You don’t have to be “Zen” to be a gardener.

April 8th, 2004

I tweak my site all the time. Seems like I am always changing colors, banners, backgrounds and such. This ‘lil blog is run through the awesome tool “Blogger” so that the archiving, dating and general file management of this blog is automatic. For this, my good friend Blogger, I am grateful. Awesome tool! However, the templates which run this blog are maintained in Blogger. Therefore, making a change to the template is a process. However, since this site is run entirely with CSS and web standards, I barley ever need to access my templates in Blogger to make presentational changes. In fact, all of the changes I make to this layout are from the CSS files.

The Zen Garden was the first site that really hammered this home for many developers, including moi. It is an in-your-face example of how much can really be done with a true separation of content and presentation. This principle is one I teach my clients almost everyday. I can’t tell you how many times my web team and I have given the whole “separation of content and presentation” speech to our clients. It gets repetitive. It gets boring. But, the message is important.

Sometimes you wonder if this stuff sinks in. You wonder if your clients and “non-web” colleagues really get it. I mean, aren’t all web pages content? How the heck are they supposed to understand the difference between content and presentation when they have never built a website and have no perspective on the historical significance of eliminating tables and fonts and the rest of the junk?

This week I saw the message sink in. I almost fell out of my chair. During a conversation about a major, major web project I heard one of my colleagues (one who had heard my spiel about web standards) say, “With the separation of content and presentation we will be able to evolve the design of our site as our brand develops. Changes to design will be easier.” Whoa. I was stunned. I replied with a “very good”.

So, for each time I give the lecture about web standards and see people sleeping or not grasping a single concept, there are those that “get it.”

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