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Standards promised to keep the web from fragmenting. But as the web standards movement advances in several directions at once, and as communication between those seeking to advance the web grows fractious, are our standards losing their relevance, and their ability to foster an accessible, interoperable web for all?

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When designing a UI we usually go right from a quick paper sketch to HTML/CSS. We skip the static Photoshop mockup.— 37Signals

Obviously, most designers — web or otherwise — would argue that the best tools in a designer’s arsenal are pen & paper. Trusty old school standards. It’s much quicker to jot down an idea down on paper really quick. You can spew out several “quick” thumbnail sketches in the time it might take to open Photoshop. If that’s the case, you should probably do some computer maintenance, but that’s another article altogether.

Although 37Signals puts forth several good points I believe it’s a matter of having a different perspective on the process. 37Signals doesn’t design their applications for clients. Their clients are their customers, but the company being designed for is themselves. This means that, although they’re selling their products to others, they are the main “Client” that the application is being designed around. Unfortunately, real web design clients need to “see” what things are going to look like when getting a site done for them. You can give them a working mechanical, but it’s really not wise to do this until you’ve got all the details worked out about what the site is going to look like. They’re hiring a designer afterall, and they really want to see the design before moving on to the next stage. That’s not to say that the design stage is the first stage. Far from it, but it’s definitely a stage that will be early in the overall process.

Another point of contention with this idea of “skipping Photoshop” lies in the fact that, for a company like 37Signals, they’ve already got an established visual style to work around. They don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time. They are, afterall, not serving clients. 37Signals relies heavily on usability, because they’re making usable web applications for people, but that doesn’t really mean that it has to be overly embellished. They can skip the Photoshop stage, because the style of the application is intentionally very simple.

Conclusion

So, the question still remains: Can you skip Photoshop in the creation of websites? Yes and No. If you’re creating your own applications in-house and have a defined style (that is generally quite simple) to work from already. However, if you’re a web designer working for a client, then you really need to consider Photoshop as an essential tool in the process, because your clients are going to want to see something before they sign off on letting you spend hours coding up a design. Should you put off the Photoshop stage for as long as you can? Yes. Get a clear understanding of the overall communication message and functionality of the desired website before even considering opening Photoshop for the first time. Rock may beat Paper, but Paper beats Photoshop everytime.

Progressive enhancement is a layered approach to interface development that helps ensure all users can navigate and read the content on a website regardless of browser or device limitations.— Aarron Walter, Building Findable Websites

The key to the success of progressive enhancement lies in the way you create and keep the structure, presentation, and behavior separate from one another.

If you keep the structure (HTML), presentation (CSS), and behavior (JavaScript) separate when you build websites, content remains accessible to everyone including search engine spiders.

You want to think of progressive enhancement as layering a cake. If you started with the frosting and worked your way back, you’d end up with a pretty terrible cake — most likely. You instead would want to start with the cake ingredients, then the baking, and finally the frosting on top. The same is true of progressive enhancement.

The Ingredients (Structure)

Begin with a semantically meaningful HTML file that communicates the information hierarchy of your page. By using heading, strong emphasis, emphasis, lists, and other semantic tags to mark up your document you’ll achieve a much better foundation from which to build upon when creating your cake — ahem — website.

Baking (Presentation)

Next, you’ll be adding the presentation layer using external CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) files that create the design of the document without altering the structure (HTML). Using CSS to control the presentation of your documents will make modifying them much less time-consuming. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to have to edit all the font tags of a hundred page website just to change the color. Ding! Cooking timer just went off.

The Frosting on Top (Behavior)

The final layer of our website cake is the behavior layer using JavaScript. This layer will enhance the interactions of the page. The JavaScript is also kept external in a separate file, and can easily take control of elements in the page without mixing in with the HTML structure.

Conclusion

Building your websites with this additive approach keeps them functional during each step. With CSS and JavaScript disabled, the user can still see all of the content and understand the information within as it’s communicated through your semantic markup. When CSS is enabled, the user is presented with an interface design that enhanced the look of the site. And finally, when JavaScript is enabled, the interactions add an extra bit of flair to the overall user experience.

When search engines encounter a site built using progressive enhancement they’ll be able to index all of the content because JavaScript will no longer be a roadblock. By making the presentation and behavior layers external, you also increase the speed with which search engine spiders can index your pages. Keeping everything separate improves overall maintenance as well.