D2stuff.com relaunch.

Dennis of D2stuff.com fame has updated his site. The new design and approach represents a a focus shift from product (tools for the horror show that is FrontPage and the legions who use it but have no idea about the tools because they are most often neophytes) to content.

Go check it out. Send him an email. Tell him to write more. And if you happen to use FrontPage buy his products while you still have the chance. They do stuff. Stuff you probably had no idea you wanted the program to be able to do. Then you'll be all impressed and more productive and you'll have helped the economy and by extension, helped defeat terrorism. Or buy it anyway and then go here if that last sentense smacks of sarcasm to you.

It's also noteworthy to point out that site is valid XHTML and valid CSS and that it was built, of course, with Frontpage, the most maligned product in the web wyswig universe. See folks, it's not the product so much as it is the author. It can be done!

"Experienced programmer and business analyst builds valid site using Frontpage!" That's a sentence that most people think should be headline on the April 1 edition of Slashdot or some such. Yet here it is just March and it's been done. Stop the presses.

Sure, FP will let you churn out some hideous themes based site and sure there's the pure evil of their navigation bars and such and other "built in Features". But lets face it, that's for newbies. If you are an advanced user and you open the program and can't figure out any other course of action than that you should just close the application fire up monster.com for new career ideas.

Finally, I would like to point out the validity of D2Stuff.com to my troops at work. Boys, Mr. Derobertis is not a designer. He is not a card carrying member of WaSP, or the Meyer or Zeldman cults or a contributor to CSSZenGarden. He is, like you, an experienced programmer that works on the front end. Witness the valid code. Done with Frontpage no less.

I'm not trying to insult Dennis here - far from it. He lives and breathes Microsoft technologies and, as demonstrated, will "eat his own dogfood" and his passion and committment to what he believes in is laudable. My point is that it is not so hard to do if you just pay attention and invest some time in learning how to strucuture your markup. Lets face it - some people use "professional" level programs and can still turn out a hacked up pig of a site. And the funny thing is that same person, whose site might wind up on the front page of web pages that suck, will still deride Frontpage. It boggles my mind.

Folks - they are just tools. Bob Villa can perform with a Black & Decker Hammer or a Stanley Hammer. Feel me?

It's a brave new web standards plus CSS world out there. Put your jacket on and go visit:

www.alistapart.com - for people who make websites. Read and learn. Implement.
www.zeldman.com - patriarch of the web standards movement
www.webstandards.org/ - deals with, uh - web standards.
www.csszengarden.com - view the source. Wow. It's always the same. How can that be?
www.quirksmode.com - because browsers suck and the rest of us need guys like this.
www.w3schools.com/- the educational branch of the mothership. Learn for free.