WEB STANDARDS CREATIVITY

Figure 2-1. On the left, the original design, including blocks of template content in all three columns
As far as the marketing department is concerned, once we
come up with an acceptable design, our work is done. The
pixels have been painted on the screen, so there’s nothing
more to do, right? Ah, but we know better, don’t we?
There is, of course, more to creating any site template
than just the design. Somehow, we have to get from concept
to sketches to visual composites to markup to styles.
Then, after a dash of browser testing, we wind up with a
finished product. That process is usually enough work on
its own. In this case, I also needed to account for specific
markup requirements dictated by the CMS. I’ll review
each of the steps involved in a moment, but first, a crash
course on CMS for the uninitiated. If you’re already familiar
with the basic functions of a CMS, feel free to hand
the book to a nearby colleague in need of some education
in this area, and grab yourself a quick cup of tea
while he reads the next few paragraphs and looks at the
pretty pictures.
chapter 2 Taming a Wild CMS with CSS, Flash, and JavaScript
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