Of course, 140 characters couldn’t capture his whole opinion on the subject, so he wrote a blog post followup. I strongly recommend reading it. I really agree with it.

Also, he later tweeted: “My new opinion, based on insight from commenters: You DON’T need to know how to write HTML/CSS. But in many scenarios it can be useful.”

I agree with this too, for the reasons explained well by Mark Boulton. A web designer doesn’t necessarily need to know how to write actual HTML and CSS. But she does need to know about the limitations imposed by browsers, the strengths and weaknesses of the medium. Writing HTML/CSS can make understanding and designing around these limitations a lot easier. But you can come to this understanding without learning HTML/CSS first.

Basically, my opinion is still the same as it was when I wrote Should web designers build their own pages? back in June 2008. Check that article out for my full opinion—including my very own architect analogy! (Seemingly a must whenever debating this topic.)

Related Posts:

• Should web designers build their own pages?
• Essential considerations for crafting quality media queries
• Me at The CSS Summit online conference
• The liquid web site motherload
• Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference 2009

Designing CSS Layouts for the Flexible Web (PDF, 5.5 mb)

Yes, it’s a big file—there are a lot of graphics in the PowerPoint. But I didn’t want to compress it very much and have all those graphics look distorted, since examining the graphics is the main point of the presentation.

There’s a little CSS in the presentation, but if you want more in-depth tutorials on the techniques alluded to in the presentation, I’ve written up many of them on this blog:

• Foreground images that scale with the layout
• Hiding and revealing portions of images
• Creating sliding composite images
• Space images out to match text height

Related Posts:

• Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference 2009
• Revised presentation slides available
• Voices That Matter slides available
• Media queries presentation at indieconf
• Hiding and revealing portions of images

Nomensa is a web agency specializing in accessibility and usability. Their own site is a nice example of a liquid design, and I’ve had it bookmarked for a while, but I finally got a chance to check out the sites in their portfolio. There are dozens and dozens of them, and almost all of them are liquid. (They also have a few elastic ones, and a few fixed-width.) Unfortunately, Nomensa doesn’t provide links to all of their work, but only a select few as case studies. But, you can google the names of the non-case-study clients, and you’ll find that most of these sites are liquid as well.

Now, I grant you, many of the sites are not terribly stylish. But they still are really useful to look at to get ideas for how to handle content and layout in liquid layouts. You could easily use the same techniques they’re using with a bit more spit and polish added.

Here are a few of the most well done liquid sites from Nomensa’s portfolio:

Barcham Online

The header using seven images of tree foliage that expand and contract to fill the available space is very clever and attractive. Also check out the feature boxes on the home page and the thumbnail gallery under Our Trees. It’s notable that this is an e-commerce site, which you don’t often see liquid.

Broads Authority

I’m not in love with the overall look and feel of this site, but I appreciate the unique layout of the home page. The main image on the home page that has a text box below, which moves down as the text in the adjacent columns grows, revealing more of the image above, is very well done.

Preston City Council

Another unique home page layout and neat use of “variable cropping” on the main photo. Be sure to check out the Gallery under Get Involved, as well as all the little feature boxes and things on the inner pages.

Macmillan Cancer Support

This site is notable for the large amount of information that it organizes into liquid rounded corner boxes throughout the site, without everything becoming chaotic and unbalanced at different viewport widths.

Business Startup Community

Again, not a very attractive site, but I’m bookmarking it simply for the treatment of the three tabs on the inner sections of the site.

I’ll be sure to stop by Nomensa’s portfolio periodically to see what new work they are featuring and gather ideas for solving problems in my own work. I should have mentioned in my flexible web design inspiration post that a great place to find liquid and elastic sites is within the portfolios of agencies or designers who themselves have liquid or elastic sites. Nomensa is now on this list for me.

Related Posts:

• Updated flexible design inspiration
• Inspiration for flexible web design
• Media queries presentation at indieconf
• Why browser zoom shouldn’t kill flexible layouts
• Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference 2009

Designing CSS Layouts for the Flexible Web (PDF, 5 mb)

Yes, it’s a big file—there are a lot of graphics in the PowerPoint. But I didn’t want to compress it very much and have all those graphics look distorted, since examining the graphics is the main point of the presentation.

If you’re ready to get beyond the graphics and start working on the actual CSS techniques alluded to in the presentation, I’ve written up many of them on this blog:

• Foreground images that scale with the layout
• Hiding and revealing portions of images
• Creating sliding composite images
  

Related Posts:

• Me at The CSS Summit online conference
• Revised presentation slides available
• Voices That Matter slides available
• Updated flexible design inspiration
• Inspiration for flexible web design

Related Posts:

• Inspiration for flexible web design
• The liquid web site motherload
• Why browser zoom shouldn’t kill flexible layouts
• Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference 2009
• Media queries presentation at indieconf

My answer in a nutshell: Ideally, yes.

I’ve been lucky enough to always design the pages that I build. I’ve worked at a design agency, as part of in-house design teams, and freelance, but never have I had a separate designer create comps to then hand off to me to build.

