by Karina Beattiger 29.April 2008 14:53
There's a handful of sharp-edged burdens that martyrdesigners must carry, but chief among them is probably the designer-to-developer crossover. The one thing I've heard Heather say repeatedly -- whether she knew anyone was listening or not, I may yet never know -- is that the spacing gets all crazy from the proof to the cut stage. Though we do our best to eyeball and, sometimes, flat out use the CS3 selection tool to measure the exact padding measurements, there's a lot -- a lot! -- of room for error. Or, ahem, developers' judgment.
Just recently, Heather enlightened me to the secrets of the "design column" -- a way of using columns not as text layout objects, but as visual cues for what elements should go where. I'm sorry, but until you have passed the 100 Trials of the Wayward Peacock and returned to me with the diamond-tipped hairpin of the seventh sister of the Lost Shogun, I can't say anymore.* (They're always watching...)
Enter Eric Puidokas' Firefox extentions, GridFox! This little gem of an add-on (sorry, IE'ers) allows the user to input the measurements of the designers' design columns. The add-on then overlays a shadowed opacity in the exact shape of the columns and gutters, providing immediate visual cues as to how far off the designers' intent we really are. A quick glance at the screen can show that your header, which should be 10 pixels from the left edge, is actually something like 20px, and that just isn't right.
Now, it also gives, in my unasked for opinion, feelings of severe complacency: don't let this handy tool take away your own eye for "how things work" on the web! The biggest disconnect between those who are primarily designers and those who are primarily developers is the translation of "what looks awesome" to "what will look less (or more) awesome, but still work on the internet". It'd be far too easy to mimic the designer's intent exactly, forgetting to keep an eye out on those layout issues that could crop up and affect usability and interface.
A seamless blend, that's what I promote. Inner peace and outer harmony, spiritual well-being between those who design, those who don't, and those who do a little bit of everything.
Having spent the past couple of weeks dealing with a particularly
sharp-eyed client, I can't share enough how something like this, when
used in conjunction with a designer who actually uses the design column
method, would have come in extremely handy.
* Stay tuned for future post explaining columns, if I can't find a better description on another website first. Shhhh.