01 History of the Web

Posted on August 18, 2012 by onno

The Prophet of the Computer Age.

In 1945 Vannevar Bush published an article, As We May Think that helped set the stage for the pioneers who actually developed hypertext, twenty or so years later. By then, the future of the internet could more or less be predicted.

Apple comes out with the Macintosh computer in 1984. A few years later in the mid 1980’s it releases HyperCard for free to all Macintosh users, a condition specified by its creator, Bill Atkinson. Hypercard instantly provided a simulation of what the web would be in easily editable hyper-text stacks. It was a successful hypermedia forerunner to the WWW. It came with a programing language called HyperTalk that is the inspiration for javascript.

Apple’s HyperCard was used to implement an AppleTalk networked based hypertext information database system in the office of CERN where Tim Berners-Lee developed the WorldWideWeb, the very first browser to edit and see what would become the world wide web. Here is the first web site.

Tim Berners-Lee created the browser on a Next computer, using its innovative software to both render and edit web pages. It was later renamed Nexus, to differentiate it from the World Wide Web, and was released as open source in August 1991.

The World Wide Web

The very first popular browser was also inspired by HyperCard. ViolaWWW was developed that same year, and was an attempt to recreate HyperCard in X Terminals. ViolaWWW was adopted as the basis for the Web’s development till Mosaic was released, which was the first widely adopted web browser.

Netscape Navigator was created by the same people who created Mosaic, and was released just as the internet was coming out of the universities and into the public realm. Its popularity exploded and by 1994, industry pundits talked about the birth of a new ubiquitous computer experience that would be computer platform agnostic.

I still remember the heady claims in 1995, that this new medium would undercut Microsoft’s monopoly and that everything would be moved onto the web. Remember, all we had back then were slow and finicky modems that the changed the data-stream into sound, so any communication was very slow.

This challenged Microsoft’s bid for world domination, and it quickly licensed code from Mosaic to build Internet Explorer, bent on making sure that this new paradigm would never happen, or if it did, that it would be on their terms. This resulted in the historic fight for control of the web: Netscape Navigator vs Internet Explorer.

Web Standards

At the time, the visual presentation of the content was delivered by the HTML tags themselves, generally using frames and tables. Pictures took a long time to download, so they were carefully optimized and used sparingly.

CSS1 was introduced in 1996 to separate the presentation from the markup, and was further refined by the release of CSS2 in 1998. The browser manufacturers were slow to integrate these standards, as they were too busy adding proprietary features to ensnare users.

Microsoft’s forceful ways worked. It trounced Netscape Navigator’s domination of the web browser market. Internet Explorer reached 93% market penetration by 2003.

It did this by leveraging its 95% of installed computer operating system base to lock users in. Microsoft gave Internet Explorer proprietary access to the rest of the operating system.

Some think that it almost committed suicide by tying the browser into the Windows Operating System. Microsoft made the entire operating system vulnerable to all kinds of hacks.

Having lost the battle, Netscape Navigator gives up. With the race won and no competition, Microsoft stops development of Internet Explorer with version 6.5, having achieved a monopoly, but the victory would not last. Standards compliant browsers slowly began to make inroads into Microsoft’s world domination.

CSS 2.1, released in 2002, further refined this standard. It was fully embraced by the new browsers on the market.

Apple released Safari in 2003 and Firefox was born out of the ashes of what was left of Netscape Navigator in 2004, and Opera was there as well. This adoption is the beginning of standards based web design so prevalent today.

You can read the story as a comic strip presented below:
http://media.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ie6-comic-strip.jpg

The New World

The plan was to sock it to Microsoft by creating stable web applications that could challenge both Microsoft Office and the Windows operating system. With web applications, the new paradigm would make the operating system underneath agnostic, not just for web pages, but for all computer usage.

That was the design goal of HTML5. Google developed Chrome, a browser where each window runs independent from other windows, bringing operating system like stability to the browser for the first time.

The next evolution is a change from computer based browsers to all kinds of handheld devices. Apple’s iPhone, iPad and Google’s Android operating systems are essentially internet devices that replace the desktop computer. To this end, both Apple and Google contributed much to the new HTML5 and CSS3 standards.

This is what Microsoft was afraid of, for its office suite and windows operating system generated most of its money. Though still a lumbering giant, Microsoft is no longer the monopoly it once was, and it decided to get on board.

Everyone wondered what was up when it released a public beta of a mostly standards compliant IE 9. It has since shown that is committed to open standards by releasing the IE10 beta right on the heels of IE 9.

It has joined in, helping to create new standards. That’s a solid affirmation that the future belongs to open, standards compliant computing.

It’s entirely feasible that HTML5 & CSS driven devices will be the future, and that it’s only a matter of time. Jeffrey Zeldman, a pioneers standards based web design, envisions that all interfaces will use such open standards.

A Glimpse of the Old World

The following two videos and the Zen Gardens web site are a snapshot of what the web was like in 2003. Molly E. Holzschlag demonstrates what the web looked like before CSSand after. This new world was brought into focus by the CSS Zen Gardens web site, which demonstrated the power of CSS with the separation of content from form.

The Existing Standards

While development of Internet Explorer stood still, a new crop of browsers aimed toward compliance of the HTML4, XHTML and CSS 2.1 standards, as set forward by the W3 organization, which brings us up to today.

The New Standards

Very exciting changes are here with the next generation, HTML5 and CSS3. This is, in part, because more and more interface elements are being created with HTML5 and CSS3, like the iTunes store interface, iOS apps, Android and others, so it’s possible that in the future, most interfaces will be using this most universal of languages, which places the scope of you learning HTML5 and CSS3 well beyond the browser.

HTML5 and CSS3 examples.

