Experienced webdesigners tend to forget that beginning in webdesigning, especially in css, is really hard. This is also the case when one has to make the jump from the deprecated way of designing and HTML coding to the use of divisions and CSS.

Basically, using standards in coding and CSS is the act of separating content from structure while managing the latter to allow it to hold the former in place. In this case, the code is the holder and works for the profit of content and not the way round. Now, if you want to get started in CSS or change your designing approach you HAVE to learn. The big question remains: where and how ?

A quick search in any search engine will show that you have more CSS tutorial websites than you can shake a stick at. I have nothing against tutorials but these, however, won’t get you in full swing without the knowledge of basic concepts. Many webdesigners have started CSS the hard way tinkering some code here and there and wading through the neverending fog of browser testing, code hacking and DOM inspecting. CSS being the standard way of doing things now, what was supposed to happen did happen: hundreds of books! There too you have your numerous bookstore shelf but the “for dummies” thing won’t get your backside out of the fire.

Which one then? For me, the question is simple and easy and the answer is short: Jeffrey Zeldman.

In 1998, Jeffrey co-founded—and from 1999 to 2002 he directed—The Web Standards Project, a grassroots coalition that helped bring standards to our browsers. Once browser makers got with the program, Jeffrey and his cohorts persuaded designers and developers to change the way they created websites—an effort to which A List Apart also greatly contributed.

My opinion is that Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman is the eye-opener any webdesigner must read at least once in his/her life. My own personal experience is based on this book, read some 5 years ago. The power of this book is the way in which it presents web standards and css without actually being a dumb step by step tutorial book. This is the one book to read in the first place as it is written for technical and non-technical persons. Once this is done, you’ll be ready to read any other CSS oriented book or tutorial site fully understanding them and why you’re doing it.

Back in the 90s, the web was an anarchy concerning the way browsers worked or the way websites were coded. CSS barely had any value and Flash was believed to be the ultimate webdesign experience. Then ergonomics came into the picture. A person’s attention had to be captured in 7 seconds. The underlying idea was to give out an interesting and fully loaded page in 7 seconds. At the time we were all using 56k/s modems and 7 seconds were believed to be short. We now have DSL lines and 7 seconds seem to be ages to wait for a page to load compared to the milliseconds a page like Google’s home takes.

The problem got partly solved when web standards got introduced. Why web standards and how ?

Most webdesigners, myself included, have a graphic arts background. Let’s make things clear right here. IT lectures do exist and arts and design lectures also. However, the bridging between the two is inexistant. Webdesigners think in pictures and not in code. This is where the first webdesign attempts went wrong. Having nothing to hold the pictures together, webdesigners had to turn towards the next best solution available: TABLE.

The benefit of TABLE was that it allowed the arranging of boxes themselves holding images. It was “tight”. Our strictly visual mentality was satisfied about it and we would be boasting about our (visual) achievements while throwing semantics, accessibility and all the other issues out of the window without solving them. This is where web standards get into the picture.

The web standards, called “recommendations” by the World Wide Web Consortium, is the general term used to define the formal (and accepted) technical best practices of designing and developing websites. The methods provided and recommended by the Consortium cover all aspects of webdesigning going from the most basic HTML elements to Javascripting and CSS. HTML and CSS are no longer pariahs in the IT world as the standards guide them and they are not just a means to an end without grasping their nature and their use. All in all, web standards stand at the limit of separating content from style and presentation from structure.

Today, most modern browsers support a vast majority of those standards. Standards give designers the possibility of controlling every visual element on a page without having to hack the core nature of the code (which was the case for TABLE). This is the beginning of semantics. CSS coupled to the right use of HTML tags create better structure, respecting headers for example is important, and, most of all, cuts down the use of custom style tags and selectors in the code (this is the case with table cells for example). This lightens up the whole thing and accelerates page loading time.

TABLE is widely used in the Mauritian context. When analysing most of the mauritian major companies’ corporate websites we can see that TABLE is still used and nearly none is compliant. This practice hinders web evolution and weighs a lot on the Mauritian DSL offer. For those not aware of this: bandwidth is usally sold packed to a website. The problem of heavy websites is that if the packaged bandwidth is consumed, two solutions are offered: the drastic site shutdown by the host or surplus bandwidth charges which are usually very expensive.

Welcome to the Web Design Bureau of Mauritius, which might be called the wdbm. This is in no way a self -centered blog nor anything close to that. The aim of this blog is to give you tools and guidance to webdesigning or better/smarter webdesigning in the Mauritian context. Let me introduce and explain.

I am Sachin Brojmohun, experienced webdesigner and CSS integrator of Mauritian origin living in France. I have worked and acquired experience in this field over the past 8 years. Patriot and curious over the evolution of the Internet in Mauritius (thing that had not even budded when I was a student back in Mauritius) I tried to find what was being done in terms of webdesign in the country. I was surprised to find so many webdesigners and some really talented persons working in the field in Mauritius. The main trouble remained technique, standards and norms. Accessibility is practically unknown and bandwidth saving nearly not taken into consideration.

I am no messiah nor teacher. I want to share my experience and make things move forward a bit for our country. There’s so much potential and we need to drive it, taking into consideration the limits of what is offered in terms of bandwidth, hosting and guidance to our webdesigners. Hopefully, this site will turn out to be a place where Mauritian webdesigners can meet, share and show what they can do to the whole world.