We promised a surprise for you guys. Well, here it is: Interview with Eric Meyer, renowned master of CSS. He requires no introduction to an audience of which so large a percentage is composed of people who actually use his books as reference. In this interview with Template Artists, Eric shares with us some of his experiences as a developer and his views on the latest developments in the web industry.

Read on and please do not forget to favourite the news item here:[link]

TA: Can we begin with a brief self introduction?

Eric: Well, I'm Eric Meyer, longtime web developer and author. I've been at this since late 1993 and was a university webmaster for the first seven of those, during which I helped develop policies, actually established a couple of very early web design memes, led the effort to put an entire city encylopedia online, created and published CSS support charts and information, and pulled a Y2K prank.

After that I spent a year in consulting, and then worked for Netscape for two years, during which time I ran DevEdge and redesigned the Amazing Fish Cam page. In 2003 I went solo and have been there ever since.

Along the way I've written six books about CSS and a whole lot of articles and blog posts about web standards in general. It's kind of a passion with me.

TA: At what point did you generate a fascination for the web and what were your initial thoughts about the internet? Did you, by any chance visualise back then, what it was to become now...?

Eric: My fascination for the web started the very first time I saw a colleague using an early beta of Mosaic. Right then and there I was captivated.

I'd already been on the Internet for a few years by then, although since my experience was pretty much IRC, Usenet, the Cleveland Free-Net, and e-mail, I thought of it as a scaled-up version of the original Compuserve. Gopher did nothing to change that perception. The web was the first thing that genuinely shifted my view of what the internet could become.

In a lot of ways, what we have now is exactly what I visualized when I first saw the web. By that I mean the vast number of sites serving every need and interest, all linked together and searchable and fairly easy to navigate. And the vast majority of web design looks about like I expected it would.

But in a lot of other ways, the web looks nothing like what I expected. I thought there would be a lot more acadmic material as compared to commercial material. By 1995 it was clear that wouldn't be the case, but in that first exposure, I envisioned much more of a global library crossed with a global town square. Those aspects definitely exist today, but they're a much smaller proportion of the web than I'd expected.

TA: Can you describe how you first got involved with web standards and how would you compare the situation (regarding standards) back then and now?

Eric: From the outset, I was invested in standards, though I didn't realize it until later. Working at a university, accessibility for everyone was a driving concern; ability to access data always trumped coolness. And being an academic environment with a lot of technical professors, we had quite a variety of browsers to contend with right from the start. Lynx, WebForce, Mosaic, Cello, Netscape-- those were the browsers I had to worry about back in the day. And at one point, only half of them supported tables!

So I had the ideals of accessibility and standards ingrained in me right from the start. A lot of credit for that goes to my colleague and friend, Jim Nauer, who was the one who showed me Mosaic and pointed me toward the right places to learn HTML properly. Compared to those days, things are so unbelievably different. Sometimes I have to remind myself just how incompatible browsers could be, layout-wise, in the beginning. Of course, that in itself was a kind of ease, because we didn't obsess over "looking the same"-- that just wasn't possible. On the other hand, browsers could be totally incompatible on really basic stuff, like GIF or JPG support. So we're a lot better off today than once we were.

TA: What according to you are the key skills required for becoming a successful designer/ developer...?

Eric: Knowing the basics of the technology: XHTML, CSS, and some general programming principles in order to be able to follow scripts. This is true even for designers: any artist has to understand the medium in which they work. I also think developers should know a few basics about visual design so that they can communicate with and assist designers more effectively.

TA: Would you call yourself a designer or a developer..? How important is it to have a dual sort mindset in overseeing the aesthetic and the logical aspects of website design..?

Eric: A developer, most certainly. I have minimal design skills, though I understand most of what designers talk about when they dissect designs, and can even do some dissection of my own. I just don't have what it takes to create them.

I think the designer/developers who have that dual mindset, who can see both the aesthetic and the technical sides, are at the top of the profession. There's almost no limit on what they can accomplish. They're also fairly rare.

TA: Can you mention some of the common pitfalls that new designers should try to avoid when starting out their career in web design?

Eric: Don't assume that the tools are perfect. Too many people assume that if it works in one brwoser, then everything's fine; or if that Dreamweaver or Expression does (or doesn't do) something, that's how things are supposed to be. Tools are a good starting point, but they're not even close to the last word.

Another common mistake is to assume that everything's already been done and figured out. That's no more true on the technical side than the design side. We're still figuring out how to make sites great. There's plenty of room to contribute and advance the field.

TA: We know your passion for writing, and till date, you have authored about 6 books. Any new ones in the pipeline?

