The Most Important Web Designer Qualities

Dec 03, 2009

I have been thinking lately. While I have had the privilege to be involved in a web design program at a local college I start to question what the most important aspects of web design are. I decided to ask my network. Here is what I ask of you. Ask yourself "If I was to hire a web designer out of college, what would they have to know, and what would be a plus?", and leave it in the comments. Thank you for taking the time to contribute!
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My Development Work Process

Nov 07, 2009

Programming in its simplest form is a series and true/false responses. You perform a test. If it's true you perform one task, if it's false you perform another. If you are fairly new to programming this might seem a little too simple, but it's true. Look at flowcharts. Flowcharts are a graphical representation of what happens when something is true, and what happens when something is false. I was interested in how other developers approached programming, so it only makes sense to share my process.
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I Went To Sleep And The Web Fell Back 10 Years

Oct 25, 2009

Nearly every morning I fire up my computer, check emails, and read my RSS feeds. I do it for a few reasons. One, it catches me up on what I may have missed from the day before. Two, it's relaxing and sometimes inspires me to do something. This morning it inspired me, but not necessarily in a good way. It felt as if the web fell back 10 years over night, and I was inspired to toss in my two cents.
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Time For a Change

Oct 23, 2009

Nothing puts a person to action more than the feeling of desperation. Unfortunately, I think I may be there. A little background of how I got to where I am at now. I have been a Union Ironworker with Ironworkers Local 55 for 13 years. It's a great paying job! Although, it does have it downsides. There is a lot of travel, no real seniority, insecure employment, and it is very hard on the body. During one of my layoff stretches, I started to play with websites. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I was back in college learning everything I could about web design and development, you know, "just in case". Well, just as I knew it would, the day came when my web development skills were needed. All construction work dried up earlier this year. Long, long layoffs were ahead. Time to put those coding skills to use. I started freelancing, and was having the time of life. It was great, all except for one thing, it wasn't exactly making me rich. In fact, the payments were very, very far apart. So I needed unemployment to help bridge the gap.
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RSS is not dead

Sep 08, 2009

Just the other day, my Twitter feed started to get littered with "RSS is dead" tweets again. I decided that maybe it's time for my two cents. I wanted to explain why I think RSS is alive and kicking, where it is failing, and how the quality is suffering.
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