Drought

Well, my thought is that everyone is too busy writing books about “it” to be blogging about “it”. I think everyone’s realising they want to get paid for their knowledge.

As for “a little more noise”, whatcha trying to say?! ;)

You’re not imagining it, I was thinking exactly the same thing about ten minutes ago! Spooky, huh?

I guess there’s only so long that the momentum of the ‘scene’ could go on as it was. Having said that, things seem to have picked up in the last week or so.

Dang, I sound like I know a lot bout this stuff. Really ought to learn my place ;)

Well, people are moving on. And there aren’t as many to take their place. People are writing books, getting more clients, sitting on panels, starting companies, starting projects. Only 24 hours in the day, and we gotta sleep sometime.

And Oxton, we love your noise.

I was never a prominent blogger in the first place, but I’ve been begining to feel that the market is very much saturated. On top of that, the little guys don’t get a voice for the most part, so they essentially quit.

True there has been a little lull, but then again it could be because a good job was done, people are starting to get standard, but my guess it that everyone is just busy. There really hasn’t been anything disruptive worth talking about lately has there?

I think I agree.

I have had “write an article” on my to-do list for months now. Any article idea I come up with has already been done. So that’s how those academic people must feel.

Of course having full-time job, side biz, and school responsibilities come into play too. Oh, and then there’s my girlfriend, haha. (She’d kill me if she read that.) I wouldn’t even have time to get engaged!

I agree as well. I would make an argument that Ruby on Rails is really in the spotlight at the moment and perhaps sucking in alot of designers’ focus and attention from web standards, etc. to it. I don’t solely attribute this “drought” to Rails though, I think there could be some other factors at play as well… lack of innovation in the CSS/web standards space lately, novelty wearing off, etc. etc.

Hey! I just started a new column on design. I’m still writing, despite getting married :D

I would have to agree with the original sentiment of this topic. Its beginning to get a bit repetitive. Of course this is coming from a guy who hasn’t written anything on the topic at hand. Some of us are better students than teachers.

I’m no contributor to the web standards community as far as writing “worthwhile articles and posts being created about standards and web development”, but I’ve been busy as hell since about September. Right now, I have more work than I could possibly deal with and I don’t see an end in sight. I think a lot of people are in the exact same boat.

Besides that, it’s more fun writing miscellany posts about life, the universe, you know, everything.

“fewer worthwhile articles and posts being created about standards and web development”

And thats a bad thing?

I guess if one is spending all one’s time writing about standards and stuff then there’s less time available to actually get on and pratise what one preaches – doing actual work. I guess everyone is pretty busy making fantastic websites and then spending the rest of the time having a life. Which is pretty much what John O is saying. What we need now is some fresh new talent – people who arn’t currently in employment spreading wise words so they get noticed and they too can begin making a living from what they love.

I think it’s the last example. We all just woke up one day and said “Wow, it’s all been written about on YTS. I know everything!” ;)

Something to think about is that perhaps the standards and design movement have finally hit critical mass – you don’t notice momentum because it’s finally up to speed, chugging along in the drudgery of normality. This isn’t a bad thing at all, it means web design has finally arrived. The books, the panels, the numerous clients you big-name designers are pulling in is evidence of this. At this point, the next phase of explosive excitement is waiting on the browsers to catch up once again. I think we’ll see another blast of evangelism when the CSS3 spec and SVG are fully supported, and IE6 begins to go the way of IE5.

Another thing to look at is the enthusiasm for programming methods now, moreso than design. AJAX and RoR are excellent examples of this. While design has hit the “maturing point”, both AJAX and RoR are still trying to find their place – high profile clients and an industry wide acceptance of their methods.

I think it’s success and maturity that you’re feeling, not burn-out or a loss of interest in the profession.

Hopefully everybody has stopped talking and started DOING. Like me.

The standards information is very valuable and I dont think everyone has been too stuffy. I mean we just received a great webcast from Oxton….what more could we ask for?

