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Web design

I am not a professional web designer, just an amateur hobbyist, but have attained some experience with basic HTML and CSS over the years I have maintained my website. I seem to enjoy HTML and CSS, which are markup languages and are easy to learn, but so far have not been inclined to try actual programming languages such as Javascript and PHP; learning the latter is rather daunting and I don’t feel up to it.

I am conservative in the matter of producing a site for myself, and while I am aware of the latest design and development fads, I am not inclined to change my process in order to keep up with whatever is fashionable (yes, I am getting older). This page contains my opinions on some of these trends.

HTML 5: the next big thing – or not?

HTML5 with its new tags is the current iteration of HTML, and is mostly implemented in up-to-date browsers (Internet Explorer 8 and lower do not recognize these). But there are issues with the correct use of these tags.

I am considering going back to <div> tags rather than some HTML 5 tags (<header>, <footer>, etc.) – usage of the latter is still confusing in some areas as is pointed out in The Truth about HTML5 website (and book). One would logically expect that the new <header> tag would be used at the top of a site for the heading, and the <footer> for the bottom part, but apparently not:

Footer: The <footer> tag is not for website footers but for footer content that relate to the nearest sectioning element (these are the four sectioning elements: section, article, aside and nav). The footer can also be used for content such as that of bylines, related documents and copyright data. It can also contain entire sections and this will then lend itself to things like appendices, indexes and licence agreements.

Header: Like the <footer> tag, the <header> tag isn’t for website headers – as you would be forgiven for thinking. It’s for introductory content relating to the nearest sectioning element. It can be used for larger-scale content such as a table of contents or foreword, but is more commonly used for headings and standfirst paragraphs.

– The Web Design Book, volume 5

That is more confusing than ever! It seems to needlessly complicate HTML coding. There is also a lot of confusion over when the <section> or <article> elements should be used. I wonder if HTML 5, or at least some elements of it, will eventually go the way of XHTML 2, which was supposed to be the next big trend in web coding in the mid-2000s, but ended up being discarded in favor of HTML 5. HTML 5 is under the control of one person, Ian Hickson, which is controversial in itself. (Journal 4/9/2015)

To quote Koshka: “HTML-wise, one need only learn HTML4 to obtain all of the necessary tools to build a great website. I still haven’t fully learned HTML5 myself because it seems to be nothing but useless bloat and confusing changes to long-held standards.” I will likewise not use the new tags as I prefer to keep my code as simple as possible without extraneous clutter. Likewise with my Cascading Style Sheet; a huge amount of selectors and rules have been (and continue to be) added, but a lot of these are more for decoration.

There is a table of all the elements here, with when they were introduced and whether they are still in use, so safe elements can be picked from this – ones that will work in browsers from at least HTML 3.2 onward up to now. I have listed the safe ones below:

CSS preprocessors and site generators

Web development trends in the 2010s seem to involve making the once-simple process of creating a website a lot more complicated and obtuse.

One web development trend that has become very fashionable in the last few years is the use of CSS preprocessors to output cascading stylesheets rather than hand-code the raw CSS. The most common current processors are Sass and LESS; they require Javascript to compile the files into a CSS stylesheet. Another fashion is to use a static site generator to compile the website from various files; these may be in Markdown or some other text language rather than HTML. And simple uploading via FTP is also regarded as outdated; one must now have a Git account to which files are “pushed,” then uploaded to one’s site from there.

Using these tools involves installing many whimsically-named programs upon one’s computer in order to follow the process of generating a website. These add a layer of abstraction and complication between the site author and their webpages – and extra dependencies. The longevity of many of these programs is doubtful; they may or may not be supported by their developers into the future. Another major disadvantage is that any changes to a page means the entire site must be regenerated. Using the terminal (command prompt in Windows) to communicate with the programs rather than a GUI is also common, which do not make them beginner-friendly.

All this supposedly reduces a developer’s workload!

No Complicators

I’m still a big believer in keeping HTML and CSS as simple as possible. Therefore, I choose not to use any preprocessors or frameworks, as those take time to install and set up, are hard for non-user developers to make updates too and they include a lot of crap and unusable code. Plus I’m too OCD about my code organization to ever allow a computer to take over. I find it a sad trend lately that it’s everyone’s goal to make CSS as complicated as possible. It’s a really easy language and you shouldn’t need “helpers”, but each to their own!

– Amber Weinberg

I have not tried to learn these, and don’t feel inclined to as my own simple process to produce my website suits me. What I do find annoying is the reaction of many web developers to those who hold such “old-fashioned” attitudes; the comments to any articles that express doubt about using preprocessors and the like are often quite hostile – essentially, “You don’t like change, you’re bad!”. (Not surprisingly, many of the angry commenters are young.) To me, it seems more generally that these tools essentially provide shiny new objects to play with. As a society we are addicted to the new and are always on the search for the next novelty; a trait that has become an unhealthy obsession.

The beauty of simple HTML and CSS is that anyone can create webpages with only a miminum of knowledge; they are democratic languages that are easy to learn. Adding all these other tools takes that amateur-friendly aspect away from web development.

The extract below echoes how I regard my own website – the creating process is in some regards more fulfilling than the completion:

I’ve also been made aware of static site generators that can create website pages from templates after you do some coding to set them up. I don’t know if I’ll ever switch to a static site generator for a couple of reasons, though. The first is that several of them seem to require knowledge of programming languages that I don’t know. I don’t have any computer science or coding background aside from HTML and CSS. I also don’t have a particular interest in learning new languages (including JavaScript??) But more importantly: I don’t think the website itself is my goal. I think making the website by hand, page by page, is my goal. That’s why I have been so uninspired by my Wordpress sites for years and why I became so excited when I realized that I could just make my own: I’m a hobbyist website builder. I always have been. It’s just that I forgot for 20 years that this is something I enjoy doing.

CMS or static?

I maintain my site manually – that is, it is comprised of static hand-coded html files, not a dynamic database. This can get a bit tedious (and possibly rather insanity-inducing!) as the site continues to grow over the years, and I have considered using a content management system (CMS) such as Wordpress or similar at times, but there are pros and cons to both approaches. Note that my views below shouldn’t be regarded as canonical advice; my process works for me as I have the time to put into my site, but someone such as a professional web developer would likely find it inefficient.

These are on the topic of web design, and many espouse the spirit of the “Old Web” – the hand-coded, uncensored, personal World Wide Web of the late 1990s and 2000s before the toxic walled gardens of social media, government censorship attempts, commercialization and intrusive advertising took over.

HTML5 dissidents:

Arguments against the enforcement of HTTPS encryption by browser vendors, which renders older HTTP-only sites inaccessible and is not necessary for personal, non-commercial sites that don’t collect data:

Friday, 30 January 2026 at 1:52:37 pm