Tribute to Molly Holzschlag

[B i r n o u]

this morning, while reading the news, I learned that Molly Holzschlag had passed away. although this is not a DW-related topic, I thought we could pay tribute to to her on this forum.

after all, it's thanks to people like her, but also Andy Clarke, Mark Boulton, Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Christopher Schmitt, Dave Shea, Andy Budd...  that the web has been able to get out of the rut it's been in since HTML4.

for those who didn't know Molly, here's the article that once revolutionized the way I thought about CSS: Thinking Outside the Grid, followed by the preface to Andy Clarke's book Transcending CSS .

many thanks to Molly for all her contributions to the maturing of the web

[osgood_]

I've never come across Molly before, unlike some of the other names you mention, or maybe l have but the name just hasn't stuck with me. However anyone who has touched our lives/careers in some shape or form always leaves a great void when they pass over.. RIP Molly, thanks for your input.

[Nancy OShea]

Many years ago, I read one of her books, The Zen of CSS Design co-authored with David Shea.

I'm fairly certain it was the inspiration for CSS Zen Garden — a one-page website styled in various ways with different stylesheets submitted by contributors. 

For anyone who's interested, CSS Zen Garden is still up & running.

[osgood_]

I think many of the names mentioned by Birnou have moved on now into different areas other than what they were once renowned for, all must be fairly old now, maybe sitting in their rockers looking back at what was a raw but exciting period for web development. For me it was the best period of web development, just ordinary folk using their talent, knowledge and skill rather than what we have today, multi billion dollar companies influencing the way they want us to do things with their offerings.

[B i r n o u]

concerning the CSS Signature, approached in the previous message, it is so old that it went out of web , either from archive... luckly I still have some personnal forum's archives 😉

[B i r n o u]

• Andy Clarke - https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/ and his revisited book https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/transcending-css-revisited/index.html
• Mark Boulton - https://markboulton.co.uk/ and his book https://designingfortheweb.co.uk/
• Jefrey Zeldman - https://www.zeldman.com/about/ and the studio https://studio.zeldman.com/
  but also, and can't forget
  the A list apart's blog - https://alistapart.com/
  the event apart conference - https://www.aneventapart.com/
  the book apart's library - https://abookapart.com/
• Eric Meyer https://meyerweb.com/ 
  Eric was the first to think about web signature (see next post) and reset CSS https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/
• Christopher Schmitt was the first to build tools to help moving from TABLE to CSS (do you remember tableless CSS at the Macromedia's era) and his publications http://christopher.org/publications/
• Dave Shea, http://daveshea.com/
• Andy Budd https://andybudd.com/

well, I've only gone over the list mentioned above, but to stop there would be really limited, and above all there are so many other friends who have contributed in their own way to :

• HTML (Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Jesse Cravens, Jeff Burtoft, Steve & Jeff Fulton, Ben Farell..) ,
• CSS (Aaron Gustafson (Progressive web design, Progressive Web App), Jonathan Snook (SMACSS), Nicole Sullivan (OOCSS), Brad Frost (Atomic Design) ,
• JavaScript... the list is soooooo long (Osmani, Zakas, Stefanov, Raushmayer, ...),
• Datas Flow (Bernard, Le Galle, Jeremy Keith, Christophe Porteneuve, Flanagan...),
• Design (Jeniffer Tidwell, James Kalbach, Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds...),
• Accessibility (Rutter, Regan, Lawson, Henry, Burks, Waddell, Heilman...),
• Ergonomics (Jacon Nielsen),
• Information Architecture (Peter Morville, Lou Rosensfled...),
• Metadatas (Matt Cutts, Tantek Celik, Dan Cederholm,...) ,
• and so on....

that it would be really impolite not to go into more details.

Are you interested?

[osgood_]

I'd like to sit down with a few from that era and discuss their thoughts on where it all is now, if they approve or disapprove or just accept times change.

I see Jeremy Keith is still at 'clear left' which he co formed with Andy Budd but what his contribution is now l don't know. Andy looks like he has moved onto other roles outside of 'clear left'

Zeldman departed Happy Cog a few years back to start up some other enterprise.

Eric Myers, the renowned css expert back then is now working for a company in Spain, l think, in what role l have no idea.

[Nancy OShea]

it would be really impolite not to go into more details.

By @B i r n o u

============

Impolite to whom? 🤔

Former Internet influencers who never participate here?  Or the occasional Dreamweaver user who rarely comes here?

[B i r n o u]

unlike the subject and people we're talking about, DW isn't the center of anything... it used to be when it was the flagship of the fleet around it, but that hasn't been the case for several years now.

all the people I mentioned in the first comment were just a tiny fraction of the people involved in shaping the web so that it could truly become the web application that makes us today work, live and thrive.

so not mentioning other equally worthy members, yes for me, would have been a real lack of respect, and not necessarily waiting for them to leave us before having to mention them. as I say, I may probably be too French, and even too regional from the lowlands where I live, that would have been impolite.

[Nancy OShea]

As you wish.  But you're preaching to a very, very small choir.

[osgood_]

As you wish.  But you're preaching to a very, very small choir.

By @Nancy OShea

Unfortunately so. I doubt no more than I can count on one hand who infrequent this forum will even have heard of any of the names being mentioned and that's a shame. It's a testiment to anyone who has of their commitment and longevity in web-development, come rain or shine. Today it has become far too disposable with little to no commitment apart from assembling a bunch of frameworks and library items. 

[B i r n o u]

whatever the size of the choir, the point is to do and feel it 😉