This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Anthony Eden.
Original Post: Re: Separate HTML "designers" from "real" programmers?
Feed Title: All Things
Feed URL: http://allthings.mp/
Feed Description: Blogging about Java, Python, technology and generally anything which is of interest to me.
I've always been amazed of the success of template-based web-frameworks (such as JSP, Tapestry, Velocity) over object-oriented ones (such as Echo and wingS). Just recently it occured to me that most projects actually has a separate team of HTML "designers". The motivation for this separation between HTML "designers" and "real" programmers being that designing HTML requires a completely different skill-set and that the actual produced HTML-code isn't actually source-code in the same sense of the word.
In my experience this separation is in many cases completely flawed.
First, please read http://www.theserverside.com/home/thread.jsp?thread_id=19744 if you haven't already. It sounds like your team is reinventing the wheel. If you really believe in this method of development then there are already frameworks which accomplish this.
Whether or not designers and developers should be separated is a moot question: they are in many, many organizations. Most of the good designers develop the layout of the site with Photoshop and then convert it into a template which can be used throughout the site. This is why JPublish provides a means for having a design template applied to a whole site. Then content authors can just write their content without worrying about all of the design parts. Some times that boundry must be crossed when their is content which requires complicated designing, but in most cases the line is clear and the separation is good.
If you are just figuring out that "most projects actually has a separate team of HTML "designers"" then how can you say "In my experience this separation is in many cases completely flawed" anyhow?