Standards, I don’t need no stinking Standards!

I’m a programmer, not a designer.  As such I go for simple easy to read and functional stuff.  I have been writing HTML since I created my first site back in 1993 on a Unix server at Middlebury College.  Almost all text, with a few links here and  there to create my own personal bookmark page for each time I logged on.  At the time Lynx browsing didn’t support bookmarks, much less formatted text.  There was no need to add anything that wasn’t needed as it would only slow down on a 2400 baud modem.  It worked well until I got ahold of Netscape 2 and a faster internet connection.

I related that information as to this day, I try to make my pages function over their appearance.  My home page for work is again one of bookmarks I created that simply uses <h1> and <UL> tags.  Simple efficient and most of all works in all 3 browsers that I use for work (IE, Firefox, and Chrome).  I created this page for one simple reason, to save myself 1 click of the mouse.  Now instead of having to click on the Bookmarks menu and then select what I want, it is all available to me from the links on the main screen.

My first real experience with CSS was with my old blog from 2007 that uses a combination of CSS and Tables to achieve its look and layout.  This was also my first attempt at using a CMS system and while it worked fine for that site, the flat file design wasn’t very user friendly if you have a post that was wrecking havoc on the site.  Deleting it was simple enough, but then the file that referenced the post also had to be altered or it would crash without that post being present.

Over the years I have learned CSS enough to know how to change associated attributes for the elements but I have never been able to figure out how to use CSS as a layout tool.  I’ve run Joomla sites and other CSS enabled software, but just couldn’t figure it out.  I ‘m realizing as I am watching the videos and flipping through the books, just how much more this class is going to teach me compared to what I know that is stuck in 2002. 

And I need to get use to all that conforming jargon that is needed to allow my pages to conform with industry standards.  <doctype> and all that header stuff I’m so used to skipping because I deem it unnecessary for my application of html.  I’m looking forward to seeing its uses this semester.