CSS Websites

There are all kinds of website creation programs, editors, builders, online solutions and clouds.  But these all come with issues.  Sometimes you have to know how to code not just HTML, but CSS as well.  Some apps are proprietary and some online services don't allow portability to other hosts as your site outgrows their services.

Half of all small business doesn't even bother putting up a website due to all of the challenges and expense associated with them, which is a sad mistake for any small business other than something like a local lake bait shop.

As a website designer myself, I have had to charge large amounts of cash to conceptualize, design, implement, develop, optimize, promote and market websites for small businesses.  But the code had just plain gotten out of hand because it comes with inherint issues, primarily lacks logical implementation, and the result is often further complicated by the fact that every single browser displays pages differently, navigates differently, and comes with its own personal set of display issues.

We as designers have been hacking this code for a very long time in order to acheive the results required.  Code purists often scoffed at what we had to do to accomplish something that code could eventually acheive on its own, but the result was that we had to memorize an encyclopedia of web design code in 2 formats, HTML & CSS.  To top that off, we had to learn the best practices to acheive something we could do in a number of ways, and also learn the 8 different ways to support all the main browsers in their last few versions.

Quite honestly, the HTML and CSS code I used to love has become a nightmare.  By default, a block of text that has no spacing '<spacing>' or gutter '<padding>' settings comes with default spacing and gutter when none is specified.  In order to get rid of said default spacing and gutter on that block of text, you have to set it to zero, which destroys the idea that the code is beautiful when you have to actually use it to eliminate that object.  

The above issue gets worse when you consider that each browser uses its own default.  This is further complicated when you have to destroy the beauty of the code by deleting all the spaces between elements so that new spacing issues aren't introduced (or comment out the spaces, or reduce the font size to zero).

The freaky way that web designers have to destroy their own code in order to comply with the bugs in the system is ridiculous and prevents others from learning new code that doesn't act right and always acts differently across all browsers.  Quite honestly, this lack of standardization in how our code is displayed is abuse.  And these unresolved quirks in the code are just plain stupid.

Which is the very reason regular smart people don't even get involved with learning web design.  Which although makes my profession a lock, is still silly.

Enter the new generation of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) best practices web design software.  Until recently, HTML & CSS code has been so complicated very few applications tackled the task well.  I have used Adobe Dreamweaver for years, but this is a professional program that costs around $600.00 and requires you to update it frequently (requiring $200.00 upgrades) just so that you can work with the current standards.

But recently, that has all changed.  Mobirise is starting to work well, and anyone can use it, free of charge.  I am also experimenting with other easy-to-use website design editors that work well and are capable of creating phenomenal sites.  

This website then, is where I will elaborate on these tools and try to push small business into getting online.