There are a lot of things we do without understanding them. Upon watching one of my favorite movie series this past weekend in Back to the Future, I realized a lot could be attributed to the knowledge of both the past, present, and future.

Synapses

Before understanding the spiel I’m about to go on, you first have to know what I’m taking about by comparing things to Back to the Future (I’ll abbreviate it B2TF throughout the rest of the article).

Back to the Future is a movie that was first released in 1985, and it followed the story of a teenager (Marty) and a scientist (Doc Brown) who invented a time machine using a car to travel back and forward in time. The series, which spanned across 3 films, brought them back in time, then to the future, back in time again, and finally back in time one more time before returning to the “present day”.

With every time they went back in time, their actions would greatly effect the outcome of events that would happen in the future. For example, the character Marty almost prevents his parents from meeting when he goes back in time, which would mean if he returned to the “present”, he wouldn’t exist.

Applying this to the web

So where does all this fit into in terms of design and development. Devlounge, along with many others, write articles suggesting that you to do things a certain way, like use xhtml instead of tables, or not blog about certain things, etc and etc. But you can not simply read articles and expect that if you make changes you will be caught up with what is the “standard” way to do things today. You have to understand why we do things a certain way, and why things have changed – not just in the past 15 years but the last year itself.

You first have to understand that things require thought. Unless you are some living-the-high-life celebrity, going out and getting married for just a few hours with some person you met only hours before is not the most practical and smartest of decisions. Just because we tell you to use divs and css instead of tables doesn’t mean that you should. You have to analyze the differences so you understand why what was once the “right way” no longer is.

Better accessibility, improved cross-browser compatibility, easier to understand code, faster loading times. Just a few advantages over using tables. So why then were shitty tables used in the first place? In the time when tables were the only solutions, browsers lacked advanced css support, and the list of alternative browsers to Internet Explorer was very limited. So, everyone used tables, no matter how complex the site was, and even if the developer understood the powers of css, simply because there wasn’t enough support for it across the net as a whole. Once support started becoming available, people started putting it to use, eventually leading to where we are today.

Actions also play a big part of the direction the web takes, just like they did in B2TF. Without knowledgeable, push-the-limit pioneers who tackled css and divs head on and built better browsers, tables might still have been the best practice for coding.

Some people remain stuck in the past, and refuse to accept the fact that times have changed. In a recent Q&A with Mr. Bill Gates himself, Molly Holzschlag asked him questions related to Microsoft’s commitment (or lack thereof) to web standards, and Gates continued to try and reiterate the fact that Microsoft helped implement the web all along and provided the basis for what people would eventually build off of. But the fact that Microsoft had the opportunity to put themselves ahead of the curve but simply let it pass and go ignored proved that they were not attempting to stay up to date, but would rather stay trapped in the past.

So next time you go to use Ajax to flip between pages of a site, don’t just do it because its the “modern” way of changing pages, but make sure you have an understanding at why its a good solution, and why it was never used before. Or when you are designing a site for your most recent client, don’t simply use gradients and big fonts just because they’re popular, but have a deeper understanding to exactly why it’s so popular today compared to 5 years ago.

Sometimes it’s best to use your own time machine – logic – to look at the past and compare it to the present, and imagine just how things will evolve in the next 5 years.