Eric: Not at present. I have an idea for a focused mini-book (of sorts) in mind, but right now everything else is in kind of a holding pattern until I see how far IE8 and Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 so forth push forward standards support. Once those browsers are in the wild, I may have a lot to write and updating to do. I can hope.

TA: Tell us about CSS Sculptor...

Eric: It's an extension for Dreamweaver (and, soon, other products) that lets the user get much more familiar with the markup structure and the CSS applied to it. The folks at WebAssist had the idea and asked if I'd help out with it, and in the end we decided to put my name on it, which was kind of weird for me. I like the way it puts a whole lot of CSS information into a compact interface, and its emphasis on the code side of things.

TA: Designers are seeing the power of CSS now and the obvious advantages that result from separating structure from presentation. Things appear very rosy these days. Do you think that CSS is complete now except for the better support it can get from the browser developers or do you think that it lacks something...?

Eric: There are definitely things CSS lacks; or, more properly, that web technologies lack in general. We need a really good layout description language, one that can create flexible grids into which we can place the pages' contents in whatever order we want or need. CSS doesn't have that, and neither does XHTML—tables notwithstanding. We've devised a ton of tricks to get close, but none of them are perfect.

So if that ability comes to us through CSS, then great; if not, then also great. I don't care. I just want it. We also need much better print-media support. CSS is lacking in this area, and browsers lag behind even what little CSS permits. There are a lot of other areas where having browsers catch up with the current CSS drafts will be a big help: things like RGBA colors (the "A" standing for "alpha", as in opacity); more powerful selectors; and so forth.

TA: Speaking of better browser support, now that IE8 has passed the ACID 2 Test what impact does this have on the Web Industry?

Eric: We just don't know yet. There is hope that it means a significant step forward in standards support in IE8, not just in CSS. But until we've gotten a chance to play with a public beta, we can only guess.

TA: What does the future hold, Eric..? Your thoughts on HTML 5, CSS 3...

Eric: I don't like playing prophet, so I'm going to pass on the future. I think HTML 5 could be a great step forward, but the problem is that I can't tell if the current HTML 5 is that forward step. There's been a lot of very heated arguments over it, and it's proven almost impossible to get neutral, objective evaluations of the points being made by those involved in the argument. Some have told me that's no longer even possible, that too many wounds have been inflicted.

I wish I had a free month to just sit down and burrow through the whole thing until I attain some sort of understanding, but I don't. CSS 3, in the form of the various CSS modules, has some promise but seems to be realizing it very, very, very slowly. Perhaps that will change if browsers start updating their CSS handling more frequently.

TA: Do you think that the current surge in Rich Internet Applications using technologies like Flex is going to affect the future of HTML..?

Eric: Yes, but not for the worse. Flash hasn't killed HTML yet, and Flex and Silverlight aren't going to do so either. What they can do is provide us with an idea of what needs to be added to HTML, CSS, JS, and so on. And since Flex and Silverlight are both based on XML, there's some chance that HTML could merge with them, or else we could all slide into a pure-XML web and all start inventing our own languages. That'd be keen.

TA: Okay, Time for rapid fire!

Eric: Serpentine! Serpentine!

TA: Some Websites you are addicted to...?

Eric:

paleofuture.com
strangemaps.wordpress.com
stephenfry.com
jesusandmo.net
wondermark.blogspot.com

TA: An awesome website you have seen lately...?

Eric: Pass.

TA: Most under-rated web technology or element...?

Eric: Element? From a layout point of view, 'html'. Seriously.

TA: Are you into Online Social Networking... (Yes/No)?

Eric: I do use Twitter and I've been on LinkedIn since approximately forever, but I'm not so much into Facebook, MySpace, and so on. So, mostly no.

TA: Do you favour Web 2.0 graphics (Bigger text, glossy stickers, fancy reflections...) (Yes/No) ?

Eric: No, but neither do I disfavour them. It's a design trend, and it will eventually be replaced.

TA: Finally, for a budding community of young web designers like templateArtists, what message do you want to leave...?

Eric: Love [web design] it or leave it. I know that sounds a little harsh, but seriously, this is not a field where you can coast by on "it'll do for now" or "eh, it's a living". There's too much need to be creative and sharp, and there are too many nagging little problems to deal with on an ongoing basis, to be doing this for anything short of love. But for those who do love it, oh, it's hard to think of a better job. This is still a field that's being shaped from within, and that changes all the time, and has at its root the best of all possible goals: to connect people and information in better and better ways.

TA: Thank you very much, Eric. We at Template Artists are grateful to you for setting aside time to take this interview amidst your busy schedules.

Eric: Thank you for getting in touch, and for your patience with me!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Help to spread the word around and build the community by favouriting the news item here!:[link]

Regards,
Template Artists