Notes · 8 March 2026
The basics of web design, revisited
A short guide called Master the Basics of Web Design used to live on this site. The link still works. The contents do not. This is the rewrite.
This article exists because an older one used to. A short guide called “Master the Basics of Web Design: HTML5 & CSS3” was published on this site some years ago, and a number of people kindly linked to it from their own sites. The link still works. The contents do not. This is the rewrite.
What is still true:
A web page is a document with a structure. The structure is made of nested boxes. The boxes flow from top to bottom unless told to do something else. Type does most of the design work even when the design appears to be doing something else. The eye reads left to right and top to bottom in this script, and the page either respects that or fights it on purpose.
What is no longer true:
HTML5 is not a thing you mention any more. It is just HTML. CSS3 is not a thing you mention any more. It is just CSS. “Responsive web design” is not a thing you mention any more. It is just web design. The idea that a website should look identical in every browser is no longer true and was never quite right.
What was never quite right:
The original guide treated layout as a problem to be solved with float properties and clearfix hacks. This was the state of the art at the time. It was also tedious, fragile, and left a lot of designers thinking that layout was a harder problem than it really is. Grid and Flexbox have made the old approach look like the workaround it always was.
What to read instead:
If you came here from an older article looking for a beginner’s guide, the most generous thing I can do is point you at a more current one. The MDN documentation on layout is more useful, more accurate, and more frequently updated than I will ever be. The Web Almanac is a good annual review of how the web is actually being built. Josh Comeau’s CSS for JavaScript Developers is the most useful paid course I am aware of.
The original article will stay up. The redirect from it to this one will not. People who linked to the old version deserve to land on the rewrite, not on a 404.