01 Homework

Posted on August 18, 2012 by onno

What do you hope to achieve this semester?

Write a sentence or two expressing what you hope to achieve this semester. Include something about the teaching style that aligns best with how you learn. Are you a self learner or do you prefer everything to be structured? You will post this on the landing page you will create next week in class.

A.I.

Explore your future using OpenAI: chat . Follow the example. Place it at the bottom of the landing page.

Your Presence on the Web

The web is a medium, like print or video. The web as medium is fluid like water running down the creek or sand held in by the walls of an hourglass. Communication and design is responsive to the many devices that may exhibit the work (from a tiny watch to the largest screen) and many circumstances as the mobile experience can happen anywhere. Print and video are passive in comparison. Web design can reach out and grab its audience through behaviors that elicit responses tailored for interactive engagement. This makes web design immediate, dependent upon satisfaction and gratification or the user will click away. A lot goes into web design.

Assignment #1: Pick a Website to Inspire Your Portfolio, and analyze it

You are to make a website. To make it stand out, pick a website that you find compelling, and analyze it. Please read Why do most websites all look the same? This is an opportunity for you to stand out. Differentiate your work. Your career depends on it.

The midterm assignment is to sell yourself. This homework is part of the research you will do for the second of seven steps of next week’s assignment, Designing for the WebChoose a professional website that represents your aspirations. For example, if you’re a photo major, pick a photographer’s website. It should be a website that represents the future you want to build for yourself.

Once you have found website(s) that represent your aspirations, analyze it. This is the starting point for thinking about your own portfolio.

Articulate who the primary target audience is. The content strategy? How should the navigation work? The visual design? Answering these kinds of questions makes you aware of the elements that go into building your own portfolio. Writing them down provides you with content to mark up.

Ideally, you become more focused on delivering your work to your target audience. That will help you focus your work in ways that can only benefit you as you leave Parsons for the real world. In the mean time, you can prepare for that day by learning to build good websites.

Creating a Website Style Guide

Check out the example by Jaeeun Jessica Jeong.

Intent: What is the intent of the website? Use the intent to inform all of the other qualities. This should be a short and concise statement, as in to sell skills.
Voice: What is the voice of the website? Is the site’s voice impassioned, assured, energetic, or conversational? Pick a number of descriptive adjectives that capture the experience that whoever had the site built attempted to convey the intent.
Tone: Whereas voice is consistent for the site as a whole, the tone is a contextual refinement that helps convey the content. An about page may have a different quality about it than the home page or a page in the shopping cart.
Brand: How does the website establish its brand? Is it consistent? Is it upscale, casual, youthful, objective?
Persona: Think of the many different users this website is addressing. If we were to write down the characteristics of any of these users and the label them, we would create a persona. Personas are composite sketches that reflect real-world behaviors, attributes, and attitudes of end users.
You can start with yourself, as you are one of the audiences targeted by the website. Take, for example, Naoto Fukasawa‘s website, a Japanese industrial designer. The audience can be personas representing museums, corporate clients, architects that may use his products in their work, end users, students doing assignments for a web basics class, and the list goes on.
Create 3 Personas: Personas are composite sketches that reflect real-world behaviors, attributes, and attitudes. Create a character sketch for at least three personas.

Go into the details why they would be attracted to the site, how the site informs them, and what can they do with this information. Would each of these people come back and be a repeat customer? Show how the site addresses these concerns.

Tell a story, assign each of these personas a name and personal details. By making them real, you can visualize the audience and walk them through the website. Stories activate many areas in the target audience’s brain, facts do not.
Wireframe: Draw a wireframe for the main pages.
Copy Deck: In developing a website for a client, the content is often done by different people and the designer requires that all the copy for the website be assembled into a copy deck. Copy the content of the first page, break it down and label it as if it were part of a copy deck. Take a look at the SAMOCA copy deck example for guidance.
Competition: How does this website stack up against the competition? What does it have that competitor websites do not, in terms of voice, tone, brand, style, design and so on? Can anything be learned from the competition?

This exercise is meant to get you into the development process of building a website — your portfolio!

You will mark up your answer and create an index.HTML page with links and linked images that you will bring to class next week.

Posting the Assignment on your Domain

You will post the assignment on the b.parsons.edu server. Some of you may not gain access to this server right away. don’t worry about it. Just do the work and you will get on soon enough.

Turn to the Tools of the Trade article for instructions on how to set up your website.

Use Fetch to upload your files.

Put a “parsons” folder inside the public_html folder.

Fetch acts like a finder window, so when you drag files into the window, they end up on your server. Unlike your finder, you replace the file when the names are the same. This is how you update files to a newer version.

Within the “parsons” folder, create a folder called “assignment-1”. The title of your web site profile should be “index.html”. It should end up in the “assignment-1” folder.

Review Writing HTML article to help you create the HTML file. I have an old assignment as a homework sample.

Visit Interactive Video Introduction to HTML course to learn all about HTML or watch the video series below.

Watch Video Series Do Not Fear the Internet

These videos (about half an hour) are much more fun and direct than my lectures or the Lynda.com videos. Many if not all of your basic questions will be answered by listening to either my lecture or watching these videos. Please let me know in class or email me if there is still something that is not clear. To go on without resolving what is not clear will cascade into many problems later on.

A fun introduction to the basics of HTML and CSS.

Don’t Fear the Internet
HTML: Hamburger Text Markup Language
Don’t Fear the Browser
Starting from Scratch: HTML

06 Web Typography

Posted on August 14, 2012 by onno

The web changed completely when it comes to typography. For the first twenty years we could specify only a few fonts. There were 18 fonts to use in 2008. The core fonts licensed by Microsoft are: Andale Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Webdings. Apple added Helvetica and Times. That was it. By 2010, there were thousands of fonts available. What a change. Since then they introduced open type variable fonts.

