A Peek behind the Curtain

Part of the skill of web design and development is working like a stevedore and then hiding all evidence of work. When we unveil that new, beautiful, functional website, we want it to stand on its own, fully formed. Art is, at least in part, the process of burying the artist. Our developers are artists, so today we want to give you a little glimpse of some of the tools they use.

Some of this is a little technical, but that is, after all, what we do. If this isn’t the part of the internet that you’re interested in hearing about, here are some kittens fighting with light sabers.

HTML5

Background: HTML is the foundation of all web development. It stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, and it tells the browser about your page content. If you imagine your website as a house, HTML is the foundation and the studs in the walls.

Remember HTML5? We told you about it, like, two years ago. With how fast technology is roaring ahead, it might surprise people that some of these technologies, which form the backbone of all websites, are adopted more slowly. There’s a good reason for this apparent sloth’s-pace: people want the web to work. If you start introducing new technologies too quickly, serious fragmentation problems start cropping up. Imagine a world in which you’d need to use one browser to read Facebook, another to use Netflix, and another to shop on Amazon.

We have finally reached a time in which HTML5 support is ramping up among all major browsers. Our earlier predictions were spot on; HTML5 adoption was driven, in part, by the rise of mobile. HTML5 allows web developers to deliver faster, more feature-full websites that are mobile-friendly.

The “faster” part of the equation is important, because waiting for three seconds for a site to load when you’ve invested in the most advanced hardware and the fastest internet connection is unacceptable (we’re not being sarcastic… it’s unacceptable). HTML5 also has elements to make plugin-free audio, video, and animation a reality. It allows more website features to live on-site, meaning that a site won’t need to call upon proprietary web technologies, like a Silverlight plugin, to play video.

Some of these things might not seem impressive. As end-users, we see video on websites all the time, and what the user sees might not change that much, but HTML5 allows a cleaner, faster web for everyone, especially when paired with CSS3.

CSS3

Background: CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet, and it tells the browser about your page presentation or, as the name indicates, style. If you imagine your website as a house, CSS is the paint, the furniture, and the art hanging on your walls.

This is still up-and-coming, but it’s far from obscure. What CSS3 promises is a more well-rested developer. Many of the beautiful features that we like to add to website designs, things that sound as simple as rounded corners, are not so simple. CSS3 enables us to add some of these design elements to a site faster and more elegantly in addition to allowing more complex features.

CSS3 provides options for layout, animation, and typography that reduce the strain on our over-caffeinated developers and make style sheets easier to maintain. Finally, CSS3 has a few lovely features for mobile development, including advanced media queries, which enable responsive design, and touch-based scrolling and zooming.

The powers that be, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), listened to the needs of web developers and designers and made note of what they were already doing (even though they were pulling their hair out to do it), and gave their blessings to the advanced set of tools that is CSS3. CSS4 is already in the works, but it’ll be quite a while before we see it make its way to the web.

Flash

Just kidding! Okay, yes, Flash is still irreplaceable for some web development, but we’re all waiting for the day when we can give it a dignified funeral.

This is all just a superficial overview of these technology advances, but we’d be happy to sit down with you and dig a little deeper into the details if you’re interested. We’d also be happy to just be the man behind the curtain and deliver a great website for you.