These guys did a swell job cleaning up Neil Gaiman’s site. Part of why I wasn’t reading it as much as I would have liked was due to the sort of slapdash, haphazard old design.
I do have to complain, though, in three stages. The first is that I should have patented the Webslinger moniker for web programmers and design when I first thought of it about three years ago. I humbly admit these guys beat me to it, but I wholeheartedly object to the S at the end being replaced with a Z.
The second stage is that their main site’s design is simple enough to accommodate a clean standards-compliant, forward-thinking, table-free layout, but they have several legacy techniques cluttering it up. If I had just done such a smart job on a well-read site like Neil’s, I would have taken some time to quickly update my own site to match.
Edit: Upon looking at the source for Neil’s site, let me rescind that comment: it’s just as ugly as their corporate site. Such a clean design is deserving of better code. Call me, webslingers, and let me hook you up.
The third stage is that someone has written Neil, in regards to those complaining about the new far-superior design, that he should take the CSS Zen Garden approach and allow people to “skin” his site and perhaps even submit skins. While I’m all for this open approach to viewing, I now must rapidly finish my own “skinning” project for this blog to beat the more famous Mr. Gaiman to the punch. And that’s just not likely.
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UPDATE: Neil’s response: I loved the idea of doing the CSS thing (http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/184/184.css&page=0) and letting people create “skins” for the blog, but the reply I got from our webmistress, Stephanie, was As for the reader’s suggestion: I’m told this is extremely difficult to implement as this was not considered before the site was created, and involves the integration of many different web technologies. Also, every “skin” submitted would have to be tested on all major browsers and platforms as we did for the current site to make sure it looked correct for each user. Coupled with that, it would require hours of testing for each skin created to fix any bugs. Which seems to be a polite way of saying no.
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I take similar issue with the advertising for Microsoft’s upcoming Internet Explorer 7. in true microsoft fashion they are extolling the virtues of their new browser by implying that their browser does things that other browsers does not. In actuality they are playing catch-up on technologies that have been adopted more that a year ago, essentially copying Firefox as they did the Mac OS so long ago.
Is it better for everyone that they try to give people what they want by “upgrading?” Yes, i suppose. Did they do it because they are becoming more progressive? Not at all; they originally branded the browser a dead technology and only decided to release a new version when people got wise to Firefox and its popularity threatened the 25% mark. Will IE7 be the new IE6? No doubt.
We will be stuck with it because it will have further integration with .NET, a dubiously popular technology, and any other irresponsibly coded Microsoft claptrap that attracts the lazy or ignorant. Le sigh. I know I sound like a zealot, but it simply comes down to progress, people. Let’s move forward, not let Microsoft dictate just how long we stagnate.