While typography’s been around for hundreds of years, it’s only been in the last hundred years or so that it became both art and science. The art and science of typography forced typographers to ply their craft in the service of the end user who reads it. That makes them the original user experience designers, so take heed.

The web is different from print. The user is in charge in a way that is foreign to print. The attention span is different, and the typography should facilitate the user experience as soon as they arrive on the page. The typographic defaults that taken for granted took their shape from the years of experience in the print world. Do not blindly accept these defaults by which to express your content on the web. The web is different from print.

You will be required to deviate from the standard web fonts like Arial, Helvetica, Verdana and Georgia in the final. These are common fonts supplied by the operating system that have defined typography on the web for far too long. They are safe, legible and entirely predictable. It is possible that legibility may suffer in favor of better expression of the content. It’s a brave new world. Please push the typography if you can. It has been documented that legibility isn’t all that its been cracked up to be when it comes to retaining information.

On the one hand, the legibility of a typeface is its invisibility, that is, just like the cuts in a movie and they are not supposed to draw attention to themselves but convey the content in service to the story. The typeface and the way it is laid out should transparently facilitate the content to the user, whose focus, after all, is on what is being said. But if you want the delivery of the content to express something, it better have style. It’s possible to do both, and in the name of communication, even if you forgo some legibility, I encourage you to do so for the sake of communication, if that is what it takes.

Adobe added in access to all of the open type features exhibited in the following demo of comprehensive CSS font-feature-settings .

For the love of type, explore what’s possible

David Carson famously did this twenty years ago, designing, among other things, covers for HOW magazine which I was writing for. If we need an expanded vision to counterbalance all of the rules, we can visit his work, with the understanding that rules are meant to be broken, with intelligence and purpose, and if the content demands it.

Honor the content with your typography, so that it aids in the facilitation of that content. After all, it is only through reading the letterforms that the content can be transmitted. As a designer, you have the power to determine that gateway.

Balance function and beauty, or whatever emotion grabs you to fulfill that function with style. Be playful, lively, think your way through the problem but let the solution be surprising, and just have fun! Having fun is contagious, and if you exhibit joyful creation, it is bound to be infectious.

Here’re two spreads on intuition from David Carson’s 2nd Sight, his influential book on graphic design after the end of print. There is a TED talk and another one of his creations in the homework. Let that get you started.

David Carson from 2nd Sight — The Fundamental Skill of a designer is talent. Talent is a rare commodity. It’s all intuition. And you can’t teach intuition. — Paul Rand

03 Why CSS?

Posted on August 12, 2012 by onno

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets makes life easy. There are two parts, the rules and the cascade. The rules give form to the content. The cascade connects the rules to targeted HTML elements. All the rules for the website are located in one external style sheet making it easy to change the site as a whole.

It’s possible to avoid the cascade by writing all the CSS rules inline. That would be painful. It becomes even more painful if the site is to be revised. Unlike Print, websites are in a continual state of revision. It is possible to embed styles in the head of an HTML document. This is great for writing style definitions once and applying them many times throughout the page. If there are more pages, however, it’s better to separate the styles out of the document into an external style sheet. A link to that stylesheet in the head of the HTML page keeps it in synch with the external style sheet.

Imagine updating your whole site by changing only one rule. That is the power of CSS!

The Bright Side

Using a single stylesheet is a boon for consistency.
A reduction in repetition and file size.
By separating form from content, the content can be repurposed to work on watches, phones, tablets and computer screens. This is called responsive web design.
Build fantastically complex web pages with relative ease.
Ease of revisions to the layout.
CSS allows for better Search Engine Optimization. You can put the most important information first no matter where it ends up being on the page. Content remains readable compared to using tables for layout purposes.

The Darker Side

The cascade can become confusing as the number of style definitions grow.
Leave out one character and the whole thing can break down. More usually, only the declaration breaks down but watch out for errors by validating often.

Quick Peek

The browser allows you to apply any inline CSS style to any object just for the page you are looking at. Open up the inspector in Chrome — right-click on the object you wish to investigate and select inspect. Once the new window opens up, navigate to the top of the left sidebar and right below the Filter box you will see: a javascript function that will insert whatever inline CSS style you want on the selected element.

element.style {
}

Here you can add any style to the selected element. This style will disappear as soon as the page is refreshed but it allows you to see what a style would look like. The left column, when looking at elements, provides a detailed description of all the css used to paint this object. You will be exploring this feature the more time you spend coding. The same feature is available in Safari and Firefox.

CSS is Awesome

by Brandon Smith

CSS is hard because its properties interact, often in unexpected ways. Because when you set one of them, you’re never just setting that one thing. That one thing combines and bounces off of and contradicts with a dozen other things, including default things that you never actually set yourself.

One rule of thumb for mitigating this is, never be more explicit than you need to be. Web pages are responsive by default. Writing good CSS means leveraging that fact instead of overriding it. Use percentages or viewport units instead of a media query if possible. Use min-width instead of width where you can. Think in terms of rules, in terms of what you really mean to say, instead of just adding properties until things look right. Try to get a feel for how the browser resolves layout and sizing, and make your changes and additions on top of that judiciously. Work with CSS, instead of against it.

Another rule of thumb is to let either width or height be determined by content. In this case, that wasn’t enough, but in most cases, it will be. Give things an avenue for expansion. When you’re setting rules for how your elements get sized, especially if those elements will contain text content, think through the edge cases. “What if this content was pared down to a single character? What if this content expanded to be three paragraphs? It might not look great, but would my layout be totally broken?”

