For more than a decade, when I like the design of a website, I right-click and select "View Page Source" or "Inspect" to see what's under the box. I want to know what .css or Javascript they are using, or if they're working right from a WordPress or Micro.blog, etc. Just recently, I passed by scripting.com, and saw that each paragraph is directly shareable via Twitter with an integrated Retweet button. That's really cool, so I inspected the elements that allow this to happen.
As a non-programmer, I do run into a wall after a while: I see that Scripting's .css "DayTemplate" helps the website present Tweets and the small Retweet button, but I can't really figure out if this is part of a plugin or hard-coded into the website theme. So, while I have just enough ability to admire the work of some lines of code, I can't fully involve myself in the website's front-end design. I end up window shopping tools that I can't comprehend.
Years ago, it was a lot more fun to inspect the HTML of a page. I could understand how a website works when lines of text were only separated by <div> and <br>. I could understand headers and footers, bodies and text markup. It's a lot harder to read HTML when every aspect of a website is designated as its own element. General purpose HTML code is just about gone. Specialization is here.
I don't think it's going to be harder for the next generation of programmers and webnauts to learn the increasingly complex systems of web design, but it was fun to see nicely-formatted websites with readable HTML. We don't need to return to it, but the higher amounts of specialization needed for modern web design will only produce increasingly esoteric communities dedicated to it. The digital jack of all trades soon might need to move out.
As a non-programmer, I do run into a wall after a while: I see that Scripting's .css "DayTemplate" helps the website present Tweets and the small Retweet button, but I can't really figure out if this is part of a plugin or hard-coded into the website theme. So, while I have just enough ability to admire the work of some lines of code, I can't fully involve myself in the website's front-end design. I end up window shopping tools that I can't comprehend.
Years ago, it was a lot more fun to inspect the HTML of a page. I could understand how a website works when lines of text were only separated by <div> and <br>. I could understand headers and footers, bodies and text markup. It's a lot harder to read HTML when every aspect of a website is designated as its own element. General purpose HTML code is just about gone. Specialization is here.
I don't think it's going to be harder for the next generation of programmers and webnauts to learn the increasingly complex systems of web design, but it was fun to see nicely-formatted websites with readable HTML. We don't need to return to it, but the higher amounts of specialization needed for modern web design will only produce increasingly esoteric communities dedicated to it. The digital jack of all trades soon might need to move out.