I know, I know. I was being all good about posting on a regular basis, and then BLAM! I was gone again. But this time I have a really good excuse: I was trapped in Tron. In addition to putting on our weekly Wednesday concerts, I’ve spent the last 7 days applying the new branding adopted by the City of Newcastle earlier this year to the City’s website. Which means I’ve been reading, breathing and dreaming HTML, CSS and JavaScript for a week. And seriously, I can’t even see straight anymore.
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, imagine reading an 8000 page book that repeats the following paragraph (that is actually 15 times longer than this excerpt) over and over and Over and OVER:
<body bgcolor=”#FFFFFF” leftmargin=”0″ topmargin=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″ class=”bgimage” onload=”MM_preloadImages(‘images/large_button_view_agendas_f2.gif’,'images/large_button_
view_minutes_f2.gif’,'images/large_button_view_ordinances_f2.gif’,'images/large_button_view_
resolutions_f2.gif’)”>
<!–#include file=”inc_header.asp” –>
<table width=”792″ border=”0″ align=”center” cellpadding=”0″ cellspacing=”0″>
<tr>
<td width=”5″ rowspan=”9″ background=”images/index_r12_c1_h.jpg”><img src=”images/index_r12_c1_h.jpg” alt=”" name=”index_r12_c1″ width=”5″ height=”57″ border=”0″ id=”index_r12_c1″ /></td>
<td width=”126″ valign=”top”><!–#include file=”inc_left_top.asp” –></td>
<td width=”654″ rowspan=”2″ align=”left” valign=”top” bgcolor=”#FFFFFF”><table width=”654″ border=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”3″>
<tr>
<td align=”center”><img src=”images/header_residents.jpg” alt=”Residents Header” width=”650″ height=”100″ />
<p align=”left” class=”small”><a href=”index.asp” class=”breadcrumbs”>Home</a> > <a href=”city_hall.asp” class=”breadcrumbs”>City
Hall</a> > <a href=”ch_city_departments_and_staff.asp” class=”breadcrumbs”>City Departments & Staff</a> > City Clerk</p></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href=”javascript:void(0);” onMouseOut=”MM_swapImgRestore()” onMouseOver=”MM_swapImage(‘index_r10_c3′,”,’images/index_r10_c3_f2.jpg’,1);”></a><a href=”javascript:void(0);” onMouseOut=”MM_swapImgRestore()” onMouseOver=”MM_swapImage(‘index_r10_c5′,”,’images/index_r10_c5_f2.jpg’,1);”></a><a href=”javascript:void(0);” onMouseOut=”MM_swapImgRestore()” onMouseOver=”MM_swapImage(‘index_r10_c6′,”,’images/index_r10_c6_f2.jpg’,1);”></a>
<table width=”635″ border=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”2″>
<tr>
<td width=”509″ valign=”top”><p><span class=”xbigMaroon”>City Clerk</span></p>
<p>The City Clerks Office is a great place to start if you have an inquiry. If we are not able to help you, we can definitely direct you…
Not only do you have to READ that, you have to CHANGE that. By cutting and pasting and hunting down random, old, broken code. By doing a lot of twiddling with tables and widths and heights. By opening and closing and refreshing every single page on the site. All of which means clicking the same damn mouse buttons one-hundred-million-zillion times and your Carpal Tunnel won’t like it ONE BIT and oh my god, who INVENTED the mouse?! BECAUSE I AM GOING TO KILL HIM.
It really wasn’t supposed to be so intense. The idea was simple: in order to save time, money, sanity and user confusion – we’d simply leave the structure of the site alone, and just refresh the existing images. By creating new images and saving them over the old ones, the site would instantly look brand new.
HOWEVER.
What I failed to realize was that while this site does use CSS, it does not use it EVERYWHERE. And in plain English, that means there were little pockets of code changes that had to be made on EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. Also? The designers (being designers) did not stop at just updating the images on the site*. They also updated the fonts. And the Tables. And the location of breadcrumbs. And the alignment of text. And DOUBLED the number of buttons through the cunning use of mouse-over effects.
So the project took 5 times as much work as expected. But truth be told, I still loved every second of it. Because:
- I am a geek
- It looks HAWESOME
City of Newcastle website 1.0
*By ‘designers update’ I mean the designers ‘sent me four sample pictures of what all the elements on the site are SUPPOSED to look like’ not ‘sent me all the images I’d need to MAKE the site look like what they want’. No. I had to create every last image, too. And that’s important because even though I can’t take credit for the DESIGN of the site, I am DEFINITELY taking credit for the UPDATE of the site. Because that? Was a helluva lot of work.
© 2009 – 2010, jules.maas. All rights reserved.
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I think my problem is that I really like things to be in order and look neat and pretty, but I can only visualize the end result and therefore don’t have the patience to sit there and MAKE it do what I want. Hmm, maybe that’s the problem with my not-so-clean house too…
You know, I think 3/4 the reason I love web design so much is that HTML, CSS, javascript, etc. really feed my OCD tendencies. “Hear me, o rowdy chaos of code – there WILL BE ORDER!!!”
Blech. I know the very basics of HTML. The rest of it just baffles me!