CSS is weird. It’s unlike any other code, and that makes a lot of programmers uncomfortable. But used wisely it can, in fact, be awesome.

05 404 Page

Posted on August 5, 2012 by onno

404 Page

The 404 or Not Found error message is a HTTP standard response code indicating that the browser was able to communicate with the server, but the server could not find what was requested.

The web site hosting server will typically generate a “404 Not Found” web page when a user attempts to follow a broken or dead link; hence the 404 error is one of the most recognizable errors users can find on the web.

Customize the 404 page, or file not found error message, so it is not generic, but reflects the identity of the website.

Not found 🙁

Sorry, but the page you were trying to view does not exist.

It looks like this was the result of either:

a mistyped address
an out-of-date link

<!doctype html>
<title>Page Not Found</title>
<style>
  body { text-align: center;}
  h1 { font-size: 50px; text-align: center }
  span[frown] { transform: rotate(90deg); display:inline-block; color: #bbb; }
  body { font: 20px Constantia, "Hoefler Text",  "Adobe Caslon Pro", Baskerville, Georgia, Times, serif; color: #999; text-shadow: 2px 2px 2px rgba(200, 200, 200, 0.5); }
  ::-moz-selection{ background:#FF5E99; color:#fff; }
  ::selection { background:#FF5E99; color:#fff; } 
  article {display:block; text-align: left; width: 500px; margin: 0 auto; }
  
  a { color: rgb(36, 109, 56); text-decoration:none; }
  a:hover { color: rgb(96, 73, 141) ; text-shadow: 2px 2px 2px rgba(36, 109, 56, 0.5); }
</style>

<article>
   <h1>Not found <span frown>:(</span></h1>
   <div>
       <p>Sorry, but the page you were trying to view does not exist.</p>
       <p>It looks like this was the result of either:</p>
       <ul>
           <li>a mistyped address</li>
           <li>an out-of-date link</li>
       </ul>
   </div>
    
    <script>
    var GOOG_FIXURL_LANG = (navigator.language || "").slice(0,2),
        GOOG_FIXURL_SITE = location.host;
    </script>
    <script src="http://linkhelp.clients.google.com/tbproxy/lh/wm/fixurl.js"></script>
</article>

01 Setting up your Server Space

Posted on August 4, 2012 by onno

I expect you to use your root — public — directory for your own purposes. You will create a new folder and call it parsons (lowercase p) in the root directory. That is where you will develop all of your work for this class. As there is a midterm with associated assignments and a final, create two folders a portfolio and a final folder.

Web Site Organization

web site organization

Index.html and Worksheet.

You will create an index.html page inside of the parsons folder that will contain the links to each of your assignments. You will place a photograph of yourself, along with your name, so I can associate your work with you as a person.

The index.html in the portfolio and final assignment folders will serve as your worksheet. This is where I expect you to document your creative development. See example. Update these files in a timely manner!

I expect your class web space to be organized exactly like this or I cannot review your work.

The web space for each student needs to work exactly the same. This is how I make contact with your work. I will be going to this page to check up on your progress once a week, so keep it current. Your grade depends upon it. Homework needs to be up the day before — so I have a day to check it before teaching, for issues that need to be addressed in class.

Even if you are not finished with the homework, upload it and show me what you have, even if it is not finished. You work is due on time, and you can revise it according to the syllabus, until the 12th week of the semester. Work not handed in on time will be graded at my discretion.

01 Visual Literacy

Posted on August 3, 2012 by onno

The web is a design language, and as some of you are not primarily Communication Design students, it becomes clear that there needs to be a reference that covers what Visual Design students take for granted.

Parsons students can use these links as resources for researching their projects. Visual literacy goes beyond how something looks. It makes communication more effective.

Visual literacy is used to solve problems in communication. This is a lot like structuring an argument in the academic essay, where reason supplants opinion. Instead of finding causes and reasons why, or a genealogy, bringing visually literate structuring to the communication makes the message more engaging, apparent and clear.

To that end, I’ve assembled a number of links to help develop visual literacy.

A Modernist design manual

Designer Massimo Vignelli’s life’s work through his design philosophy with a wealth of examples in The Vignelli Canon. He distributed it free on his website for everyone to become better visually educated. That site no longer exists, so I put the book on my server. You can purchase it. The Vignelli Canon represents the status quo that David Carson opposed that we will cover in Week 6)

Design Inspiration

Use the following resources to explore your site design. Be inspired — copy, borrow, steal — but make sure that whatever you take, you make your own. The top priority is to effectively communicate the content.

Design Sandbox

Canva is an online graphic design platform that lets nondesigners put together and play with designs till something clicks. You can use it instead of photoshop to prototype your design. Download it as a PDF and open it in Illustrator, and all of the elements are editable.

Canva

Web Design Sandbox

Invision is a web and mobile device application design platform that allows you to create and user test your designs before you commit to them with code.

InVision

Typography

Typography remains elusive for many, so I gleaned useful definitions, descriptions and links to explain the basics.

Books on Design and code

Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams, and LUST, Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture 
Kimberly Elam, Geometry of Design 
Armin Hofmann, Graphic Design Manual 
Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style 
Frank Chimero, The Shape of Design 
Leah Buley, The User Experience Team of One 
Compiled by Laurel Schwulst, Very Interactive Library 
Paul Ford, What is Code? 
Emil Ruder, Typographie

04 Layout Strategy

Posted on August 2, 2012 by onno

Web design layout strategies continues to change, from what it was at its inception to today, and from where it is today into the future. You have to go along with those changes. It started out as a presentation language for static documents written by scientists. That changed when the general public got a hold of it, but for the first twenty years, the size of the page was pegged to the size of a computer screen.

