Month: March 2007

Vast

Because the web is so big,there are folks writing 20 books a day about user interaction, interaction design, information architecture and the many other categories involved.
There are countless books on programming,design and web standards.
Then there are the articles and pages written for blogs and websites and blogging websites.
You could read all day for months and you may come out learning quite a lot but you won’t ever be able to learn it all.
I have tried to keep informed and am determined to do so,because I found out late in life(ok,I’m only 36 but that’s sort of late for picking a career)what I wanted to do for actual work.Which is to design web sites.

I say “actual work” because I always knew what I wanted to do:paint and draw. But I didn’t find a way to turn that into an income. A reliable income. In fact, it seems to be the main fate of most people in the Arts to have a thing they love to do but have a job that sucks their soul and pretty much destroys their energy for doing what they love.And they become evil, bitter and used.
It’s sad but it’s life and it’s face it or become evil,bitter and used.
I didn’t want to learn how to draw about 25% as well as I could by hand on some sort of software.So I didn’t go the route of a computer artist.(I simplify but you get the idea)
I didn’t have a computer until 2002.
I didn’t begin to learn anything about design until 2003.
I didn’t make my own web page until 2004.
I didn’t have my own website until 2005.
But once I got into it I was unstoppable.
So now I’m in the process of getting hired to do web design.
I found out pretty early on that this meant I had to know a lot more than the basics.
I had to be good.And I had to know how to improve and not get stuck on one method because it worked once about 6 months ago.
I’m always trying to improve and absorb good design practices combined with user interaction and common sense.

Idiots,Weirdos,Flamers and Lurkers

All of the webdesign work I’ve gotten,I got by browsing CraigslistNY.
I look in gigs, computers and in web/info/design sometimes even art/media/design can turn up something I think I can do.
Over and over I read ads that say one of the requirements for the job is an in-depth knowledge of Dreamweaver,InDesign or Fireworks…even folks asking that you know the evil(and discontinued) Frontpage.
Why??
Why is the ability to use an html editor or site building tool a requirement?
I can hand code html and css.I then validate the code and I don’t stop until I get a clean bill of code health.
I guess people use those programs because they don’t know how to hand code or they’re afraid of handcoding or this is just how they do it.
When I start writing a style sheet I never use tables.Tables are out of date.They fill your document with code and hamper robots and spiders efforts to crawl your page’s content.
If it’s a design choice for tables, ok.But you’re going to be keeping your client in the 90’s and it’s 2007,man.
So that is why I don’t use tables if I can help it.I even removed the tables from the Google search bar I put on one of my own sites.That is how much I don’t wanna use them.
Most WYSIWYG html editors have the option for tables.None have the option for divs–except the big ones like Dreamweaver,etc.
Going back to Dreamweaver and CraigslistNY,though: I ran an ad on what was up with this stuff being a requirement for a design job.
————————
Here is what I wrote:

Dreamweaver and etc

All of you posting gig ads stating that interested parties who answer must know Dreamweaver or InDesign or blah blah blah, as if anyone who knew what they were doing actually needed one of these programs to design a website.
Here’s the facts:programs like those maybe make a project finish faster.If the user doesn’t know css or html the programs will not teach them to him.
I have Notepad and Filezilla and 3 years learning Html and Css…this is the same as knowing how to use Dreamweaver because the end result is the same.Sigh.
So uh, yes, I know Dreamweaver.Can I have the job?
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I must have pissed off the 2 guys who answered my post because I got these responses:
RE:Dreamweaver and etc

FROM: Pete Tubbs
to gigs-299064806(me)

NO!! You Can’t.

Because your English sucks!!!

Who wants a web site from someone who can not complete a sentence?

NO ONE!!
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My response:

sion mccormick to Pete

I’m sorry, what part of my silly post led you to think I actually serious?
And if your wildly amusing rejoinder/rebuttal had come close to addressing the issue I raised in the ad(which you did not,by the way) I may have been interested in what you had to say.
Don’t you think it’s funny that these prospective employers all seem to think that having downloaded Dreamweaver somehow qualifies one person over another person?
My English is really very good.I got all A’s in college,ha ha.
Besides, we all know nitpicking someone’s language skills instead of paying attention to what they are saying is just a way of avoiding real communication.
Have a nice day and don’t hire me ever please! You seem mean.
————————————————————-
sion mccormick
to Pete

Oh and “can not” is one word.Cannot.
———————————————
His response to that:

Pete Tubbs to me

Good one, you got me, you’re right.

My 99.99% accuracy.

I should be ashamed in comparison to your 65%.

Funny how you could correct me and not give your own post a once over.

I bet you pasted my reply into word and ran spell check.

Genius
———————————————
My response to that:

sion mccormick to Pete:

Ohhh! But how do I know you didn’t use spell check? I thought since we were nitpicking that my comment was in order!
—————————————————-
And that was all he had to say.
Notice not once did he even mention the ideas in my original post.

And here is what this guy had to say:
RE:Dreamweaver and etc

FROM:ilurkk
to gigs-299064806(me)

Your a douche bag!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
—————————————————
My response:wow you must really be attached to dreamweaver.is it yer mum?
———————————————————
His response:It always strikes me as funny what people will say when their not within arms reach
——————————-
My response:
oh,you mean like calling me a douchebag for saying I didn’t think dreamweaver was a necessity in the designing of web sites?
I was only stating an opinion in an area of CL where I often saw ads posted by folks who seemed to think that knowledge of this program was essential.
But why you felt the need to call me a douchebag for stating an opinion as innocuous as that mystifies me.
Your latest response also seems to imply that if I was within arms reach you would do physical harm to me or that I feel I can say whatever I like because there is no real physical threat! Come on! Whoever you are “I lurk”, you are obviously a little imbalanced and or extremely silly.
I look forward to the brilliant response. Or not.
——————————————
And he never wrote back.

I guess either these guys looked at my post and got angry because it wasn’t a job or a job that involved Dreamweaver(something they seem really attached to)
and they got pissed because I kind of knocked their honey-poo.Or they got pissed because I’d wasted 10 seconds of their lives.Or it was just something they do,flame folks on CLNY.
Probably all of the above.
And yes, I did correct some of the grammatical mistakes I made in my ad posting.Ok,I put in some commas and capitolized the names of the programs I listed. But there weren’t spelling mistakes.
I Googled Pete Tubbs and found that some other people had had a run in with him,too.But the guy who complained about Pete had already done a lot of research on him and found out that he covers his tracks pretty well. So he isn’t that accessible. This makes sense:if you’re going to make a habit of emailing snarky things in reply to innocent ad postings, you’re not going to want the offended showing up to your blog or website and trying to get back at you.In short, it’s just usual cowardly internet behavior.
I did find Pete Tubb’s website and as Peter Frank put it:”it is a really crappy website-all flash and no substance”
Look for yourself.

I left a comment of sympathy on the guy’s blog,PeterC.Frank
He posted my comment but I got no other response.Perhaps the memory was too painful?
Ilurkk,on the otherhand is actively bidding for jobs on Getafreelancer.com.
And one of his credentials that he lists is Dreamweaver 4!
Just the other day I was reading about how there must be tweaks done to Dreamweaver 4 in order to make it produce valid code.Wow.
I always spellcheck my blog postings and my emails or comments I write.I consider it to be the least I can do.I don’t consider the use of spellcheck a sign of weakness!