I’ve had enough. The web is experiencing another kind of Eternal September. Reams of designers are being unleashed upon us, armed with Photoshop and Mac Books; ready to blow our eyes out of our skulls with their colourful and creative designs. They have more buzz words than teenagers have mom jokes. Their websites are filled with accolades of their awesomeness — but their markup and style-sheets tell another story. If I open up another one of these sites and see this kind of code, I think I might start spamming these people with my anger.
A large part of the problem? Adobe.
They just released version 3 of their ubiquitous Creative Suite. The software which costs more than the hardware it will end up running on claims to have new workflow features for unleashing the creativity of the designer on the web. Of course, any professional worth their weight will tell you that the markup and CSS output by Adobe products is messy and generic boilerplate code that should never be used on a live web site without touching it up (which kind of defeats the point of it).
The sad thing is, Adobe’s marketing material makes them look as clueless as their users are about the web. Who hired these people to write this drivel? I’ve been bashing on Adobe a fair bit in the past few weeks. They just keep giving me so much material to beat them over the head with. It’s insane… and you’re insane if the features page on their site actually convinces you to buy their product.
For example, consider this following excerpt:
Keep pace with evolving technologies and standards. Design with HTML and CSS; integrate with development technologies like XHTML, XML, Adobe ColdFusion®, ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, and PHP; test content across browsers and operating systems; and prepare for the new Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).
IPv6!? There is no way Creative Suite has anything to do with IPv6; clearly showing that the marketing people at Adobe are complete idiots.
All the software a good web designer needs is free.
And it doesn’t come with hokey buzz-speak.