DRY notwithstanding, I agree with Animats that design should be done visually, not programmatically. Using code for layout is just as bad as programming by flowcharts. Programming tools should reflect how a programmer thinks about the problem, and design tools should reflect how a designer thinks about the problem. Expensive "web programmers" shouldn't be needed for web design, just as "print programmers" aren't needed for print design.
> Expensive "web programmers" shouldn't be needed for web design, just as "print programmers" aren't needed for print design.
You don't need web programmers for web design. You can export from a WISYWIG to HTML, or design a big ol' GIF and post it on Wordpress. Lots of restaurants do that sort of thing.
But you probably want something that interacts with the user, changes layouts based on screen size, provides information to disabled users, validates and submits information, allows commenting and moderation of comments, etc. Eg, a program. And you do need programmers for that.
Why can't the designer specify that? Because the current tools suck for designers (i.e. they were made for programmers).
> provides information to disabled users
Ditto.
> allows commenting and moderation of comments
There should be ready made solutions for that, usable by non-programmers. If you wanna buy a toaster, you don't go "oh, it's an Electrical Device and we need an Electrical Engineer". A toaster is complicated inside, but it was made with good engineering so users don't have to care.
The web is not like that. The needs of most websites are well understood by now, but somehow we still need programmers to make layouts and comment systems. My only explanation is that the whole system of HTTP/HTML/CSS/JS is poorly designed, in a way that's very hard to fix. Name me one other medium where positioning elements on the screen/page/whatever isn't a completely solved problem. Show me a single game developer who just can't seem to get the crosshair centered vertically on the screen.
But unlike print, the web is never not code. There are still people who design for the web making Photoshop comps that they throw over a wall to "web programmers" to make it work but while some say you should design in the browser, most say the designer making comps should have some understanding of what works on the web.
Print designers also have to think about the platform their design is presented on e.g. what kind of color bleeding will happen in the press when an image is used on newsprint.
I'm talking more about the kind of web that we could have, not the kind that we actually got. There's nothing about the concept of "worldwide set of pages connected by hyperlinks" that stops non-programmers from contributing. Non-programmers can already create printed pages (pretty) and spreadsheets (computational), so with better tech they could create the web as well.
