Mike Davison on the standards-compliant redesign of ESPN.com:
Through a dizzying array of table tricks, transparent spacer images, and JavaScript hacks, we found a way to make things look great to the human eye through the window of a graphical web browser without worrying about what everything looked like under the hood. Now that digital lifestyle devices, tablets, wireless phones, and other Internet appliances are beginning to come of age, we need to worry about presenting our content to these devices so that it is optimized for their display capabilities. Do we want to send a 100KB index page full of Flash, images, and tables to a small wireless device or would we rather send them our top story, our top headlines, and essential navigation to get through our site? By separating our content pieces in a logical way rather than a graphical way, we are free to restyle this content for any device which supports open standards.
I’ve talked about standards and proper web design more than a few times on this site. It feels good to know that the people in charge of a major site sees it the same way. Who will be next to join the standards race?
The full interview with Mike can be found on DevEdge