Dealing with legacy pages

I wrote earlier this week about the rebranding process we’re going through at work, and the problems that have surfaced regarding static legacy pages. The curse of the WYSIWYG has reeked havoc amongst the ranks, the files now stand in line like badly disciplined soldiers that refuse to obey the CSS, no matter how much they scream and shout… Or maybe that’s stretching it a bit far.

There is another enemy at play, tables. Not only that but nested tables and loads of them too, with those 1px high images that push the cells open. These are the most time consuming hurdles, trying to figure out what sits within what and why. Almost all of them serving no purpose apart from contributing to the endemic code bloat.

It’s sometimes difficult trying to balance time between doing what I think I should do, and what I actually have time for. To a certain extent rebranding an old website, built by someone else with no regard to any sort of standards, is an exercise in damage limitation.