do that with a normal CMS implementation.

So when marking up XHTML and CSS for client managed content, we should always think of using the basic default HTML elements. But of cause if really really need be, these WYSIWYG editors mostly allow custom CSS class declarations, but don’t expect your clients to remember applying classes to many many items on one content page. Having a CMS is meant to be easy for maintenance for them.

So when designing a template, do make sure in the content area, all the basic HTML elements that will be used by the WYSIWYG editor is declared and styled. If you want a quick start, have a look at Mollio, Tripoli, BlueTrip and HTML-Ipsum.

I’ve always told myself, if my clients knew advance HTML and CSS… i’ll probably be out of a job soon.

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WebSG Aug 2010

The Web Standards Group (WebSG) met on 4th Aug 2010 and it feels like its been a year since we last met.

Andy Croll started the night with his experience on running a web business. He shared his personal tips and tricks of the key stuff that matters. From day rates to distractions, from client issues to payment collections.

The point that really resonated with me is how he mentioned about designing within the browser and how its like sculpting and chipping away at a huge piece of rock while photoshop was more like a modelling tool. So designing within the browser meant using HTML to design and build the end product step by step and getting closer to the end product just like his sculpting analogy. I read something like this before but can’t seem to remember where. This concept is sound, just that it might not work for a traditional-new-media company (if you know what i mean).

Yuhui was up next. He shared on his 2 weeks experience on HTML5’s canvas element and how he used it to create his Lantern Corps logos and Singapore flag. Cools stuff. It reminded me of my primary school days when my dad sent me to computer classes to learn logo programming which I really loved.

The above photo is of Dr. Kevin Lim sharing about how game mechanics can make productive work fun. He shared hardcore stuff and I think his knowledge came from years of experience and research during his PHD. It felt like a real crash course, somewhat like chicken essence for your brain. Real good stuff. You can find his slides here.

My take away was not really the content in his presentation, but instead on how receptive he was to comments and feedback. I could literally see “+1exp” rising up from his head like an RPG game when he listened attentively to those in the audience. I see too many people trying to be defensive, but his receptiveness was a real breath of fresh air.

I finally met Winnie Lim. I’ve know her online for eons and had never had a chance to meet her till this WebSG. I’m glad she came.

So the first official WebSG meetup happened in 2007 and its been 3 years now. How time flies. Looking forward to the next one. Once again, thanks to Lucian who made all these possible.

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Its time to blog

When I meet people, I have so much to say, but when it comes to my blog, it seems like there are a lot of stuff I try to stay away from.

The following are some stuff I’ve consciously decided not to blog about.

  1. Who my clients are
  2. Work related stuff
  3. Ticks of the trade
  4. Good stuff I’ve seen else where

So just because of this, I’ve blogged a lot lesser. I think it’s time to change that.