Andy Clarke Gets Transcendent
February 12, 2008Andy Clarke is the author of Transcending CSS (New Riders, 2006) and one of twelve great speakers appearing at An Event Apart New Orleans on April 24–25.
Q: You advocate “transcending the web of today.” What does this mean to a designer, and how does one start transcending?
I know, from speaking to many creative designers, that many feel that working on the web involves accepting many more limitations than perhaps might be acceptable in other areas of the graphic arts. Designers feel limited by many different factors such as typography, the limitations of XHTML markup and CSS and also what is possible within certain browsers, particularly often-used, but fat and wheezy browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 for Windows. But perhaps the biggest limiting factor is what designers themselves feel are possible.
Transcending is about moving away from outdated notions, for example that a design should look the same in all browsers. It is about designing the best possible visual experience for people using the best browsers (and then considering what happens for people using outdated technologies). This is the opposite of progressive enhancement where a designer would design for the most common, lowest common denominator browser (even it is the least capable), and then add extra visual decoration to reward people who use more modern software. Transcending about designing the best for the best.
Transcending also involves using all the available tools, for example CSS selectors, even though some may not be implemented in all browsers. This can also be extended to using already implemented, or previews, of CSS3 where various browsers now implement some features such as multiple background images in Safari, Multi-columns in Firefox or Media Queries in Opera.
Once you let go of the notion that a design has to look the same across all browsers, your creative options multiply and this can only be a good thing for a designer’s creative appetite, clients and the web in general.
