Datasheet

FUTURE-PROOF WEB DESIGN
10
WEB DESIGN PROJECTS contain four essential components. First, you must know
your environment.  en you need to plan ahead, learn to adapt, and  nish the process by
resolving compatibility issues as they arise. Meeting these objectives is challenging, but
the work is necessary if you are to successfully future-proof your site.  is chapter
describes each of these components and illustrates the importance of being  exible to
change your way of thinking about your design methodology, now and in the future.
Understanding the Environment
When you design a site, understanding the environment where it will exist is critical. You
need to know what factors increase or decrease the chances of your site being noticed, and
you need to be familiar with the tools visitors will have at their disposal when interacting
with your site. Understanding what makes up the Web’s current incarnation is important,
as is learning what is and isn’t possible (or useful) when designing for it. Before you can
access any of that information, however, a number of untruths need to be dispelled.
The truth behind terminology
 roughout the Web’s history, designers have become adept at assigning names to things,
even if the names aren’t required or deserved. Names have been assigned to speci c tech-
nologies, techniques, and events that occurred long ago, and abbreviations have been cre-
ated that try to encompass entire technologies. Although some of these terms (for
example, HTML and CSS) do a great job at identifying an important technology, an unfor-
tunate slew of buzzwords has been forged, leading to confusion among designers.
Here are three of the biggest o enders:
> AJAX
> Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0
> the Mobile Web
Although forged from the technologies it employs, AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and
XML) didn’t need a shorthand name because developers were already employing these
techniques in their work.  e mechanism behind AJAX is a sound one, in that you can
avoid page refreshes by pulling or pushing data from the server to a user’s device in the
background, but as far as the stability of your site is concerned, the mechanism can be
fraught with problems, such as the unavailability of scripting.
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