HTML is not WYSIWYG

hypertext markup language is not 'what you see is what you get'

That is not a statement of fact, but a valued statement.
There are those that grudgingly accept this, and those that rebel. I however, relish in this facet of our internet.
Ultimately the reader is able to decide how s/he wants to view paragraphs, emphasis of various kinds, links, images, etc... Perhaps XML will really push the web in this direction, but it doesn't seem like it. In the mean time, we see various forms of rebellion; attempts to make the web WYSIWYG (or more appropriate, WYDIWTS [why-de-witts] 'what you design is what they see'):

Recommending specific browsers/resolutions to web site users. Not so much a rebellion as a statement of defeat.
Disgusting abuse of tables, machine generated by software like Dreamweaver. Makes HTML code no longer human readable
Flash and other multimedia plugins, being used for the entire website design.

So I say abandon all this time spent on design (unless you are also working for a print audience). In general I think the whole of the internet could benefit for a few less minutes spent on design and a few more minutes spent on content development, checking for accuracy, etc...

I think this is especially pertinent as the newest and most exciting internet applications, wireless devices like phones and PDA's, and the rapid spread of the internet into the context of the developing world, don't use graphics at all or use other alternative viewers. (This idea should at least be partially credited to Bill Mitchell, Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, who said something to this affect during a lecture he gave to my 11.001 class; what exactly that had to do with Urban Design and Development, I'm not quite sure.)

And a closing thought, this is not to say I don't think there should be massive and overwhelmingly multimedia-filled websites, just that they should be primarily content, and not design driven. I think massive websites are great, and tools like PHP and MySQL are great even for personal web pages (and more industrial grade stuff for bigger sites).

So, before you spend another four hours tweaking the design on your site, be sure and view it with Lynx, a cell phone, or just turn off graphis in your web browser and see if there is much left there.

Stuff I like on the web...

Web pages that capture a live picture of someone.

Dug
Becky

Other live information source type pages:

Plaza Cam -- a live web cam of the Marsh Chapel Plaza on Comm. Ave., not far from my house
NOC Weather Report (MIT) -- Stuck over in East Campus and wondering what the weather is like at the Student Center? Well, actually, this is indoor tempature, and seems to be mostly machine rooms, as its administered by the Network Operations folks, but its still pretty nifty.

Other interesting pages:

The Human Clock -- just pretty cool