Goals for this Column
By Lynda Weinman
Since this is my first column for Web Techniques, I thought I'd share my philosophy about Web design and explain how I view my role as an educator in this field. Some of you might know me through my books, classes, or magazine articles, and some may not know me at all. Knowing me isn't important, but knowing my opinions about Web design and design education will help you set expectations for future columns.
You wouldn't think being a visual designer would necessarily stir up controversy, but the Web is good at throwing disparate disciplines together and causing trouble. This is probably because HTML was intended to be a display medium, rather than a design medium. Its originators never meant to create a substitute language for page layout or interactive multimedia-authoring tools. Yet zillions of workarounds are being used on the Web to kludge together a medium that was designed for one purpose and is being used for another.
Visual designers are, at large, responsible for this. Visual design is about control; designers care about how things look, how they are positioned, and how they are displayed. If we didn't care about the way things looked, we wouldn't be designers. For this reason, most designers curse working with HTML, because it behaves differently on almost every browser and operating system.
For the first time in computing history, visual folks need to code and programmer folks need to design artwork. Egads! Let the sparks fly! Designers and programmers typically know little about one another; it's often designer versus programmer, Mac versus PC, Photoshop versus CorelPaint, Netscape versus Internet Explorer, HTML purists versus WYSIWYGers.