The iPhone revolution changed web design, and a web page is expected to perform equally well on many different devices, from smart phones and tablets to computer screens, car entertainment devices, and more.

Design for the web today has to cover all the differs devices with the same content and CSS. Think of web content as a flexible material that automatically adapts to different sized devices. Each device has its own characteristics, from the small pointer on a computer screen to the large finger on a smartphone.

It means that you cannot design for your laptop screen and hope it works on the other devices. You need to address the target audience for each device. This takes some time. You’d want layout functionality that automatically arranges the content in different ways, depending on size and function. You can trust that a person behind a desktop will sit there, but the person with a smartphone is probably on the go. You need to put your head in the right place when you design for the web.

There are automated formatting systems available that make it easier to place things in the right position for different user experience based on device size. Flex-box was introduced to create a more flexible layout experience. While flexbox allows you to choose both horizontal and vertical directions, it is most appreciated for its ability to organize content going across the page.

Nesting flex boxes allows for great horizontal or vertical placement using the margin:auto; property. This automatically places content at the top, bottom, left, right, or center of the parent object. Flex Grow, Shrink, and Basis provide controls that dynamically determine the proportion between the content items. It fits the flex-items to the remaining space, or lack of space as determined against a reference basis width, using grow, shrink and basis controls.

CSS grid does that flex box does, but in both horizontal and vertical directions at the same time. Grid is very flexible in laying out content and can automatically lay out content. It is actually possible to build a responsive website using CSS grid without using media queries.

The History

The CSS working group is finally addressing layout. For 20 years layout in CSS was an afterthought and designers had to be creative with the tools they had. Those days are behind us. New tools change the way we lay documents out.

The new tools and techniques augment the old layout strategies, superseding many of them. That does not mean these older properties and techniques disappear. They will have less to do, perhaps, in the grand layout scheme of things. As the new tools gain traction there will be a divergence from layout techniques before 2018: the Layout Modes, Floating Layouts, and Beyond Floats.

Tables were used in the prehistoric age before 2003. This admixture of form and content locked in the structure of a web page with its content and was never flexible. That may not have been a problem in the early days of the web when the computer screens were all pretty much standard but it would be a problem today. I recently stumbled on an old legacy table based website: Muhammad, Legacy of a Prophet on PBS. It is an example of a page designed in Photoshop and cut up into a table layout. This no longer happens.

Between 2003 and 2007 there was an attempt to develop the holy grail of web design, a CSS based perfect three-column layout using floats. The NY Times created its layout using CSS floats instead of table and pictures. Floats are less intuitive and more fragile than tables but they are more flexible as they separate form from the content. Who could have guessed that floats, originally conceived to run text around images and other elements would be used to power grid systems like Bootstrap constructing the majority of the web pages from 2007 to 2017. Bootsrap has been updated to use CSS flexbox instead.

The idea for Flex Box has been around since before 2008. By 2009 it was a working draft. Changes in the syntax kept it from becoming mainstream till after 2015. Flexbox is flexible, but it’s still just one dimension, either horizontal or vertical. For two dimension, both horizontal and vertical, you need the CSS Grid module released in 2017. Browsers adopted grid just a month after the standards committee released it, paving the way for era of modern web layout. Layout will become more automated, moving away from absolute and relative measurements toward flex spaces that automatically fit the content into whatever liquid layout may present itself.

The Basics

The different parts of CSS layout are tools. The better you know these tools, the more effective your layouts will be. The basics have to be understood before using flex and grid so we cover them first.

Inline

Inline follows the text flow inside the block element. Depending on the language, it can flow from left to right, right to left, top to bottom, or bottom to top.

Block elements: Down is Easy

Block elements automatically extend to the width of their parents and push content down. This is called Normal Flow. Normal Flow is how the browser lays out HTML pages by default when nothing is done to control page layout. Documents are built as if stacking building blocks upside down. Starting at the top, you work your way down. Each block automatically fills to the width of the parent.

The normal flow is used throughout the layout process and should be respected no matter what layout strategies used.

Horizontal Layout is More Problematic

New York Times

All of the traditional layout strategies work to build elements horizontally by limiting the width of one element to something smaller than the parent element , and then using one or another strategy to place boxes (blocks) next to one another. It is necessary to limit the width of elements that would otherwise automatically fill up the entire width of the parent element, to something that fits within the parent element.

An exercise we will do in class is to look at the NY Times using Web Developer’s outline feature (this works only in Chrome or Firefox). You will see the following methods being used to determine the horizontal layout, starting with floats:

Floats
Relative Positioning (using negative margins)
Absolute Positioning
Absolute Positioning with Margins
Display Property (block as inline or inline-block).

Layout Demonstrations

Each of these layout methods is demonstrated below. Try them out. Combine them in various strategies to create layout.

Floats

Applying a float value such as left can cause block level elements to wrap alongside one side of an element, like the way images sometimes have text floating around them in magazine layouts.

CSS Code View

Live Demo

Box A:

It is a testament to the creative problem solving of the CSS community that refined these techniques to the point where they will remain current for a long time.

This paragraph will either join the one above or clear: left; will clear the float.

Relative Positioning (using negative margins)

Positioning allows you to move an element from where it would be placed when in normal flow to another location. Positioning isn’t a method for creating your main page layouts, it is more about managing and fine-tuning the position of specific items on the page.

CSS Code View

Live Demo

Box B:

Box C: This box is positioned relative using negative margins.

Box D:

Absolute Positioning (with Margins)

CSS Code View

Live Demo

main content

Display Property Interactive

Display property is assigned by default to different elements making them inline, block, list, or table. Using the display property you can resign the display value of any element, from block to inline, for example.

