If we were Apple

Posted on | April 28, 2008 | No Comments

Having a bit of a funny turn today, thinking about webdesign and layout. It’s almost that time where work dies down and I dedicate huge chunks of my own spare time to do work over summer for my employers, all gratis of course.

Summer is usually the time that the website gets an overhaul from the ground up, to cement in all the bric-a-brac that’s tacked on during the year and not had enough time dedicated to making it really work as such.

I had a quick look round at some of the big sites that I visit often, or daily. I have been known to ‘borrow’ some ideas from sites. Yes, yes, I know – bad me. But everything’s really been done before. The trick is in re-doing it in a way that’s equal or better and not just a carbon copy. That’s a plus with webdesign – an idea can be ‘borrowed’ and the code or implementation can be worlds apart. It’s only the interface that will parallel the original.

Lightbox JS, and many other ‘add ons’ are become more of the norm. With mild templating changes being all that’s needed to make a good idea one that can be used all over. Obviously GNU and more open source licensing has meant that copyright isn’t so much of an issue anymore.

Well, as I flaunted with the ideas of re-jigging the website to a more aesthetically pleasing work, I realised that the content of the site and the ‘way it works’ from an inside point of view (corporately) was the biggest limiting factor. A nice clean design would only work so far until someone uttered those fateful words ‘can we make it do this™’. Then, it would crumble to pieces. I can’t say no, and no one else realises the implications of working against a CMS system’s inherent structures.