Levi Sigworth, Web Standards Developer/Designer

I am a front end developer/designer who focuses on web standards. I believe that content is king, but the content needs to be appropriately accessible.

The Grocery Store Story

You're in the canned goods aisle, picking out tuna for the melt that you're making tomorrow. But the cans have no labels on them. So, you pick up the can that most resembles a tuna can and hope for the best.

Next you need mayo. But even though the mayo jars say "Mayo" on them, they contain black olives instead. Where are you going to find the mayo now?

While you're wandering through the store looking for the mayo, you pass the bread section. Remembering your melt, you reach for a loaf...but find out that someone put the lemons there instead. Seriously, what's going on?

What I do

No real grocery store would do what I described above. Why? Because a small flat can means "tuna" to us, bread comes in a plastic or paper bag, and the lemons are over with the produce, not in the bread section. If grocery stores started messing with our expectations, we would be confused, and we wouldn't spend money.

A few years ago, web design used to be like the crazy, non-sensical grocery store. We web developers used to put lemons in bread bags to achieve a certain visual effect. But now we have realized that we can have code under the hood that is just as powerful as the visual design. It's time to put the tuna back in the small flat can.

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