One of the reasons SPF has the ‘Getting Started With Web Design’ forum is for the more newbie web design questions so typically the regulars should observe; many of the Original Posters tend to be less experienced and so forth, and respond appropriately etc.
I sure hope that isn’t the case with other new members.
To quote the forum description…
~TehYoyo
I knew there was a reason I learned to take constructive crit the right way. They dont mark down your markup to mean, they do it so you will see true success.
But I can see where Irishman also see’s it as being over critical. Truth being we dont know how much effort some one put into making a site.
It might look like something from the 90’s but to them it might be something awesome. It might have been the first site they ever built, it can be a little deminishing to be all proud of something just get get knocked on your rear at the end of the day by someone who is 20x greater then you are. – We all start somewhere.
But in respect to the people who are reviewing It only makes sense that you would want to be honest because if your not it could lead to issues for the person doing the design. Plus if they did not want the brutal they should not post it. After its posted its open to be fired at.
-I did not spell check sorry if there are errors there.
You can be proud of something and still take constructive criticism. I think it’s a skill to learn and to have (a necessity, really). Although some people do cross the line. I just hope I’m not one of them.
Constructive criticism is how you grow. If I looked at a (in my own opinion) terrible site, and then I posted that it was fantastic and that the OP should be extremely proud of it, would that help him/her learn? No. Of course not. In fact, I think it would stop their learning and growth. Therefore, I try to be honest but not mean.
~TehYoyo
Which is exactly what I said in regards to the people doing reviews. (I see both sides of the coin mind you… which is rather rare. I can see why some would take a review as being harsh but I also see why the review is harsh…) I know with out Joomla my sites I hand code are not the most pretty to look at and in all frankness they are basic. But I can still say I know how to code and I am trying to get better with it.
-This is a live and learn kind of business-
You keep on mentioning the big successes of the web but you can’t compare the likes of fb, twitter, amazon, etc to these small personal and business sites. The sites you are referring to are dynamically driven web applications with a high level of user interactivity. That is a far cry from most of the types that show up in design galleries. Smaller sites such as those for small businesses tend not to have a lot of content. So are we are to tell them they can’t have a website because they have nothing meaningful/new to add the the web. So I guess where I am getting at is that larger application type sites can get away with a much lets say “cleaner” but I really mean is bland design because there is so much content and user interactivity to balance aesthetics out. Whereas, a smaller sites tend not to have much content nor user interactivity so they balance it out with more aesthetics. Otherwise I guess the site would be worthless but most of those types of sites are pretty much worthless from the beginning… design isn’t the cause.
…and thats how it should be. My point wasnt that I or other noobies may not be able to take criticism, its just that some of the comments made in the forums (and not just the reviews) are overly aggressive with an overuse of CAPITALS and exclamation marks!!! which when allied to some rather caustic and sarcastic comments, are not at all helpful.
Everyone has an opinion and there is no need for some posters to shout down others who are simply offering their honest opinion and/or advice. If someone disagrees with anothers statements instead of launching into an attack on the first person they could show a little more respect, perhaps starting with a ‘I see what you are saying but I feel…’ or ’ I have found that way of doing things a bit slow/old fashioned, you could try this…’
Live & let live
Something is crap, you call it crap. This namby pamby dancing around it does nothing but promote the status quo. GOD FORBID you say something negative about anything… To blazes with that and that type of thinking.
I was raised to believe you tear everything down to the bones and build it back up, that’s how you make things BETTER. Artisanship, craftsmanship, PRIDE in ones work…
… and there’s SO MUCH bad advice out there, that unless we start telling nubes they’re having the rose coloured glasses slapped on their head and are being led down the garden path – by IDIOTIC NONSENSE like jquery, HTML 5, WYSIWYGS, tables for layout, “Oh everyone has broadband”, drawing goofy pretty pictures before you even think about content, flawed and broken approaches to building websites – we’ll never have anything approaching progress otherwise.
As George Bernard Shaw said: The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man..
Though it could just be that period of military service talking… or my being a genuine New England Yankee. Ya cahn’t geht theyah frum heeya isn’t just a catch-phrase, it’s a way of life.
