An illness.
Some time back, I was let known that I’m officially sick. And to make things worse, there’s no cure for it. The diagnosis says that I’ve reached the final stage of this illness and there’s no turning back. I was actually advised to spend the remaining of my days meaningfully and do things that I really want to do alot.
I was lost for a moment before I finally picked myself up and said, “All right I accept it“. Denying won’t cure me. I know what I have to do, I have to fulfill my wishes and help others with theirs too.
And recently the symptons are showing. So obviously that I am once again reminded that my days are getting limited by the day… so here is the story, if you are interested.
I consider myself a web designer to a certain extent though I am no professional. I can do designs with XHTML and CSS for content and presentation respectively, using no table hacks. And I insist on writing semantic XHTML though some of my friends just can’t understand why am I so persistent. To make things worse, they think insisting on using XHTML/CSS for a web site is already crazy enough and I have to insist on using semantic markups so every XHTML markup codes are what they mean.
They think I’m hopeless. I think I am too, actually.
Nowadays whenever I read any server-side scripting books that have examples with HTML and tables, I would exclaim “oh, bad HTML and table hacks!“. I have reached that stage when I would comment on people’s work! And when I view websites, I would check if it’s designed using table-hacks or presented by CSS and I would sound slightly disgusted whenever I realise it is the former.
And the main project for my SIP semester is doing a web portal for a club house, some sort of full CMS thingy for them. And like always, I am insisting on doing semantic markups and CSS presentation. But the greatest difference this time is that I would not be maintaining the site once my team gets the entire back-end PHP scripting and front-end web design handed over to them upon completion.
That said, it means that I would have to plan administration updates carefully so everything will remain semantically correct even after I do not have control to make sure it remains that way. You may think I’m crazy, but somehow I worry that the work that I once took pride in doing will soon be turned into one that’s full of <br /> and <font> hacks because the new (or original) webmaster only wants visual effects and does not bother about semantically correct codes.
I think I’m trying too hard to perfect. Maybe my friends can’t stand me anymore! But they don’t know how important it is to have semantically correct HTML markups and how important it is to have standard-compliant websites! Just ask yourself if you will want to ship products that don’t comply to ISO standards, or would you want buy any that don’t; this way you will understand my passion or persistence in both the markups and the standards.
Alas, I’m suffering from Webular Standarditis. An illness that’s being over-concerned with web standards and all.
Deadly, I say.