In 2025, Mosaic proudly celebrates being home to a small web design and development event, the Modern Web Event, for ten years. Over these years, we have endeavoured to encompass everything related to web design and development, which has consistently been the focus of this magazine. To commemorate this milestone, we believe it is a fitting time to reflect on and reconsider some of the topics we found most compelling. While we have not managed to address everything we desired, all the articles gathered in this issue merit inclusion. Except for one, all have been authored by speakers who have participated in the Modern Web Event at some point during the last decade.
We begin the issue by recognizing that multimedia must never overlook the simplest form of media: text. This is a medium that we, unfortunately, do not always give the necessary attention. It is not merely that an image is not always worth a thousand words; if you have not ensured that your thousand, or one hundred, or however many, words are well written and legible, it is nearly impossible for images, sound, or video to salvage your piece. We tend to notice the text on a website, just as we notice the audio of nearly any audiovisual, only when it fails to function properly. Let Diego Rodriguez’s article serve as a reminder to prevent this from happening to us again.
One topic that cannot be overlooked when reviewing the history of the past ten years of web design and development is web accessibility (which should not be neglected in any aspect of our lives). The notion that the web should be accessible to everyone ought not to be open for debate. Unfortunately, in our efforts to build it, we overlooked that there are individuals with permanent disabilities, and that accidents and time can bring about disability for all of us. Initially, computers were text-based, and text is not particularly difficult to make accessible. Although we could always strive to write more clearly for those with cognitive disabilities, of course. Then images emerged, and we began to forget that we could describe them in text for those who cannot see them. With the introduction of video, we again neglected the need for audio descriptions and transcriptions. When JavaScript came into play, we allowed the spectacle to overwhelm the interfaces until they became inaccessible on numerous occasions. On a positive note, we now possess technologies capable of making accessible what we could not have imagined thirty years ago, enriching the lives of those with any form of disability. And over these ten years, who has won? Fortunately, we have Juanjo Montiel to highlight the victories and remind us of the many battles we are still losing.
Cristina Chumillas was given a challenging task. She had spoken at the Modern Web Event about images and web performance. We could have asked her again to update us on the progress made. We know well that unnecessarily heavy images significantly contribute to the time and resources we waste while browsing the web, and that designers and developers should keep abreast of this issue. However, we have left that matter as an exercise for the reader, as we could not squander Cristina’s contributions, as UX lead, no less, in the vast open source project that is the Drupal content manager. There are few projects on the web of Drupal’s magnitude and, consequently, few challenges of that calibre that intertwine design with development on the web. Additionally, it is an open source project, a type where usability often does not receive adequate attention. Cristina has been pivotal in ensuring the implementation of people-centred design at Drupal. We could not afford to miss such an opportunity to understand how to tackle such a significant challenge.
Dani Latorre is our “guest star”. In our Sevillian edition of the Modern Web Event, we relied on Abel Sutilo to discuss how challenging it can be for the fields of design and development to work in tandem on a project (or not: he argued that, if executed correctly from the outset, the challenge is not insurmountable). When we asked him to revisit the topic for Mosaic, Abel stated that while he still stands by his thesis, his current experience has led him somewhat away from the “battlefront”. Before expressing concern over this loss, Abel suggested we contact Dani. Upon rereading his article, I still regret that we could not have Abel, but I take pride in the fact that our guest’s work merits this promotion.
I should not have favourites, but the reader might allow me to highlight Marcos Gonzalez’s article without downplaying the others. To begin with, Marcos is one of the pioneers of the event from which the Modern Web Event emerged. The legendary Device Days was dedicated to designing and developing applications for the web long before web technologies (primarily HTML, CSS and JavaScript) had matured enough to serve as the deployment and distribution platform they are today. Experienced readers may have guessed that Device Days revolved around the technologies Macromedia once developed – first Flash and then Flex. Thus, Marcos was an expert in designing and developing web applications before they even existed a decade ago. As the years passed, he embraced those new technologies first and continued to ride that almost impossible-to-surf wave. This gives him an unparalleled perspective on what has transpired in this decade. I am very proud of every article in this issue, but readers might forgive me for confessing that Marcos’ is my favourite.
These are the stories of the five articles that comprise issue 202 of Mosaic. Incidentally, 202 is the code that HTTP – the web’s foundational protocol – returns when a request has been accepted but not yet completed. It is a fitting code for these lines; however, if we are here, we have reached 200, which signifies “all OK.” I would like to extend my gratitude, in my role as issue editor, firstly to our authors for their effort, and secondly, but by no means less importantly, to the team dedicated to advancing Mosaic, for trusting me to assist them in this journey.
P.S. I forgot… I must also pray to the web gods that the next issue I edit is not 404…
Recommended citation: CÓRCOLES, César. 202 – Modern Web. Mosaic [online], January 2025, no. 202. ISSN: 1696-3296. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7238/m.n202.2407
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