Category Archives: Development

I know, bad pun… maybe I should stop designing and go apply for a newspaper?

As you may be aware by now, Adobe has announced a new product of theirs entitled “Muse”.

If you don’t already know what it is, it’s a modern day version of  a badly conceptualised, poorly executed set of applications that allow pretty much anyone to “build websites”.

Why the hostility?

Put basically, Adobe, it feels like you’re trying to screw over the very people who use your products on a daily basis.

The web community has been working hard over the last 10 years to encourage writing websites in a semantic and meaningful way. Muse basically ignores all of this and does it’s own thing!

Not only does the HTML consist of over 1,500 lines of HTML to build an incredibly simple page, it even promotes it’s self as the program for creating “websites as easily as you create layouts for print”.

As pointed out by… Read more

When I was looking to get into the web design and development industry, there were no courses, jobs or apprenticeships of any kind.

It was a rough ride looking for a job before I was finally lucky enough to be given a position in a company on a “trial run”.
I worked hard, initially scanning holiday properties from hundreds of holiday brochures and importing them into a content management system.

With some knowledge of photoshop, and little to no knowledge of HTML, CSS or Javascript, I had to work hard in my own time to learn the skills I would need to be able to design and build websites.

This is common in our industry, and is the only real way of learning.

Yes, there are courses on design, development, computers etc. However, the industry is so fast moving that courses often find it hard to stay relevant.
Students often have to employ their own skills of research… Read more

Earlier today, @JohnONolan announced he was quitting Dribbble, and has caused a bit of a stir (do you expect anything different from John?).

While I fully understand where John is coming from, and the reasons he has decided against using Dribbble, I won’t be doing the same.

I agree that this design “community” site has become a little “elitist” and sometimes it can be like a school playground.
However, I fully believe that this can be the case on any community platform, and will continue to be as long as it’s human beings contributing content.

It’s human nature to form social groups, or cliques. There is absolutely no avoiding it.
One way to deal with these is simply not to interact with them (which is what John has chosen to do), and thats his prerogative.
While some don’t agree with the way he did it, I admire his honesty, and putting his… Read more

I need to get my site designed and built!

I have been saying that exact phrase for what feels like years now.
I start a design I like, then I give up and abandon all hope of finishing it.

Time’s are about to change!
2011 is the year where I stick to my word… the site WILL be built.

Why the sudden turn around?

I’m sick of having subdomains that I link to, and nothing on my main URL.
I’m sick of promising myself I will do something, and not doing it.
I have a couple of projects I’d like to do, and no “Personal” site to write about it.
Someone might actually have a use for the gumph I intend to write about.

For the above reasons, the next few weeks are going to be spent deciding exactly what this site will become, how I will use it, design and build it hopefully before the end of… Read more