FaeDubh

In the last post, Do they have the rightful judgement?, Ydreece brought up the question of what roles reviewers should take. In the comments, a new question was posed so I thought I’d continue it here.

Which is more important? Graphics or Coding?

When I first started out in the community, the consensus seemed to be Graphics. The graphics side feels that the visual side is the most important because that is what is viewed. It doesn’t matter if the coding is bad or not up to standards, as long as the webpage works. It needs to be visually pleasing because that is what the viewer sees, that is what they base their opinion on when they decide whether to stay and browse or leave. In some cases, the high-imaging is backed up by decent coding but in many others the site is displayed using outdated coding like tables, internal styling, etc.

As I’ve grown more experienced, I’ve met many others who believe that Coding is more important. They feel that the site is there to display content and that too many graphics will take away from the content. Thus, coding and styling are used to make the content visually appealing. They see coding as the most important because, with bad coding sites would lag (bloated coding), might not load for all visitors (cross-browser incompatability), and could display improperly leaving graphics pointless. Many times these sites do have pleasing designs focused on content styling and colors rather than imaging. For example, Jemjabella, Jingwen, and In Obscuro.

More and more sites are realizing the importance of good coding and are flocking to minimalistic designs with little or no graphics. But is that the answer? Personally, I believe that a balance should be in place: both visually appealing graphics and up-to-date semantic coding. A comfortable medium which works in all browsers, displays properly, keeps content at the forefront, and has a nice layout surrounding it.

So is the answer to make a drastic change (like I did for one layout) and focus more on coding without the imaging to back it up or take a few steps to the center and even it out? For example, Elena. She kept her image-heavy layouts but got rid of tables/bad coding in exchange for div layers backed up by good coding. Rather than having to decide between graphics and coding, she has both going for her.

Might I also add that it’s easier said than done.