CSS Code View

Live Demo

Box A:

Box B:

Box C:

Box D:

Creating layouts

Horizontal and vertical techniques are combined to create more complicated layouts. You will use one strategy to get the box to the side, another to populate it with content, and so on.

The inline content itself fills out the layout and expands the box (block) that its in.

The placement of elements is manipulated through relative and absolute positioning, floats and the display property, and given padding and margins so they fit the layout.

Absolute positioning, as used by Indesign and Illustrator, for example, is not a good layout strategy when it comes to the main elements of the website. It works well for print because, once a job is printed, that’s the end of the story. Web sites are continually viewed in different viewports and require a much more flexible approach. That is the key word here: flexibility.

That’s why the word processor is a better metaphor, as the content starts at the top of the page and is pushed down the page. Absolute or fixed positioning can be used to nail down details of the design but not the main parts of the layout.All elements need to be flexible enough to go along with the flow.

Positioning the Page in the Window (ViewPort)

The first decision is to place the document in the window. Does it take up the whole window? What if the window is 2400px wide? Does it take up a 1000px width in the middle of such a large screen? or does it stay to one side, ignoring the size of the window once it passes 1300px?

This requires a solution with at least two blocks; the first is a div with a class called wrapper, and the second is the sections tag. The div is needed to limit the maximum width of the window to 1300px, and the section determines the width of the page as well as horizontally centering itself inside of the wrapper. This is the strategy used in the HTML5 template and gone over step by step in setting up the page in the demonstration.
Page Layout in Window

With the width of the page decided, the process now goes from the top of the section. First comes the header, then the navigation (the navigation is often nested inside of the header) then comes the main article with usually an aside to the right or left of it, and finally, a footer to define the bottom of the page.

If all of these are in the document flow, and determined by the size of the content, then the document is flexible, meaning that if something were to be added somewhere in the middle, it would be accommodated in the document flow, and everything else would adjust accordingly.

Building flexible documents is the ideal. Please aim for that, as it will make your documents much easier to manage. We have not yet covered responsive design using media queries but when we do, the document has to remain flexible so it can adapt to different size viewports, or window sizes, from the tiny screen of the iPhone to the largest monitors.

If you think it is hard to manage a static page, just imagine how much more difficult it would be to manage various states of the same document. Lets make our documents flexible for now, and worry about responsive layouts after the midterm.

Fixed Layouts

A fixed layout has pixel-based widths for the whole page and for each column of content. Its width doesn’t change when viewed on smaller devices like mobile phones and tablets or when a desktop browser window is reduced.

Fixed layouts are easiest when first learning CSS but are limited in addressing the many variable viewports.

Fluid Layouts

A fluid ( or liquid) layout uses percent-ages for widths, allowing the page to shrink and expand depending on the viewing conditions.

Elastic layout can use ems for both width and all other property sizes, so the page scales according to a user’s font-size settings.

There is no single layout strategy that is right for every circumstance, and you will find yourself using all of the CSS layout tools at one time or another.

01 Absolute and Relative Addresses and Other Necessary Things

Posted on August 2, 2012 by onno

Listed below are a number of issues you need to be aware of when coding for the web.

Absolute and Relative Addresses

The difference between a relative addresses or paths and an absolute address can be confusing.

The short answer is that you should build your website using relative paths. That way you can build it on your local disk and copy it to your web server and it will still work. It also allows the site to be moved from the Parsons’ A server to your own hosting service when you get around to making it part of your identity.

An absolute web address is unique on the web. That way you can go to that address when you click it, no matter where it is located on the web, hard disk, thumb drive, etc. Relative links, on the other hand, indicate locations relative to the file itself.

Anchor href and Image SRC attributes

Anchor tags <a> use the href="hyper_reference-location" attribute to hyper reference or link to another page. Images use source, the src="image-location" attribute for the image that will replace the code when the page is displayed. All attributes use an equal sign and put the value in double quotes.

Absolute References

An absolute reference or address would be the complete address, all the way back to the root. An absolute address on your computer will look something like this: file://localhost/Users/onno/aWork/Parsons_Fall_2012/03-absolute-positioning.html.

This says that the file 03-absolute-positioning.html is located in the Parsons_Fall_2012 folder, located in the aWork folder, located in the onno folder, located in the Users folder in the root directory of my computer, called localhost.

In the same way, the absolute address for this page on the World Wide Web is: http://b.parsons.edu/~dejongo/01-absolute-and-relative-addresses/. Some browsers hide http:// and there may or may not be a wwwdepending on the way the hosting service is set up. Browsers can also hide that information, so all you may see is b.parsons.edu/~dejongo/01-absolute-and-relative-addresses/.

Relative References

Relative addresses originate from the page on which it is written. Relative address directions you would give someone who asked how to get to the store a few blocks away. You would say, “Walk this way for two blocks, make a right turn, walk another block, and the store is on the left.” The directions are relative from where you are standing and giving directions.

Relative addresses are relative to the file in which they occur. If only the name is given, it assumes that a file or folder with that name is in the same folder as the file in which the link appears.

Connecting to Resources in Different Folders

If the file is located in a folder (directory), or even buried several folders down, each of the folder/directory names would have to be spelled out with a slash between each of the names. <a href="down-two-blocks/right-one-block/store-on-left"> directions to the store </a>. You get the idea.

This allows you to drill down to any and every folder or file on the website.

But what if the file itself is enclosed in a folder, and it has to go back up the directory structure?

The way to go up the directory structure to the parent folder that’s holding the file is done with two periods and a slash (signifying a change in directory/folder)../. <a href="../../index.html"> two folders up </a>.

An external CSS file located in its own CSS folder that references a picture in an image folder located in the parent directory will need to go up one level and then go into the image folder before it can access the file. The url would look something like: url(../images/file.jpg).

