Here's an interesting article: Visual vs Structural. The author argues there are two types of web designers (we'll kindly ignore those who just don't have a clue): those who layout a page--the visual thinkers, and those who assemble structured documents.
I strongly come down in the structural canp. Perhaps this is because I approach a web page from the point of view of a programmer rather than a visual designer. I am, I must admit, often more concerned about the structure of the content. There's nothing really wrong with taking the other approach, unless in doing so you completely ignore the structure of the page.
I've seen too many pages designed with little thought to how the content should be structured. The signs are fairly obvious: br tags; many nested tables; spacer images, and so forth. These approaches work. But, I think they're fairly shortsighted. When approaching pages designed with little thought given to structure, the "next guy" often has to do more work to make a little tweak. Pages with proper structural elements are much easier to style, and change later. And change always happens, and it is often not at the hand of the first designer. So, be kind to the next guy and write good code.
End of rant.
Posted by Karl
October 14, 2004 09:14 PM