Flash:totally overused and overrated.

I hate Flash.I hate it on websites,hate hate hate it.
And everyone wants it.Everybody!
All the jobs listings posters ask for it.
It can’t be hard to do if everyone is doing it,can it?
I’ve started taking the steps to learning some of the basics.I’ve looked for open source stuff and I’ve loaded some stuff to a project web site.I know I’m going to have to know how to use it if I’m going to continue pursuing my dream.
Just like with Mysql-you can only resist for so long…

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.

New Blog Look


I can’t stand having the same blogtemplate that 10,000,00 others have. Even though the template I used was the nice TicTac (Blueberry)-I had to go in and change everything.
Actually, I didn’t care to change the placement of #main #posts #sidebar #header. So if you think about it, it’s now just a smaller(thinner),pinker,greyer version of the original.
Still, it was a lot of work…a lot of deleting work,hah ha.
Then a few changes to the margins and paddings and fonts and background colors and voila:my version is cooler!
yay.
I really like the font Miriam.I used to exhaust myself trying to find out there type fonts.But the depressing news on out there fonts is that unless the veiwer also has this font-they won’t see your font.So you’ve got to use something widely used.
There are ways of embedding your fonts with PHP or Javascript but I haven’t had success with those,yet.