Editor's Corner
August 11, 1997
Revolution By Design
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Dynamic HTML -- or, more properly, the various
technologies described by that term -- is more than just the latest
"cool" thing for Generation X web-heads; it's no less than a set of useful
tools that will help revolutionize web design.
If you doubt that Dynamic HTML (DHTML) is cool,
check out the winners of the
recently concluded Netscape-HotWired Webmonkey Dynamic HTML contest. Before
touching on why DHTML is helpful, and to gain some perspective on the revolution
it's contributing to, let's step back in time.
Imagine: My first publishing job, way back in
the late 1970s. I used a handheld waxer on "galleys" to produce a newsletter.
Galleys, in case you're unfamiliar with them, were long pieces of paper
containing an imprint of the final typeset version of a manuscript. Now
the term is so old that you have to put sanitary quotation marks around
it. Then, in the days before desktop publishing and computer-based graphic
design, galleys were just something you used to put together a publication.
After I waxed the galleys, I positioned them wax-side
down on a "mechanical" so they would stick but still be movable. Then I'd
use a T square to be sure they were aligned correctly. Sometimes, if a
word was wrong, I'd take a tiny piece of paper with the right version of
the word and paste it on top of the wrong word. Or I'd cut out numbers
from another galley to make the page numbers. Who knows if I got them straight;
at least they were there.
At the time, we thought we were doing really well.
We could turn the newsletter out overnight. Other, more professional people
got amazing results using the same basic method.
Now, to state the obvious, computers have replaced
this mechanical process. Desktop publishing has made paper-based methods
of producing printed materials virtually obsolete. Similarly, the graphic
design industry has adopted computer technology so thoroughly that it's
hard to find a designer who doesn't use a computer. Why? Because computers
have allowed designers to attain a level of innovation and creativity that
were much more difficult to attain in the days when new ideas had to be
mocked up by hand.
Some designers will argue that the quality of
design and print production reached a pinnacle in the era of hot lead and
paper-based design techniques that current electronic means will never
match. However, a most that I know -- even older designers who came
out of the world of paper and pencils -- go so far as to say that without
computers, design would be practically impossible.
Skipping forward another couple of decades, if
I were to write this column in 2017 or so, I might start this story by
saying, "Just think: I used 'hypertext markup language' to design web pages."
By then, HTML will likely be as out-of-date as galleys and hot lead are
today.
Let's face it: HTML, despite its ease of use and
flexibility, is slow and inexact -- like galleys and even the trustiest
T square -- if you really want to design something. Even when you dress
HTML up with GIF animations and Java applets, there's only so much you
can do to guarantee users a quality experience. You're still limited to
what HTML can do when it comes to choosing fonts and styling text, positioning
elements, animating and moving items, customizing the user's experience,
and adding other types of user friendliness. We'll look back on it fondly,
remembering those all-nighters we spent coding a web page. We'll be amazed
at what some of its better practitioners could do with such a limited tool.
But HTML will have long since been augmented, or even outmoded, by new
techniques that make true web design not just possible, but easy.
Some of those new techniques are the Dynamic HTML
technologies -- primarily Cascading Style Sheets, absolute positioning,
dynamic fonts, the Document Object Model, and JavaScript 1.2. These technologies
together give you precise control over how a web page/application looks
and behaves and, more important, let you truly design the user's experience.
To quote Webster's dictionary, design means
"To create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan." To come
to the point simply, with older HTML, design in this sense really isn't
possible. First, many of you can't do as much as you'd like; second, you
can never be 100 percent sure that your work will appear to the user according
to your plan. With DHTML, you can do a lot, and you can be far more certain
that your users will have the experience you design for them.
True, there are a few challenges when it comes
to using DHTML. Your DHTML-based designs can only be experienced by users
of Communicator (or Internet Explorer 4.0), and in the foreseeable future
you can expect some users to continue to surf with earlier browsers. However,
there are thousands of people upgrading to Communicator every day, and
you want to be sure to give them the best experience possible -- before
others vying for your customers' attention do it first.
Another challenge: The DHTML technologies are
more complex than plain old HTML. You still don't have to be a programmer
to use DHTML, but, in the words of one designer I know, "You've got to
know what you're doing." This is, at worst, a temporary situation while
vendors of visual web design and page creation tools incorporate the new
technologies into their products. (Tool vendors, take note: With demand
for DHTML-based web applications growing, it's only a matter of time before
all page-creation tools support DHTML. You have a terrific -- if short-lived
-- opportunity to get there first, ahead of the competition.)
None of these challenges diminishes the usefulness
of DHTML: Like the electronic tools that forever changed the publishing
and design industries, Dynamic HTML will enable design innovations and
creativity that simply weren't possible with earlier tools. True, these
technologies aren't the be-all and end-all when it comes to web application
design. They are, however, the opening salvo in the technical revolution
that will lead us from the Web's present design limitations to the truly
usable Internet of tomorrow.
Paul Dreyfus, Editor
P.S. If you want to get started using Dynamic
HTML, you can find a wealth of material on it in the Dynamic
HTML Developer Central area within DevEdge online. Also, be sure to
see Angus Davis's article on Cascading
Style Sheets-Positioning from an earlier issue of View Source.
- Related Readings:
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