December 28, 2002

stepping on toes

A few weeks ago I was sent a link to the Tibetan Liberation Theater. The concept behind the site seemed very cool, but the design would not display in my browser. I let it slide thinking that maybe a redesign was in progress. Checked it out again a few days ago and it was still the same — pictures over the top of text, the top frame taking up half of the screen and the left frame (all of the navigation) had scroll bars. I emailed the author who was unaware of the issue. I volunteered to do redesign on my day off and let the author know when it was finished. Now, I’ve seen many a site which could use some work, but never have I spent the time on a redesign. The reason is because I believe the content is important. The site has since been fixed (not using my design, but that’s ok). The major issue with the site is the lack of structure to the documents. Throughout the emails back and forth between the author and myself it was mentioned that a complete site makeover was just not feasible at this time. Too much work. I agree. The initial redesign would take some time — a whole lotta time, but if done correctly any future updates would be cake.

The magic key lies in the structure of the document. Once you have clean markup that has some meaning, you can make it all pretty with CSS. In a perfect world, every site with good information would be marked up this way.

UPDATE: Boxes and Arrows is all about Information Architecture — or designing your site wisely. Designing CSS Webpages also has some great information. (Expect this update to keep getting updated as more sites come my way).

posted @ 1:16 PM

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