To warp a saying, “You can give a canvas to a programmer, but you can’t get her to create a Picasso.”
I’ve read dozens of pages geared towards design professionals, about color, content, form, and shape. I understand the theory, but when it comes time to put pen to paper, or keyboard to monitor, I simply cannot make it happen. God knows, I’m just hammering my head against that concrete design wall.
I struggled with a visual design for a day, and created a big black blob with a non-descript background, and some white blob text logo on it. For the tenth time, I’ve resigned myself to the fact, that I cannot design worth a dime. I’ll stick with established designs by template, with my own tweaks.
The coding is a much easier challenge. It’s finally getting into my thick skull. If CSS is the way to go, don’t code tables into the HTML. Slap my hand whenever I type “table.” I have to resist the temptation to just let Photoshop slice the image and autocreate the HTML table. I have to take the longer and bramble-covered path, and follow some CSS tutorials.
The pivotal tutorial that broke me out of the tables mind-set was this one: http://tutorials.alsacreations.com/tutocss/. Viewing the web page in terms of “zones” or “blocks” makes it easier to understand how to build the CSS. Raphael’s site also offers some beautiful navigation solutions. There are excellent examples of two-image navigation CSS coding. No need for javascript mouseovers, no second hover images, and no carving of images! Compact code, and compact imaging.
A lot of this stuff I will never incorporate into the site, but I never miss the opportunity to learn improved ways of doing things.
Onward.
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