Web Design
I have made a career of web design and front end web page development since 1996. Over the years I rode the dotcom wave on the crest and the trough after the wave broke. Along the way I've seen a lot of good and, franky, shitty web design. I'm an environmental science major. Maybe I've molded my major to the Web: I'm here to make the web a cleaner, safer place to be.
Here's what I have learned:
- The blink tag is best left forgotten
-
Most of the folks who read English read from left to right, up to down. No need to fight the current here, ok? It's damned annoying to try to read English like Chinese, when that's not how it is supposed to be read.
- Everything designed for a professional business, for the professional world, should be one to two years behind the technology curve. Riding the crest is fun, but your site will break for most of the community who is lazy about updating browsers and the latest Flash Player.
- Stylesheets are the true path, young grasshopper. I still code in tables sometimes, depending on what the client desires and my timeframe. Do as I say, not as I do: avoid tables, there is now a better solution.
- Addendum to the third point: if you are designing for your own portfolio to show what you can do, ignore what I said. Go nuts. Just know a lot of folks won't be able to see it right, but you'll impress the right people.
- The Web is a power unlike any other. In the ten years or so it's been here, we have broken through a new wall in communication, and are now able to reach and share our lives with people we never, ever would have met otherwise. If the six degrees of seperation ever lowers to five, the Web will be why.