Blog
Abstruse ramblings of a corporate web developer gone freelance
I just joined Facebook last week and joined their ‘Web Design’ group a few days ago. One of the Topics posted there was:
Div or Table - If you was going to teach a newbie web design, would you start with teaching TABLE or DIV layouts?
The overwhelming response was: “Use Tables!”. Excuse me, but WTF?????? I’ve been doing web design for the last 12 years and I thought this dispute had been put to rest about 4+ years ago! You use tables for data and divs for layout! Why would someone encourage a newbie to learn to do this the wrong way??? My only conclusion is that the ‘Web Design’ group is full of amateur web designer wanna-be’s or I have no idea what I am talking about….
Here is the link to the discussion on Facebook in case any of you are a member of that group.
Here is what I responded with:
Tables are made for data!!! You DO NOT EVER use tables for a layout. I cannot believe so many people on this post have suggested such a thing! If you use tables for a layout, you are writing invalid HTML/XHTML. Ever heard of W3C Valid XHTML/HTML and CSS???? Table layout design is a hallmark of an armature web designer and has been out dated for years! Bottom line, you are not a real web designer if you’re using tables to create your website layouts (no professional web design firm will hire you if you design like this). This is undisputed. Everyone from Jeffrey Zeldman to Eric Myers to the W3C will tell you this. Hey, if you want to learn how to become a web designer, how about learning to do it the right way? Use Divs… that’s what they are meant for.
New Doodlekit Blog Post:
Free Website SEO and Traffic For Beginners
Other References: Digg, Ezine Articles
Doodlekit was reviewed by PCWorld this morning, but with one caveat - it's the Danish PCWorld! Hey... we are not complaining! The very first few sentences (translated) read:
"The time's most beautiful, quickest and mostly advanced web page gets one with Doodlekit . Next month a new web service has maybe taken over the leading position, but just now Doodlekit is the enough strongest online web page programme."
Read the translated article yourself (scroll down a bit).
Yesterday TechCrunch did a write up on the Doodlekit Online Website Builder. The article compared it to some other online website builders and pointed out some of the more advanced features that Doodlekit has over its competitors.
The only thing that was a little disappointing about it was that you could tell from some of the comments that a few people thought Doodlekit was just another website building tool like every other service provider has. This is not true. Doodlekit has a lot more advanced CMS features than those static website creators do. Not to mention the ease of use compared to these tools.
But that’s OK. A lot of other people mentioned the fact that there was a need for businesses websites to have more advanced features beyond static page creation. Advanced tools for collecting data, organizing users, etc. that Doodlekit provides that these other companies don’t.
Then there was the web traffic. Wow! We have already more than doubled our traffic since a few weeks ago when we first released the latest version of Doodlekit. We have been pretty excited about that. But the last 30 hours since the posting of the TechCrunch write up has generated us over 6000 extra visitors and 600+ new Doodlekit websites!
The past few days have been pretty exciting for us and there is more to come! We have some interviews lined up for next week so we will see how those go. Watch out world… here comes Doodlekit!
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. I have been super busy. I have been dealing with the following:
- Doodlekit’s fast growth
- Working a large custom website contract
- Working Google / Yahoo / Other advertising issues
- Visiting friends and family for the holiday
- Picking up some extra chores around the house for my wife (she’s 5 month’s pregnant – with twins)
- Fixing up the house to sell (we need a bigger house for the twins)
- Selling both our vehicles and getting new ones that accommodate two child safety seats
- Jury Duty (they didn’t pick me thank God)
- Oh yeah… and working on Heathbits’ new design.
Any guesses as to which one got the lowest priority?
Needless to say, I finally finished up Heathbits’ new design and pushed it to production today. I picked a unique color theme I liked and went from there. This took a long time to create. I designed, and redesigned, and redesigned again. Creativity comes with a price – time. Once the final design was complete, it only takes a few hours to convert into valid XHTML/CSS. The hard part is always coming up with a unique design.
Anyway, I hope you like it!
Doodlekit Free Website Builder Created by my business partner and I in 2006.
Garbage Burrito - The online blog of Ben Kittrell, Ruby On Rails guru and Doodlekit co-owner.
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