“When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can’t run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn’t fight it’s way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. As for the types of comments I make – Sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence.”
– General George S. Patton Jr.
So if the kumbaya singing hand-holding tofu eating millivegan PETA donating drum circle crowd can’t handle it, OH WELL!!! Maybe they should look in the mirror or take a breather to realize that we’re trying to HELP make better pages that are useful to everyone. If you’re knee jerking into a panic over the comments someone else makes, MAYBE, JUST MAYBE it’s time for a bit of self reflection.
Perish the thought. No, let’s just slap on those rose coloured glasses, pat them on the back and say well done no matter how much bad advice they’ve taken and bad practices they’ve used. THAT HELPS EVERYBODY!
If you don’t want help and can’t take people pointing out things you did wrong on your page – what’s broken and what to do about it, what are you even asking for?
My fellow libs feel the same way about me. I ain’t vegan (though I respect them), I don’t do drum circles (though I love drums), I’m not a member of PETA (though I am an animal rescuer), and I don’t sing kumbaya or much else because I sound like a rusted foghorn (though I do sing along with Eddie Vedder and don’t care if my voice isn’t in the same galactic quadrant of talent as his). I’d much rather kick Rush Limbaugh’s scraggly hind end than coo over him and help him “understand.” But …
When I came into SP dragging my first, horrifically busted Web site in tow to find out why something didn’t work like it was supposed to, I expected to get mocked, vilified, sneered at, and chased out with my tail tucked between my legs. Didn’t happen. The folks here (some of whom are still here) were occasionally harsh (“what the hell did you do THAT for? Try this instead”) but very supportive and very helpful. They still are.
Jason’s like the crusty old b@stard Marine DI who slaps you upside your helmet and screams at you about your mama every time you do something wrong – then he shows you how to do it right, and slaps you upside the head again so you’ll remember. It doesn’t bother me because I face far worse than his all-caps grumpiness and sharp-tongued correctives every working day (I teach middle schoolers and have worked in lockdown facilities – taking a gun off a kid twice your size who’s screaming and spraying spit while trying to get his hand on your throat will inure you to online vituperation very quickly). But I understand others are more easily intimidated and put off by Jason’s rough approach, especially those who are new to the field and insecure about their designs and code to begin with.
Newbies who are put off by Jason’s approach: I understand how you feel. I was you not that long ago. I invite you to stick around and learn: that’s what we’re here to do, to help you (and each other) learn. Jason is a hell of a good teacher, and if you can pick through the rough language and skip past the all-caps snarling, you’ll find a lot of good info in his posts. I’m a teacher, and I’ve also been Jason, or very close to it – I almost lost a job once by going overboard and yelling at the kids too hard. I know how he feels. It’s frustrating to see people make the same mistakes over and over again, and not respond the way you want them to when you correct them. I had to learn to moderate my frustration. I’m still learning, and have to forcibly rein myself in on occasion.
Jason: You have a real gift for instruction. When you “cork your bolts” and get down to teaching, you’re superb at it. (You have a PM in your box from me about this same subject.) But you won’t make your point in this milieu by howling and ranting at the newbies (especially when they’re not 100% sure what you’re berating them about – they don’t know as much as you. Hell, I don’t know half of what you know, and I’ve got the spiffy green mantle). They’ll just leave and go somewhere else where someone will calmly and nicely tell them all about the wonders of Photoshop and Dreamweaver, and we will have even more badly made sites to exasperate us. I’m not asking you to get all gooey and kumbaya on us. That ain’t you, and if you did try, your gift for explication and example would suffer. Just moderate the roughness. If you can’t, you’ll end up not being here, and that would be a great loss both for SP, for our forum denizens, and, I believe, for you. Keep up the superb instruction, keep rolling out the examples of how it’s properly done, and understand that everyone doesn’t know as much as you, nor do they always want to approach coding/design the same way you do. You’re in the position I’ve been in, when the kids told me, “You need to stop yelling!” I used to retort, “I’m NOT yelling,” and I wasn’t – in my view. In their view, I was. After a while, I had to learn to split the difference. I have moderated my volume and toned down on the “firmness” of my tone, and now when the occasional kid tells me to stop yelling at him, I can confidently say, “Dude, I’m not yelling at you. You just don’t like what I’m saying.” You know you’re not “yelling” at the posters, and they just as certainly know you are “yelling.” Split the difference and see what happens. And I’ll tell you the Big Old Secret of teaching: if you ease down off the throttle and give them a chance to show you their stuff, they will teach YOU something. It’s inevitable. And it’s the coolest thing in the world.
