August 12, 2006 1:12 pm

Web 2.0 Designs

:note: Moulin Rouge Soundtrack – “Come What May”

I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I like shiny, round, “Web 2.0” designs. The designs on Carbonmade, Geek In The Park, Perfection, and Templatica make me happy. I am ashamed because these designs are what’s “in” right now. They’re super trendy. That said, I LOVE THEM. I wish I could successfully pull them off.

I am going to be involved in an Independent Study class next term as part of my Multimedia Senior Project requirement. Basically, I have to make up a project, a syllabus, assignments, etc. for myself and then adhere to that and report to an instructor periodically on my success. A fellow student is in the same position as me, and I think we’re both seriously considering a project on CSS, web standards, and accessibility.

This would be a perfect excuse to buy all those CSS books I’ve been looking at, so I was pricing them all on Amazon.com today and my total came to a bit over $120 for six books, which averages out to $20 a book, which isn’t that bad. I think I’m going to head to Powell’s Technical sometime soon so I can see how much they’d charge me there and if I can find any used books. Otherwise, I’m just going to buy the lot of them and be done with it.

I’m going to see if I can get better at cross-browser compatibility. Right now, my site looks… odd… in Internet Explorer. Thanks to Rose, it actually works, but for some reason my rounded corners get all gorked up and strange rectangles appear out of nowhere. I’m still not sure where the issue is coming from. I want my rounded rectangles to work in IE like Perfection does. *pouts*

I’m currently struggling in regards to my title. Do I want to call myself a web designer? A web developer? What if I don’t think I’m that good at design but I enjoy it? And what if I’m not super fantastic at programming but I enjoy that as well? And what if I think I’m about equal talent-wise at both? My friend Ben H. branded himself as a “develonizer” to get around this. GENIUS.

I’m starting to think I’m going to go the route of being super-specialized in CSS/XHTML. I know of at least one person that currently works for a great web design agency here in Portland that pretty much exclusively works CSS magic. I would love to be that person. Hence all the books and lusting after shiny, round designs. Trust me, if I could actually use Photoshop to make something good-looking, there would have been a shiny, web 2.0 design here long ago.

File Under: ,

Tagged: No tags

4 Comments