Innovative Future Web Design

Recent Projects

I’ve recently been testing e-commerce software for ease of setup and customisation and the ease of use for the end user to maintain their shop.  More of that will come in a later post.

Having carried out that project I’m proud to say I’ve been invited to join the Google Page Creator Beta testing program to help them test out the features, functionality, ease of use, standards compliance and accessibility issues before public release.

Google Page Creator will be an online tool to make it easier for people to create and publish their own web sites.   It’s not groundbreaking, for example Yahoo Site Builder has been around some time amongst others but I think it will be an interesting development if it goes beyond beta. Incidentally the initial main difference between the two is that Google Page Creator is an online tool whereas Yahoo is downloadable. With the full force of Google behind it I’d hope it will become a useful tool but modern standards compliance, tableless design through CSS and accessibility will be difficult for them to attain with a site “generator”.

There are obvious conflicts of interest with my being a web designer and some might suggest there’s potential for losing business to services such as these. I do believe I can keep an open mind and that web designers and tools such as this are able to work with each other, and I believe, and hope, that they serve different markets and purposes.

If Google and others such as Blogs and Newsvine can encourage people to the Internet as providers and not just users then all power to them. I believe it will be of long term benefit to designers and the Internet as a whole in removing the fear of the Internet, particularly that engendered by the “media” in the last few years, and will give a greater understanding of the design process underlining the need for web designers to create accessible, standards-compliant sites that are crafted to the end user.

I would suggest that tools that “Generate” sites will struggle for some time to meet professional standards of accessibility and standards-compliance and negate the need for a designer/coder. Having said that there are implications which clients, particularly those from smaller businesses, will feel are deal breakers. The most obvious is that of cost. but I do believe that using these tools will go a long way to reinforcing the need for designers and not undermine them as clients discover that fully functional, professional sites, particularly those selling products through e-commerce, are not nearly as simple as they first thought.

Keep an eye out for progress reports on the Google Beta…..