Changing my ways for the Tao Te Ching

In order to better understand how to create a web page and spruce up my blog, I recently read an article by John Allsopp title The Dao of Web Design. For the most part, Allsopp made some good points about how to make web pages accessible to anyone. By using style sheets instead of HTML for all style elements, you create a much more accessible web page, because any person on any computer can go in and edit the page as they best see fit.

Now, some of this was a little shocking to me. As a long-time HTML user, the world of CSS is a very scary one to me. I like to use HTML to emphasize my point. See? And I am also part of that old school of web designers that Allsopp speaks of that believe the website is thought of like the printed page, wherein the designer expects their hard work to look identical on every browser. I am one of those people who will spend ages browsing over a Colour Codes sheet, picking exactly which shade of fuchsia I wish to inflict on visitors to my website.

Allsopp argued that this is no longer the case. He believes that a web design should be flexible and adaptable, in order to meet the needs of all of its visitors. By using style sheets, he says, you can control fonts using relative formulas rather than absolute values, or allow people to change their colours, based on what they are best able to view. While I would typically reply with, "No! There's no way! This is MY website and I'll edit it until everyone sees it MY WAY!", I am beginning to understand why the web does not work like that. With such a large audience, it is unreasonable to assume that my vision of my web page is the only acceptable one. Once I begin to better understand how to create CSS, I can further my education as to why I'm not always right. A shocking revelation, I know, albeit a necessary one if I want people to read my web page and actually enjoy reading it. Oops, that was more HTML , wasn't it? I'm going to have to get out of the habit of doing that...