My method is very similar to kthdsn's. I have never been a strikingly consummate visual design artist. Don't get me wrong, I have an operational (and, in my humble opinion, fairly strong) understanding and knowledge of CSS. I have mastered HTML since I was 11 (yes, pshaw, it's only a markup language), and JavaScript since I was 13. I'm proficient at PHP, Perl, and Python to name a few. As you can see, my talents rest with programmatic design, rather than visual layouts. Thus, when I create a website, webpage, or web-oriented tool, I usually start with a plain text version (but nicely organized and semanticized/tagged), with some scrap CSS from old designs/stylesheets. When I am satisfied with the extent of the content, I usually work on the stylesheet. I believe in dynamic programming (and modularization) to extravagant extrema, so oftentimes I make sure that the stylesheet, HTML, JavaScript, PHP (or other server-side code) are all fully 100% independent. This means the HTML is often bland and linear, and my progressively ornamental stylesheet provides any desired visual aesthetics (a la CSSZenGarden).
Web design is wonderful, truly!  |