XHTML and CSS is part of design.
In Andy Clarke’s latest blog entry at his newly created For a Beautiful Web site, Andy wrote an article about how he thinks it is Time to stop showing clients static design visuals.
I agree with a lot of what he says, and this statement from Andy in response to a comment at the bottom of the article really empowers the point behind this approach.
“I don’t think of working with CSS as part of the development phase. For me, development is ExpressionEngine and technical work. XHTML and CSS is part of design.”
For quite a while now I have realised this approach is a very valuable one, I can just as quickly build a site in XHTML and CSS as I can in Photoshop and this allows me to show to my clients exactly what they are getting. They sign-off on an actual interactive web page and not a flat Photoshop composition.
There are many benefits of doing this such as the lack of worry about font inconsistencies and stacks, bugs cross-browser and platform, static visuals, page fluidity, client interaction with page elements, use of the latest CSS selectors… and the list goes on.
I feel this approach works best for me but each job is different and I do still have clients signing off on comps just as much as actual web sites, this though, I feel will be the way forward. Also read:
- 37signals – Why we skip Photoshop
- Jon Hicks – Graphics Editor or Text Editor