The ability to move up and down the directory/folder hierarchy is crucial to building web sites. Make sure you understand this before you continue.

Upper and Lower Case: Careful: the Internet Bites Back

If you do not name your files correctly, you cannot expect the internet to fix your problem. The links just do not work.

You should be made aware that the computer does not see a difference between an upper and lower case letter, a and A but to the server, they are two completely different letters. This can result in your website working correctly on your computer but when you move it to the web, the links break.

The computer also sees the space as a completely different character, so do not use any spaces when naming web files. You can use the underscore and the dash. The underscore links words together when you double click, while the dash separates them.

The space is an example of a reserved character and is changed to a percent-encoding. It also effects: " % , . < > \ / ^ ` { | } so do not use these reserved characters when you name a folder or file.

The Slash at the End of the Address

An address that ends in a slash instead of a file name often means to go to that folder, though it could also signify a custom permalink. In content management systems like WordPress, a database query like ?p=123 is replaced with a custom URL structure to improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of the links.

The Default Index

When a link does go to a folder, it will default to the index.html file. If there is no index.html file, it will show the contents of the folder, if the server has not disallowed that. It is recommended that you have an index.html file in every folder, as that will keep people from exploring files you may not intend for public consumption.

Refresh Does Not Update After Changes

For expedience sake the browser does not always go back to the server and shows you what is in its cache. To force the browser refresh to go back to the server, hold down the shift key while clicking on the refresh icon.

Target A New Blank Window or Browser Tab

Another oft used attribute is to target a new window if you do not want the visitor to leave the page when clicking on the link. The target attribute usually takes the new page value: or <a href="" > new window </a>.

Email Address

You can also address an email using the format <a href="mailto:dejongo@newchool.edu"> email Onno </a>.

01 HTML & CSS Primer

Posted on July 29, 2012 by onno

The biggest hurdle when first coming to web design from other design fields is how to relate the process of design to coding. Hand coding is completely different from the design interfaces that you are used to. The intention of this article is to explain how to think about code so that you can design with it.

The design process in Illustrator, InDesign and some aspects of Photoshop allows for the creation and positioning of objects anywhere on the page, and in any order.

Anyone familiar enough with how these programs work will know that behind the scenes, there is a long list of instructions that make up the document.

Code looks like this linear sequence of instructions without the interface. Unless you are familiar with coding, it is hard to tell how code relates to the objects on the page. This makes it difficult to apply your design experience.

What one has to understand is that each of these lines of code is a potential design object, and can be given form.

Preparing the Content: HTML

There are two parts to this process. The first is marking up the content. HTML stands for hypertext markup language. This entails tags, or instructions, for the browser to interpret. These tags are placed at the beginning and the end of each discrete part of the content, like a <h1>for headline, <div> for division, <p>paragraph and <li> for list item. Just to make it confusing, there is also a <header>tag for headers.

For example, a header represents the area of a page, and is designated by using the header tag: <header> Header content </header>A headline has six levels, for the main one, represented by <h1> to the least important, <h6>. The paragraph: <p>paragraph content</p> and the code for a list contains both the ordered list tags and the list item tag, and looks like: <ol><li>list item</li></ol>.

Some tags are replaced by the content they represent. These are self-closing tags. They do not require an end tag. The image tag is replaced by the image itself: <img src="address of picture" alt="description of picture for screen readers, etc."> and the line break tag <br> is replaced by the line break itself. Read about the other HTML tags.

As you can imagine, the first step in the web design process, after all of the design development has taken place, is to mark up all of the content. Once the content has been marked up, it is possible to start giving the content form.

Turning the code into design elements

The opening and closing tags and the content sandwiched between creates an element or object.

All of the content must be marked up in this way and turned into objects before the design process can begin. What looks like lines of code to the uninitiated ends up being many objects, one after the other.

Without intervention, content itself merely follows the default document flow, like a word processor. It starts at the top left hand corner, moves to the right till it runs out of room and then returns to the next line, like this.

Specifying the content in paragraphs forms block level elements that simulates what happens when the return key is hit on an old fashioned typewriter or word processor. It initiates a new paragraph to start below the existing paragraph. All paragraphs stack vertically down the page.

We have just described two ways that content can flow on a page: The horizontal or inline direction is a lot like characters in a line of text. The vertical or block direction has each object come one below the other, like paragraphs.

In coding, this is done by inserting the tag for a paragraph <p> in front of the paragraph and a closing tag </p> at the end of the paragraph. Each paragraph acts just like the paragraphs in a word processor, proceeding vertically down the screen, one below the other.

In Illustrator or InDesign this paragraph could be in its own box and moved anywhere on the screen just by clicking and dragging, independent from all of the other elements or objects. This is also possible by styling the code, which becomes possible to do once you have marked up a document in to discrete elements.

CSS: Giving Form to the Content

CSS stand for cascading style sheets. Giving form to the elements in an HTML document is done by writing rules that specify a quality of the object.
InDesign Toolbar

In Indesign, a box is drawn by first selecting the Text Creation Tool and then clicking and dragging the mouse. It can be filled with a paragraph of text.

If it were moved to the lower right hand of the document, that would be reflected in the status boxes of the tool bar, which would provide the distance from the top left corner on the x, or horizontal axis, and the y, or vertical axis. It would also provide the width (W) and height (H) of the box.

Used the mouse to create the box, it might say X: 25p0, Y: 41p8, W: 16p8 and H: 8p4. If it doesn’t, you could tweak the dimensions of the box by changing the numbers in the toolbar.

Clicking and moving the mouse to create code is not an option if you are writing code. There are programs that will change a click-and-drag into objects that you can then move around, but we are learning how to actually do this without the help of such programs.

