Out Of The Box

Every day I am reminded of the growing number of Web Standards savvy designers. For those of us dedicated to improving the Web and providing the best solution to our clients, this is an encouraging trend. The Zeldmans, Meyers, Bowmans, Cederholms, Bowmans, Sheas, Orchards, and other designing/coding powerhouses are well deserving of our appreciation.

To top it off, Web Standards design has not been limited to a small, dank corner of the internet by pocket protector wearing markup gurus (not that pocket protectors are a … bad … thing … just … ). Standards design is practiced by some of the most influential, trend-setting designers in the business. Visit CSS Vault, Stylegala, CSS Zen Garden, and CSS Beauty to see how if anything, Standards design has liberated enlightened designers and in doing so, their clients. With a few adjustments to a CSS document, designers are able to greatly effect the presentation or look and feel of a Web site whereas before, in the world of embedded tables, font tags, and chopped up images rendered this process tedious at best.

Today’s Web site, when built effectively, is capable of delivering a consistent layout across a majority of platform/browser combinations, maximum control over typography, make updates a breeze, and do all of this with lower-bandwidth.

The Challenge

For all of us that design for the web, growing competition presents us with the challenge to continue our investigation into Web standards, inform clients of the benefits of their investment, and push the design envelope in a way that challenges our peers, challenges ourselves, and best serves the medium.

Naturally, when the source of creative inspiration is limited to a small base of influential designers, we have to work to not absorb their style. At the core, a Web Standards markup should not dictate style. There are of course limitations related to typography, cross browser support for javascipt wizardry, and the lack of accessibility with flash, but these limitations should in no way stifle creativity. Resources such as A list apart , and html dog provide excellent tools to help liberate your Web standards designs.

And, at the end of the day if you find yourself in a corner with your project, Jon Hicks, Shaun Inman, Jason Santa Maria, Didier Hilhorst, and others can help reinvigorate your vision with a healthy dose of inspiration.


Let us hear it

  1. I especially appreciate your links page. It’s one of the only sites that actually classify the list instead of meaningless classification, like alphabetizing. I often find myself looking to people like Shaun and Jason for inspiration, and am constantly looking for more, so thanks for broadening the horizon.

    Dan Mall

  2. First off, congrats on the Web Standards Award.



    Seems like when you first dive into the web standards scene, CSS seems like the easiest language there is (after battling c++, php, actionscript). Then you start the war of XHTML / CSS compliance with different browsers and the mess gets a little more hairy. Definately beneficial to look to the web standards gurus for inspiration to know that it can be done, and how it is done. Just like when I started flash based web design, I looked to forerunners like 2advanced.com, flashlevel.com and fantasyinterfaces.com to know that good flash sites could be made.

    Brady White

  3. I am extremely happy with the way things are going for web-standards. People like Shaun Inman and Jeffrey Zeldman set a great example for anyone not convinced of using standards.



    But we shouldnt forget, that there are millions of websites not yet using standards…

    Matthijs Aandewiel

  4. Nice work! Welcome to Textpattern!

    Jared Christensen