Welcome to ''Web Design Patterns - A future approach?''
This website is part of my bachelor thesis I write at the Reutlingen University, Germany in the winter semester 2007/2008.
''The pattern discipline has become one of the most widely applied and
important ideas of the past decade in software architecture and design.''
(James Coplien)
In the 1970s first appeared an idea called "Design Patterns". It was first introduced in the book "A pattern language" by the architect Christopher Alexander, who used patterns to describe a problem, which occurs recurrently so you can use the solution multiple times without doing it the same way twice. Patterns became an interesting approach also adapted in the object-oriented programming as well as in interaction design.
Nowadays there are more and more designers who think that patterns might be a suitable form to structure recurring problems while developing websites. So you find several approaches in the Internet, e.g. starting from the YAHOO! Developer Network to a collection of the UC Berkley University, U.S. and so forth.
The question is, however, if patterns are really helpful while developing websites and if the concept is practical at all. At the moment several pattern libraries try to establish their own pattern concept, but do they all follow the same structure and are they interoperable?
This thesis analyses the pattern approach and compares existing libraries and their benefit for web developers.
If you are interested in the topic, I offer you to download the whole thesis as PDF.
Contents:
- Introduction
- Basics of the Pattern Approach
- Web Design Patterns
- Analysis
- Exemplary Implementation
- Conclusion