The same effect is done by writing a rule that specifies that the paragraph is to be absolutely positioned, allowing it to be moved so many pixels along the x and y axis irrespective of whatever else is in the document, and that it should be so many pixels wide and high.

The language used to specify the rule uses properties and values that are similar to the way we speak. We can write the code for that paragraph into the <p> using the style attribute style="position: absolute; left; 300px; top: 500px; width: 200px; height: 100px;". This specifies the paragraph just as Indesign specifies the box using numbers.

I could stroke the box with a 1 point line and add some Inset Spacing in InDesign to keep the content from butting up against the border of the box. Using the Text Frame Options Dialog Box available under the Object Menu in InDesign provides the ability to add Inset Spacing to the top, right, bottom and left.

The same border and inset spacing can be applied to the paragraph by adding the following properties to the rule: border: 1px solid black; padding: 6px;.

It is possible to select words within the paragraph. In Indesign, you select a word and give the command to make it bold. In HTML, you surround the word with inline code <em> like this: <em>word</em>.

You then define a rule that makes the inline selected content bold with the property font-weight: 700; where the weight of a character is determined from 100 to 900 in jumps of 100. It could also be specified by the keywords bold or normal. In the style sheet, the rule would look like: strong {font-weight: 700;}. It should be noted that this does not create font weights, but only specifies fonts that are available to be used.

Though it is possible to write the rules in the element tags themselves, <strong style="font-weight: 700"> that is not a good idea. CSS is designed to apply the rules at a distance. That way, all of the rules that inform how the web page is to look can then be collected in one place, an external style sheet, and all the pages of a web site can reference that external style sheet, and be styled by just one set of rules.

This is done by providing a selector in front of each rule that seeks out the element it is to style. In the example above, the name of the tag itself came before the rule. That way the rule would be applied to all <em> elements wherever they are used in the website.

Putting it All Together

blocks

The content is marked up by the hypertext markup language as discrete blocks that can be manipulated by cascading style sheet language.

These blocks can be treated as separate elements or objects, removed from the document flow, the way Illustrator or InDesign treats objects. This is not the way it is usually done, however.

That is because the web requires flexibility. Chances are that a page has to adapt to various formats, from tall and skinny to fat and wide.

To maintain that flexibility, the design elements on the page need to be organized more like a word processor rather than a page layout system used for preparing documents for print.

Think of a child stacking blocks. Now turn those blocks upside down, as if they were staking them onto the ceiling.

Instead of being fixed in their position as they are for print design, they need to be flexible and able to change hale and location, and even what they look like, depending on the context.

The word processor model allows the blocks to reflow depending on the size of the window. The window is called the viewport.
blocks upside down

All of the elements originate from the top left hand corder of the page and moves down. They form a chain of boxes that act much like a word processor.

When one word is deleted, the rest of the sentence fills the gap. So it is with the elements in the document flow. This is what is means to be chained together from the top of the document.

Since block elements move downward by default, the challenge is how to move objects horizontally. This is like having two paragraphs next to one another. This can be done by floating one of paragraphs.

There is a lot to learn.

So Where is the Design in designing a Web Page?

Page Layout

The design of the layout happens before the coding begins. There is little design in the actual creation of the web page. All of the design happens before, just as it does with InDesign.

To be fair, the coding can be likened to preparing an image for print, in which the creative design has already been executed, and now the image is prepared so that it prints correctly.

The process is as follows.

Using paper and pencil to create thumbnails, develop the equivalent of stick figures in a wireframe, and then use photoshop to render it so you have something to aim for when you code. Only then do you start to code.

Coding is more like solving puzzles than designing. Unlike print, the interactivity of web pages requires a continual back and forth between designing the way it looks and coding the design.

We spend two weeks on learning how to mark up documents, two weeks on CSS, and the rest of the semester learning how to use them in a way that is professional and standards compliant.

The Prophet of the Computer Age.

The World Wide Web

Web Standards

The New World

A Glimpse of the Old World

The Existing Standards

The New Standards

HTML5 and CSS3 examples.

What do you hope to achieve this semester?

A.I.

Your Presence on the Web

Assignment #1: Pick a Website to Inspire Your Portfolio, and analyze it

Creating a Website Style Guide

Posting the Assignment on your Domain

Watch Video Series Do Not Fear the Internet

Don’t Fear the Internet

HTML: Hamburger Text Markup Language

Don’t Fear the Browser

Starting from Scratch: HTML

For the love of type, explore what’s possible

The Bright Side

The Darker Side

Quick Peek

CSS is Awesome

404 Page

Not found 🙁

Web Site Organization

Index.html and Worksheet.

A Modernist design manual

Design Inspiration

Design Sandbox

Web Design Sandbox

Typography

Books on Design and code

The History

The Basics

Inline

Block elements: Down is Easy

Horizontal Layout is More Problematic

Layout Demonstrations

Floats

CSS Code View

Live Demo

Relative Positioning (using negative margins)

CSS Code View

Live Demo

Absolute Positioning (with Margins)

CSS Code View

Live Demo

Display Property Interactive

CSS Code View

Live Demo

Creating layouts

Positioning the Page in the Window (ViewPort)

Fixed Layouts

Fluid Layouts

Absolute and Relative Addresses

Anchor href and Image SRC attributes

Absolute References

Relative References

Connecting to Resources in Different Folders

Upper and Lower Case: Careful: the Internet Bites Back

The Slash at the End of the Address

The Default Index

Refresh Does Not Update After Changes

Target A New Blank Window or Browser Tab

Email Address

Preparing the Content: HTML

Turning the code into design elements

CSS: Giving Form to the Content

Putting it All Together

So Where is the Design in designing a Web Page?