Kicked out of my nest.
Reflections February 12, 2008
Due to being a graphic designer I entered the world of computers through the door of Apple. My first steps were in Illustrator, trying to grasp the core of a spline and paths and then it was Photoshop and QuarkXPress. This was all that I needed to make the jump from pre-computer (yes, there was such a time) into the digitally savvy and competition ready graphic designer world of 1994.
From then on out my path was set solidly in this world.
For the first 5 years of my digital life I refused to design for the web, to take the web into consideration in any way design wise. I HATED it. Used to the print world and the control I have with it over all and now here came this ugliness and slowness of the web just that anyone could override what I was trying to present. Sometimes I wonder how many other graphic designer had to fight the same fights, had to overcome the same barriers. The next 2 years I still battled the web but bit into this sour thing with the help of GoLive which allowed me the illusion of some sort of control and design, while hiding all the code from view.
Of course, one grows and gets more adventurous. At some point I got into blogging and this pushed me irresistibly into the world of PHP and with that I began losing the fear of code. It was so LIBERATING to sit down, learn and grasp what HTML truly was all about and to throw GoLive away.
Since then I find myself on the quest for clean code which includes simplified structure.
It does come at a cost, I do take at times longer than if I do a messy job. But in the long run I believe that I am faster all the same. Most of the time I worked directly for clients and sometimes as freelancer and all these past years it remained a heavily Mac oriented world. Even though I ran 7 different CSS files for my 2nd website (just because I could do it), I never worried too much about the PC side, if it looked somewhat okay, that was good enough… serves “them” right as they chose to live on a monster like a PC if they don’t see it as beautiful as somebody on Safari!
I know, I know… pretty short sighted, especially if one wants to address the current majority of computer users. And I’ve definitely learned my lesson this past year when I was tossed into the harsh world of IE6, IE7 and Firefox on XP and Vista combined and where Safari users only get accommodated if we have some time to spare.
It was a tough year and I know I am not yet done learning this side of the game. But I have definitely found some neat little tricks and over time the amount of hacks I had been using in the beginning seem to have boiled down to only a very few. Keep tuned, I will go over a few in due time.
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