Markup Strategies: Web Based User Interface Development in Practice

Let’s get this started with a quote:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

I’ve had this little quip from our old friend Abe Lincoln taped to the white board in my home office for more than 6 years now. I’ve cleaned the office out a number of times since then and I’ve reached mechanically toward this little slip of paper, only to withdraw my hand as it sensed the properties of something essentially useful. Something the room would be lessened by in absence.

But what does the quote above have to do with HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript or even web development in general? The simple answer is, whatever it means to YOU.

I began this blog for a simple reason. As a store place for all the energy I have poured and am pouring into the many axes I have sharpened and will sharpen again. My profession being web development, and particularly user interface implementation, the axes stand as metaphor for all the above technologies (and many more) whose use I refine in my day to day exploits.

Hopefully the content here will serve as both a journal and compendium of the struggles to put forth a better product, capture best practices for continued use and record of the most useful failures.

At its essence though, this blog is about the PRACTICE of web based user interface development, not the THEORY. About what has worked in what situations, what didn’t and why.

So let’s do something a little more perfectly. Let’s get practicing.

Here’s the strategy……