There is a great article over on Smashing Magazine called Choosing a Responsive Image Solution that has a fair amount of commenting going on. The whole image and page weight conundrum and the swirling circus of slippery solutions for these problematic areas of responsive web design is reaching towards a tipping point, in my opinion. Yes, people are being weeded out of the web design business, but for those that remain, if the current paradigm holds, things will never be the same. I shared a comment on this article I want to share here:
I remember not too long ago when web design was fun. None of this is fun anymore. It takes half-a-dozen js libraries on top of some flavor of HTML5 boilerplate – all before you even look at a CMS – to get going with responsive design. It’s more like we are crossing the threshold into a new paradigm were fully-baked software platforms will have to create and manage website development. It’s getting to the point where making a website is like coding an illustration by hand in SVG, or coding a PDF in PostScript by hand. Sure you can do it, but those technologies, especially PostScript, made fully-baked IDEs for creating documents based on it a sure necessity. Where is the Quark, PageMaker, InDesign, Illustrator for websites going to come from? Does Adobe have anything up their sleeves? And if you flip over to app development – man that sure looks a lot more fun by comparison! I think my philosophical waxing about responsive web design was finally terminated by the all-of-them-are-too-complicated solutions around images. Or rather, they are too-complicated to be *fun*…You may agree or disagree — that’s fine. The point is that the technical complications and wavy-gravy permutations of web design solutions, in 2013, are seriously unfun and a big killjoy to what used to be a process more like building with Lego bricks, which shall forever remain FUN. After 18 years doing web design, I wish it was more like Legos again. Like it used to be 🙁
Adobe Muse, is on its way. It’s exactly what you ask for. InDesign for the web. It’s only been live for about a year now, but will on;y get better with time to come. But I agree with everything that you said. Thanks for the post.
Hi Franco:
Muse – I looked at some early betas and thought it looked promising. I’ll take another look! I’m a DW user since 1.0, but it’s really just a big editor with FTP but I know it inside and out for hand coded sites, cross-platform. However, in the day, in the RIGHT situation, it’s DWT template system fit the bill before open source CMS systems really took off, and web hosting (for things like SSIs) were harder to come by or set up. I’d like to see DW ride off into the sunset like PageMaker did when InDesign came out and kind of set the new standard across the whole industry. We are approaching the days where tinkering with the code in a website (beyond local HTML in designated spots) will be a thing of the past for the average joe. I hope so, and soon!
What if I told you that responsive websites can be made without tons of js libraries? What if I told you that the actual ‘not fun anymore’ problem is the dev itself.
Far to often devs seem to think ‘If I include enough libraries and copy paste 100 scripts the website might work in 1 browser’. Far to often devs use an entire library for simple document.selectById() logic. Who told you to use jQuery? Who told you to use modernizr? Who told you to use bootstrap but then overwrite all the defaults?
Why not go back to good ol’ JS and css with good ol’ html. That was the fun. Getting your own hownbrewn code to work, not someone elses badly commented code that works like sh*t. Far to often we simply copy paste stupid code without reading the documentation and then hacking at it untill it does something completly different. And yes indeed, that is no fun.
as a whise man once told me: “Let all devs develop websites with a 10k modem and they will have fun again.” 90% of the time we don’t need libraries, we use them because we ‘have’ to.
I hear you, but using RWD and a CMS negate most of what you are saying. For instance, look at the kerfuffle around one aspect of RWD: images. We can’t be sending desktop sized images down to mobile devices. 18 months ago, stretching back to web-time immemorial (the late 90’s) the mantra was “shrink the page” and “keep it small”. Now with RWD, it’s “well, forget that until we have a better solution”. The better solution is a server-side platform that can detect *something* on the device and not send it a big image. Then you have the art direction issue with how to, if necessary, crop big picture. Not all big pictures can just be shrunk. So we need a system that allows for multisizes and cropping, etc.
Now if you are making a site for yourself, bare-bones HTML and no js libs is great. Forget overridding boostrap and modernizr and roll your own as you say. But that is not what clients are going to put up with. There is the expectation by default, and growing, that they should be able to “do stuff” themselves. So back to the point – we need to find a way forward that helps automate and solve basic problems if we are building sites for other people. For our own sites, yes, roll your own would still be “fun”, but properly building a RWD site that isn’t a bear to maintain while looking awesome and fresh all the time, that is still quite elusive…
How is crying about the learning curve working for you?
I did not want to do websites at first. I am good at print design – why do more?
I learned my lesson late and have played catch-up ever since. Now, whatever I have to learn and do, I learn it. I did not plan to be a programer when I started 30 years ago. Living life on life’s terms now requires graphic artists to roll up their sleeves and KNOW THE CODE. Or get out.
I take exception to the assertion that clients should be able to “do stuff” on their own. Before the Internet no one was interested in graphic design. Learning to use a typesetter was a specialized trade. Maybe we are returning to a culture of specialization again; but it will be a culture of specialization that exists in tandem with a culture of “good enough” and technologies that cater to facile WYSIWTF drek.
It feels good to be honest 🙂
We are in a steep learning curve that won’t last being this steep; it will flatten out for sure at some point. But right now, it’s the worst, by far, it’s ever been. Even the most ardent RWD apostles add “yeah, things aren’t sorted out” and “we are struggling” to articles written just in the last few days. The struggle is real, and struggling, fighting, battling, just isn’t fun. It’s work. It’s hard work. It’s good work. But it’s not fun. There, I said it again 🙂 I’ve been building sites full-time since 1995, starting in print design and ending up with the title “Principal Software Engineer”. Woops! That’s just my personal story, so far. There is more to write. And there is exciting hope on the horizon.
One thing I am quite sure about, regarding this hope on the horizon: it will not involve another javascript library or automated build tool. I think it’s going to look something more like Squarespace or it’s competitors. Print designers are limited by their paper of choice and number of inks. Web designers will be limited by the “paper” and “ink” of a template choice, but will be able to dig deeper if they want. THAT will be FUN again! Restrictions that are all worked out in advance, and delimited problems and powerful out of the box solutions! We are nearing the tipping point!
You can take exception to the assertion that clients should be able to “do stuff” on their own, but the fact is that the vast majority of users expect software to magically do things today nobody even dreamed about even 10 years ago. Hence the success of services like Squarespace.
The future of web designers will be, by and large, designing once again as the tools of the trade rapidly mature and we can forget the foundations and plumbing, and get back to playing with paint colors, fixtures, and decorations 🙂
In 2014, designing websites will start becoming fun again!
🙂