Web Design Woes

I’ll tell you right off the bat–this is not an “article”, just a post. Now that we’re clear:

I take back a lot of what I said about HTML, CSS and the W3C. It’s all a good idea, and I now realize that. That said, I’m still a bit touchy about the Validator. Want proof? This page was validated in 2008, but running it through the Validator again brings up four errors and two warnings. I’m sure they have their reasons, but I still feel that my anger is justified.

All of that said, I’ve been redoing my website to:

• Use HTML for page logic.
• Use CSS for page looks (a challenge, considering that as of this morning I didn’t know CSS at ALL.)
• Make the little navbar thingy towards the top a lot easier to maintain.
• Pass the Validator (OK, OK, maybe Tidy HTML can help a bit.)

I also took advantage of the shuffle to rewrite the content a bit.

So far, I’ve finished one page, which was based on this one, but will now double as my index too.

A few notes:

• All the CSS on it was whatever I could hack in a few hours using Google, part of this, scientific experiments with simple pages and Tidy HTML and logic. I have no idea how ‘nice’ it is (in terms of coding style) but it appeases my eyes, the Validator, and the end product, so I’m not complaining. I do not recommend this method of learning for the faint of heart. (Yes, I am going to do a proper tutorial this summer, I just wanted results NOW.)
• I hacked together some Javascript for my navbar. This was accomplished by: Looking at sample code, and writing like a Pythoneer while using the Java syntax I’m learning in school.
• So far, the Validator is happy!

Some of you might be wondering what happened to my colors. Answer: I’m colorblind, and as such have absolutely no sense for what looks good on a page. I began to think that all the blue might be a bit overwhelming, so I’m going old-school with the black-on-white. If you have any opinion on this, please relate it in the comments. I would really appreciate it.

I’m a bit miffed that this means absolutely nothing to people looking at my site with polite browsers, but I guess this is what they would call a Black Triangle. It makes me feel really proud of myself though, which is one of the reasons I love coding.

Goal: Finish the rest of the pages by the end of this weekend, and move everything from my ‘experimental’* subdomain to the real deal.

*That thing is great for organization.