As far as the maturation of web design and development goes I see it like this: our collective voice has cracked (CSS, standards, the realization of best design practices) and now we’re getting arm pit hair and more testosterone (Ajax, MVC design patterns, DOM scripting and accessible JS, emerging frameworks et al) ... Dunno about you but I’m enjoying watching my body develop and can’t wait to see what’ll happen next!

@ Chris Carter

I wish that was the case but I don’t think it’s true.

I’m doing contract work for a “corporate” design company if you will. I don’t even think they know what web standards are.

Here are some observations I made, and this can be applied the majority of designers unfortunately.

First, they don’t keep up with the latest trends and practices. I don’t mean trends as in the worn and grunge look. They think CSS is only for changing link and text colors.

One of the guys that work there is a “certified web author”. What the hell is that? there’s a certification for that? and how can he be a certified web author if he doesn’t even know how to create CSS layouts, and uses SPACER GIFS!

Bottom line is, things won’t change until it hurts their bottom line. So if you want designers to become more web standard aware, grab up all their clients, especially the big ones.

So if we convince the corporate world that we need web standards then we shall shut them down or make them learn. I don’t even know how these people can call themselves professionals.

I think alot of people are either working on projects like someone mentioned above, or might be having a hard time finding nuggets here and there to write about which haven’t been covered a thousand times already.

I think we’ll see alot more posting come sxsw (maybe its a seasonal thing?)

I’m new to the blogging thing myself, but planning for a wedding this May doesn’t give me a lot of time to try to ramp up. So I”ll plead the wedding excuse….

Garrett, there has definately been a drought. And the few articles appearing are shallow. Most authors probably do not want to repeat the same story over and over again as most of the ground has already been covered one way or the other.

I think well established authors like you, Garrett, should revisit earlier topics in a more comprehensive way. Or from a slightly different angle.

How about if the articles get shifted more towards programming database-driven stuff than CSS and CSS layouts?

i’d have more to say but i’m getting married in 6 weeks.

I’d say we’re all a pretty passionate bunch and we tend to throw ourselves headlong into everything we do. This leads to intense periods of creativity and productivity. Naturally, we can’t sustain it, so there are the down periods you mentioned.

Personally, I’ve been putting in 10-13 hours a day at work lately and just this weekend hammered out a Flickr API app. I’m fully expecting a down period and I’m looking forward to it.

There’ll be an upswing again (most likely around SXSW), so don’t sweat it. See everyone in Austin!

Garrett,
I’ve been reading plenty of good articles lately, but I think you need to keep searching out new authors. Most of us go through dry spells and then turn out a flood of material in cycles as our workload, energy, and inspiration ebb and flow. I’ve found it takes a little effort but that there are plenty of good minds out there writing about interesting topics.

I do see your point tha twriting on basic web standards (semantic HTML, CSS bugs and basics) has waned. But I’ve been seeing some great writing at Design Observer and good posts showing up on Stylegala. I find that a little exploration turns up some fine writing on interesting topics from design to web standards to programming techniques. Heck, just follow the links from your commentors and I’m sure you’ll find some good new stuff. Happy Reading.

I think you’re going to see less and less written about standards as they become more of a norm. I think the word is definitely out there, and CSS has been stretched to its limits twice over. Now’s just the calm before the storm.

Wait until IE7 romps out into production. We’re already having hack issues with IE7 beta 2 at work.

Most of the writing I’ve seen out there lately revolves around AJAX, Web 2.0, RoR, etc. I think a lot of it has to do with web standards becoming more accepted as the norm, and people are now looking ahead to ways of making their sites “smarter” so they can provide a better user experience.

Aside from that, a lot of what needed to be said seems to have been said, thanks to all of the great writers/teachers out there and collaborative efforts like A List Apart. I’d like to continue to see new techniques, but there’s only so much you can do reliably, as far as I know.