This is a regular text file.

    Nothing advanced and not much to see here but some words.

And you're reading them.

    Everybody is impressed with fancy designs, responsive layouts,
    and scripts that do magical things.

    However the most powerful tool on the web is still words.

Please keep in mind, this is still a regular text file, and you're
reading it: that's magical.

    I mostly hang around in Germany and Luxembourg; you're probably
    somewhere else. I wrote this early in the morning, June 23th, 2013;
    you're probably reading it at a different time. I wrote this on
    my laptop; you could be reading this on your phone, a tablet or
    a desktop.

    You and I have been able to connect because I wrote this and you're
    reading it. That's the web. Despite our different locations, devices,
    and time-zones we can connect here, on a regular text file.

    I wrote this in a text editor. It's 3.5 KB (without the ASCII art). I
    didn't need a Content Management System, a graphic designer, or a
    software developer. There's no markup used for paragraphs, hierarchy,
    and emphasis.

    I remember answering questions from people that wanted to install a
    linux driver for their TV card. The driver package provided not only
    one but a whole set of readme text files that were cross-referencing
    each other.

    All these people didn't manage to get the driver compiled and
    installed, one cause surely was that the readme author didn't
    care about how to present the content at all. He just cared about
    functionality.

You are still reading. How magical, many people would have stopped
reading already.

    Think about all the things you could communicate with a regular
    text file like this. If you're a businessperson, you could sell
    something. If you're a teacher, you could teach something. If you're
    an artist, you could show some ASCII arts you've made. And if your
    words are good, people will read them. Maybe.

You're patient, regular text files don't make fun.

    If a client wants to get something done, I'd like to challenge you
    to think about user expierence (UX). If you want to sell products
    you will have more success with some good designs and layouts. Even
    more success if your layouts are responsive in combination with fancy
    (but not too fancy) designs.

    What do you have to say? If you don't know, just imagine I would
    write all my blog posts as regular text files. Now imagine every
    blogger would do. What about Wikipedia delivering you text files
    instead of HTML?

    Do you care about how the reader feels when he's reading your
    text? Does a better user experience help me to target more people? If
    you're not sure about the answer just use fancy designs and scripts.

    At its heart, web design is about user experience and not just
    about content.

Start with some initial words and continue with your fancy designs,
responsive layouts, and scripts that do magical things.

Cheers,
Romain Schmitz
@slopjong

I wrote these words in response to Justin's post "This is a web page"
(http://justinjackson.ca/words.html) where he's focussing on the content
while he's promoting very basic html instead of something fancy. Ironically
he's using himself a CMS for his website http://justinjackson.ca.

Justin promotes his own book so why shouldn't I do some promo too?

People say I have some skills and I love to create things. If you want
to get something done, drop me a message here: http://slopjong.de/contact




 
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 This regular text file got some attention and made it up to

      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5926782