Off Topic:
I prefer loc-tite, grease 'em up to slide 'em in, then loc 'em down once good 'n tight…
Break them down so you can build them up. It’s the only method I’ve ever found that actually accomplished anything – everything else being feel good nonsense with no actual logic, pride or effort behind it.
… and on that note; good night Chesty, wherever you are.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the Marines, they aren’t living the life 24/7, and they can walk any time they please, including the first time they get angry or taken aback by the “breaking down.” They have to stay and take it in the military, and go through the process. Here, they don’t. And I’m telling you, it isn’t the only method that works. Other, less aggressive methods are not necessarily “feel good nonsense.”
I signed up while tracking Jason, (deathshadow60) and a long thread about a standard (right) way to design web pages . I am reminded of [B][URL=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=IN&v=IDS-Ycq-NB8”]Gny.Sgt Hartman[/B] from [B]Full Metal Jacket[/B]! Imagine him staying in character to scare one of the most intimidating movie makers (a favourite of mine), [URL=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JwAnMUavzA”]Stanley Kubrick!
I like the way deathshadow60 writes his
(http://www.deathshadow.com/). Clean, easy and elegant. Reminds me of my Math teacher's classy derivations which were a joy to follow along with her precise explanations. I like the fact that I can take a peek into [B]deathshadow60[/B]'s code and adapt it. I think we should learn from every type of approach. To say one method is the supreme one, is to be very myopic. One size does not fit all. A successful website/app/publication is pulled off while balancing possibilities and limitations.
I remember a time when people used to be against the visual ugliness of HTML pages. They would resort to spacer gifs and table based layouts to get pixel precise layouts. I even bought the book. It was called [B][Creating Killer Sites[/B] by David Siegel. His [URL="http://web.archive.org/web/19970504155724/http://www.dsiegel.com/balkanization/"]articles](http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Killer-Web-Sites-Third-Generation/dp/1568302894) were quite wonderful. He became one of the first "HTML terrorists" who subverted Web Standards! Almost everything in that book is now outdated (and strictly forbidden!)... except, that wonderful attitude of craftsmanship he brought to the task of making websites, which still lives on... handcoding, tweaking images, careful choice of (web safe!) colors etc. If there is one common factor behind every well designed site, it is that passion for getting the details right. The approach of using Photoshop as the launchpad to create visual layouts can be traced back to that bygone era.
The swing to the other side where visual impact has been discarded for pure usability and efficiency is also interesting. The arguments of usability experts are quite valid. Content is King. Nonetheless, I think it is safe to say that there will never be one supreme way to build websites. It is closer to architecture that way. Form vs. Function arguments are as old as art and architecture. You need to strike a balance and test out the pages/ sites/ apps you create against your target audience/ user base/ purpose. Your clients have to be satisfied. Your clients' goals have to be achieved. What you build today with HTMLX with Y methods are going to be forgotten or rendered obsolete as the medium explodes at its rapid pace. What is right today will not ring so true and right tomorrow. Standards themselves are shifting as platforms emerge and change. I can think of new interfaces emerging and new paradigms of interactivity sidelining all the carefully planned approaches of today.
Spacer gifs, flash eyecandy to semantic markup to html5 boilerplate...if there is one lesson, it is that there is no one supreme "correct" way to build for the web. The web is constantly changing, much faster than any medium for which designers have built before.
Off Topic:
Funny since I’m ex USAF not USMC… and I was a lazy {expletive omitted} of {expletive omitted} instead of working for a living.
Besides, I much more a fan of Staff Sergeant Lloyd from “Boys of Company C”. FMJ was ‘cute’ – for a sensationalist remake… unfortunately there’s no good youtube links for that – but at least both characters, Lloyd and Hartman, are played by an actual USMC Gunney… R. Lee Ermey.
Move it up until the private in front of you smiles…