I call myself lucky in this regard because even though I’ve never experienced this design process firsthand, I’ve seen how frustrating it can be for other web designers. (Note that I said “can,” not “is.”) When the visual designer doesn’t know how to actually build web pages, he or she frequently designs in elements that just don’t work well on the web. Either they’re things that cannot be built with HTML and CSS—such as elements that depend on an exact font size—or they’re things that can be done but are either difficult or unwise to implement, due to current best practices in the areas of standards, usability or accessibility.

It’s been my experience that the more experience a designer has actually building web pages, the more successful he or she is in designing interfaces and graphic elements that work well with its strengths and constraints. That doesn’t mean that every designer should build his or her own pages; it’s fine to have a division of labor, and I’m sure it’s actually the smartest process in many teams. Nor does it mean that the designer has to be an advanced HTML or CSS developer. It simply means that the designer ought to have some idea how to build the page if he or she really had to.

Mark Boulton argues in his post “Design isn’t about tools” that “knowing how to build things in HTML/CSS limits your creativity.” I see his point and think it’s a really good one. We all have to be careful to not just keep designing things the same tired way because we’re used to building things a certain way. It can be a really positive, fun experience to drop a print designer into your comfy design nest to force you to consider new design possibilities, even if you can’t use them exactly as-is on the web.

But at the same time, it’s unrealistic to think that you can design without the constraint of any tools. At the Voices That Matter conference I was just at, Jason Cranford Teague gave a presentation on web typography in which he said that design is about constraint—working within it as well as overcoming it—and that if you want to work without constraint you’re an artist, not a designer. I think this applies to the question of whether designers should feel constrained by HTML and CSS, and I think the answer is yes. Architects don’t have to be qualified to build houses, but they have to have some idea of what construction techniques are possible, the physical characteristics of the materials they’re designing with, general physics, etc. They can’t just design buildings without any knowledge whatsoever of how they will ultimately be built.

Mark uses a print design analogy to ask “do print designers need to know how to build a press?” This analogy makes no sense to me. It’s like asking if web designers need to know how to build a browser, or a computer even. Of course not. The real question is “do print designers need to know how a press works”—and the answer to that is an emphatic yes. They don’t need to be qualified to actually operate a press, but they need to know the limitations and strengths of the printing press they’re work is going to be produced by. Print production processes are a pretty important part of the curriculum of any good graphic design program. (That last sentence had a lot of p’s in it!) Print designers need to know practical things like not to design important info within 1/8″ of the edge of a piece, not to run something that must be matched up perfectly across the fold of a multi-page book, what type of paper they’re going to be printing on, etc. I suppose you could call this being constrained by your tools—but it doesn’t necessarily follow that that’s a bad thing.

(On a little tangent, I applaud Jon Hicks for pointing out during this whole debate that Fireworks is a better tool for creating web comps than Photoshop. I switched to Fireworks for web work almost five years ago and can’t imagine going back.)

Related Posts:

• More debate on designers writing HTML and CSS
• Essential considerations for crafting quality media queries
• Me at The CSS Summit online conference
• The liquid web site motherload
• Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference 2009

Flexible web sites—sites that are liquid or elastic—have the unfair reputation of being ugly and plain. There are certainly lots of flexible sites that fit this stereotype, just as there are tons of ugly fixed-width sites. But flexible design doesn’t have to be unattractive. There are lots of really beautiful, graphically rich liquid and elastic web sites, which are all the more impressive to me because of the extra skill it often takes to pull off these graphic techniques in a flexible environment.

Here are some web design galleries that showcase flexible design:

No Resolution

This is an entire site devoted to showcasing liquid and elastic designs. Unfortunately, you have to register to submit entries, so things have been slow lately. Still, lots of great stuff in the archives, and new additions from time to time.

CSSGlance, liquid layout category

CSSGlance categorizes all entries as fixed-width, liquid, or elastic, which is really nice. They have a pretty good collection of liquid layouts.

CSSGlance, elastic layout category

Only a few things here, but elastic layouts are pretty rare in general, as well as hard to recognize with only a glance.

CSS Drive, liquid layout category

This category seems to have been mostly forgotten about recently, but it does have a good collection of liquid layouts from 2007 and earlier, and new entries do show up occasionally.

Unmatched Style, entries tagged as liquid layout

A very small collection of liquid layouts that is very rarely updated, but I include it here in case it takes off one day. Let’s hope so!

I keep my own collection of designs I find attractive and inspiring in del.icio.us. I have a number of liquid layouts saved as inspiration, as well as a few inspiring elastic ones. I’ll point out a few of my favorites:

• SimpleBits (sadly, no longer elastic)
• Dizzain (liquid)
• Castello di Bolgheri (liquid)
• Sozidatel (liquid)
• Simon Wiffen (liquid)
• Clearleft (liquid)
• Biola Undergrad (liquid)
• RateMyArea (liquid and elastic)
• iA (elastic)

Related Posts:

• Updated flexible design inspiration
• The liquid web site motherload
• Why browser zoom shouldn’t kill flexible layouts
• Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference 2009
• Media queries presentation at indieconf