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10 Jul 2006
Prefab and the Blog Template
Thomas Vanderwal compares housing prefab with web-sites prefab. I agree with him that prefab reduces the cost, in terms of money, time spent and required knowledge, of creating a web-site. I am not really fond of prefab, but it has some advantages. And with the coming of Sandvox, I dives into prefab as well.
It seems that web-sites designs are going for the same floor-plan. The two columnar layout seems to be the most favourite. The three column design seems to have a come back due to the widescreens. A single column design is not very widespread. In the two column design one sees a major and a minor column. The major column can appear at the right or left part of the screen.
The major column contains the actual MicroContent Items, such as a blog-item, a photo, a video, etc. The prefab designer has control over the number of Items per page and the order of the Items. The number of possible designs seem to be limited to the type of MicroContent. I differentiate between a tabular design, with one Item above the other, a rectangular grid design, for images or events, and a geographic location design, for Items with longitude and latitude. From a prefab standpoint it seems that there is not much freedom here. The MicroContent Items determine the possibilities.
The minor column contains indices, blog-rolls, links, etc. In Sandvox these are called pagelets, but they are also called widgets. It is in this space where most of the action is. However the action is with the rectangular area of the widget. Which widgets are visible and their order is set by the designer. It is like deciding what kind of rooms you want in your house.
And finally there is the visual aspect of the web-page. Although many blog looks very similar, this more due to a lack of choice in the blogging-system catalogue of designs, than a real lack of choice. An application such as Sandvox comes with 32 designs, Blogger has some 31 designs, etc. And there are many more out there, but that puts more burden on the designer, he has to dive into CSS.
So one indeed sees a drive to prefab. And with the definition of more and more MicroContent Types this will increase. Not only the layout of a web-page will be standardised, but also each building block. Fortunately this standardisation of building blocks will improved the visual aspect. With standard building blocks and thus standard tags, we will be able to choose from many more designs.
And I am not sure it will look like prefab anymore. Just have a look at all the designs at the CSS Zen Garden. I think we can go well beyond a prefab look.