This is a bit old - you may or may not notice the date on this post but it's over a year old. That doesn't mean it's not useful but we all know how fast things chance on the web so there's a chance that techniques and technologies described here could be a little dated.

Why we should all be forward thinking

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for a beautiful webHaving attended the “For a beautiful web” workshop in Newcastle I was very impressed with Andy Clarke and as such there’ll probably be a few more posts on here related to the stuff I picked up from the day and I would highly recommend anyone who can to attend a workshop or see Andy speaking if they get chance.

For those who don’t know, the workshop was all about using new technologies such as CSS3 and central to everything was the fact that websites don’t have to look the same in every browser. (Check out http://dowebsitesneedtobeexperiencedexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/)

I was convinced, the arguments for progressing and using this new stuff are great but I left and my first thought was “well it’s all right for Andy he gets good clients, but I couldn’t start doing that with our clients”. Which I’m sure is what a lot of other people think straight off, and then I did a bit more thinking and realised that was the stupidest thing I’ve possibly ever thought to myself.

You don’t need to be some huge company

As I was mulling over my assertion that “our clients” wouldn’t be happy with us not making the designs the same in every browser I thought about Andy’s company Stuff & Nonsense, they’re run from Andy’s house in North Wales and it’s pretty much just him. It’s not some massive company so if he’s doing it why can’t we all?

Good practice is good practice anywhere

So there’s no reason why we shouldn’t all be doing it. Why we shouldn’t be embracing CSS3 and HTML5 and getting our clients on board for the ride. At the end of the day it’s just a matter of explaining everything properly, I think sometimes we forget that we’re the experts here! We don’t have to be some big well known agency to be doing new things, we can all do it now ourselves.

It should help us move forward

Which gives me the final thought that came straight from the workshop on Friday. The best way for us to move forward with CSS3 and keep improving  browsers and the web is by using the technologies, it’s by trying things and giving the feedback on how they work, how they don’t work, how we were expecting them to work. So we should all get involved, we should all be forward thinkers and we can all pave the way for the future of the web.

If you want to read more about moving forward with web design and designing in the browser and not showing clients static visuals then head over to All the Malarkey Andy Clarkes blog and read “Time to stop showing clients static designs”