WDR #2: Web Developers Needed for a Website
Post from November 25, 2008 (↻ October 19, 2022), filed under Web Development (feed).
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The Web Dev Report, issue #2, this time featuring a classic situation.

- (Back in 2005.)
- Guy 2:
- How many web developers does it take to build a website?
- Guy 1:
- …?
- Guy 2:
- Two.
- One to build the tables. Another one to calculate the values of the
colspan
androwspan
attributes. - Guy 1 and Guy 2:
- Muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
About Me

I’m Jens, and I’m an engineering lead and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead for Google, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.
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Comments (Closed)
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On November 25, 2008, 21:02 CET, Duluoz said:
Oh thank God developing large sites with tables was before my time! Funny stuff!
-
On November 25, 2008, 21:54 CET, Harry Roberts said:
@Duluoz—same here! Although I did have to build a HTML email last week. I was nearly sick.
-
On November 25, 2008, 21:57 CET, Kroc Camen said:
You know your code is messy when your table recursion crashes the browser.
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On November 25, 2008, 23:35 CET, Jens Nedal said:
Oh the times, when browser performance was so laggy, and all because of the underlying (X)HTML structure.
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On November 26, 2008, 0:45 CET, Steffen said:
Back in 2005? I wonder if Guy 1+2 are still laughing in 2008 or if they are too busy writing articles about equal column heights in column layouts.
Apart from the validity of the table layout approach: My feeling is that even without table layouts there are still too much (common) problems that waste more time than necessary of more than 2 web developers in software projects. -
On November 26, 2008, 11:29 CET, Ash said:
I looked at an employers website in the interview a few years ago and it never stopped loading… which i thought was weird… the web guy said he’d ‘heard of CSS’ when i mentioned it as one of my skills… my head said something along the lines of frame two of the cartoon…
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On November 28, 2008, 9:27 CET, Jens Oliver Meiert said:
Great guys, I knew you would love to discuss tables 😊
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On November 30, 2008, 22:42 CET, Paul@Green Home said:
Classic stuff. I thought this was going to be a joke about web dev. clients to start with.
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On December 30, 2008, 17:25 CET, Amber said:
Although we have all of the wonderful features now for web designing backed with teams of people to allow a single person to drag and drop features they wish to have on their site…too much has changed to me. I almost miss the simplicity of the basic header|paragraph structure. Although it was nice to mature from the webskins of 98′. Excellent mark-up*. I enjoy the sites that Keep It Simple
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