andrew.pilsch.com

I’ve used Firebug for a long time, but I
never really grasped how powerful it can be, before today. I’ve
redesigned the blog to be more compliant with new features in WordPress
(Widgets and the lik

e). Rather than role my own theme, as I’m lazy, I’m
using a theme called Barthelme. As you
can see, though, looking at that screenshot, this blog doesn’t look much
like the original. I wasn’t happy with Barthelme’s kind of blah colors
(and I started hating that left-aligned sidebar in a moment of web
design iconoclasm), so I thought I’d make “some minor tweaks” to the
style sheet.

In case you’ve never used it, WordPress’s Theme Editor leaves a lot to
be desired (it’s no VIM, that’s for sure). I got
tired of loading and reloading the page to see if the CSS looked nice or
not. Then, I remembered that Fireburg lets you edit CSS properties on
the fly. Wow. Let me just say that I never realized how groovy this
program can be. I ended up recoding the entire site’s CSS in Firebug
and then loading the changes that work into the file itself. A much
easier way to work out the intricacies of a complex web job. I’m still
not happy about the design of the site (I don’t like the fact that the
way the CSS is done feels like a kludge).

The larger thinking, though, that drives this site is the realization
that form and content really are separate things when it comes to
technical communication. This bifurcation is something I’ve stressed in
my teaching and its something I’m going to make a much bigger deal about
in future iterations of my techcomm class (more on that in the future, I
would imagine). I think this divide between form and content is
becoming in vogue (or back into vogue) thanks to the advent of Web2.0
and the need to scrape content from other sites. Unfortunately, the
thinking on form and content (I want to hyphenate it) is, in technical
communications, still on the form is content model of document design.

The reason I shifted to thinking about content and form separately is
that by dividing form and content, the importance of design is easier to
teach to people who’ve never really thought about the shape of the
things around them. I tell my students that, in technical
communications, the content should be the focus of their documents:
everything else (grammar, form, paper quality, etc.) exists to
accentuate the content. If you fail at design or spelling, your ideas
won’t come across easily.

Partly the form is content paradigm seems to derive from Marshall
McLuhan’s adage, “the medium is the message,” but I don’t think my
stance on the division between form and content is actually annulled by
McLuhan’s understanding of media: form, for me, is not the same thing as
media. My exploration of Firebug really drives this point home. By
mucking around with the CSS properties inside my browser, I changed the
look and feel of my website (to create a design that I think is more in
keeping with the image I’m trying to convey in my content). These
changes are changes to form, but they are not changes to content, and
they certainly aren’t changes to the medium. Ultimately, for me medium
dictates form and content, as separate entities. Moreover, form and
content must be thought of as separate yet connected. It seems to me
that the two concepts are related, but in the technical communications
classroom, in order to introduce the importance of design, the two must
be presented as separate (and, to me, the separation makes more sense,
anyway).

Image Credit: “empty red cart 2” by pbo31.