Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

I spent a good share of the weekend working on V4 of Boyink.com, making solid progress on the About and Portfolio sections.

The current version of Boyink.com uses Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) for layout, and one of the big selling points of designing sites in this fashion is that they are quicker to redesign, due to all the presentational logic being contained in the one central CSS file.

I’m not experiencing that time-savings.

This is mainly because in addition to a visual redesign I’m restructuring the architecture - flattening some sections (like the About and Services), while expanding other sections (like the Portfolio).  Now factor in the changeout of the Content Management System (CMS) used to power the site, and the move from a fixed-width design to a fluid design, and this project has become a total and complete site rebuild with no HTML or CSS code being salvaged from the current version.

It makes me wonder - if you eliminate web-head bloggers who flip out their design on seasonal whims or to be part of the various “CSS-Reboot” movements on the web - do projects involving the redesign of CSS-based business websites (especially those running on a template-driven CMS) actually see any time savings?

It seems to me that, human nature being what it is, any kind of website redesign project is also going to initiate additional efforts to modify the site information architecture, add or remove features like Flash-based slideshows, or implement better search engines.  In the Jeep world we call this “While I’m At It” syndrome - which can turn a simple tune-up into a complete body-off-frame restoration.

So I have to ask - are we selling snake-oil when it comes to CSS saving clients time on future redesigns?

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. Nathan Smith on January 30, 2007

   Before you venture into the brave new world of fluid layout, you might want to read this…

   http://www.boagworld.com/archives/2006/11/the_problem_with_ie7_zoom.html

   Methinks that fluid layouts will become less necessary in the coming months / years.

2. Michael Boyink (Author) on January 30, 2007

   Man - stuff like that sure sucks the fun out of this work.

   But I’m plowing ahead for a couple of reasons:

   First, I’m waaay too far into the new design to start over.  Just ain’t gonna happen.

   Second - until I see solid evidence that people (regular, non-web head people) actually use the zoom I’m not going to worry about it.  I’m still not convinced that most people even know how to resize the text in the browser—I think by and large people live with whatever comes up by default.

3. Michael Boyink (Author) on January 30, 2007

   Actually in playing with it in IE7 just now, the current version breaks down worse when zoomed in than the new one.

   And I actually think it makes perfect sense to scroll sideways when zoomed in - that’s what happens in other desktop apps like Word and Powerpoint.

4. sparky on January 30, 2007

   People consistently use what’s set up for them by the software or someone else.

   Remember not long ago I told people in the EarlyCJ-5.com forums about resizing text using the ctrl+ and ctrl- keys. Most were unaware that it was possible.

5. Michael Boyink (Author) on January 30, 2007

   This issue has been on my mind a bit over the last day or so. 

   I think this is just one more nail in the “control the user experience” coffin.  There just gets to be a point where, as a site designer, I can’t prevent users from choosing a combination of settings in both windows and the browser that makes my site totally unusable.

   I mean really - you want to zoom in 300% and set font size to “large”.  OK.  If you were in any other app on the desktop you’d be looking at all of 3 letters of one word on your screen - why should my website be any different?

   I can go to great lengths to make it look good at the default settings, after that people are on their own.

6. sparky on January 30, 2007

   -I can go to great lengths to make it look good at the default settings, after that people are on their own.-

   Good thought

7. Michael Boyink (Author) on January 30, 2007

   Actually I was just googling the issue, and sounds like the IE team isn’t quite done figuring out how the zoom feature should work.  It’ll likely change in a future release, so I won’t be making any design decisions based upon it. 

   Overall my gut feeling is that fluid layouts are still the overall best way to go.

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