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It’s FrontPage, Jim, but not as we know it.
Why is it that all of these “automated” page generators churn out crappy code?
I just saw the Google Pages thing on a web forum, and out of idle curiosity I thought I’d have a play and see what kind of HTML the Google Pages interface churns out - and I’m not terribly impressed.
Sure, it uses CSS, it looks ok, and the markup isn’t terminally hideous (aside from the fact that the italics end up enclosed i tags not em, and the code is so heavy with divs that it looks like it might break under the weight), but really, they could do better. A lot better.
Clean, semantic markup is easy. I’d like to appologise to all the web developers out there who are making a good crust out of pretending that it’s rocket science, but it isn’t. It’s easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.
I don’t know why I’m surprised by Google’s poor quality code, though - the search pages that they built their empire on are crap from an XHTML perspective, but they build value purely on function, not form, and certainly not on best-practice web-standards techniques.
The downside of this new service from the mighy Googlopoly is the fact that potential clients will once more trot out the “Why do you charge so much when I can do this on GooglePages/get my cousins girfriends nephews neighbour with a pirate copy of Dreamweaver for free” lines.
Fortunately the answer is simple - those options pander to the least-cost, fastest-turnaround model, complete with the least attention to detail, least understanding of the medium, and least though given to the clients needs and those of their target audience.
We charge “so much” because we are good at what we do, committed to providing the best service we can, and anally retentive when it comes to writing clean, lean, semantic code that translates just as well to a mobile phone as it does to a PC-based web browser. We charge that much because we are worth it.
So I guess that even though they’re pretty crap from a “professional” perspective, I’m down with GooglePages - as long as there’s bad code being churned out, there’s a reason for people to employ good clean coders… like me!