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I’ve been working on a super-sweet page, and being halfway through I was amazed with how extremely elegant the code was. So very minimalistic… but also flexible, easily allowing for elaborate additions. Pure beauty! Both the HTML markup and the CSS were short and sweet. I felt quite good about myself (and still do).
That reminded me of Ryan’s code. Sometimes I would take some copy & paste code from some online resource for some feature I want to have but can’t do myself, because it is PHP, for instance. After some wrestling with the code, often accompanied by frustration, Ryan would have a look at it. Sometimes he just helps me makes sense of it, so I can continue, but other times (lots of times) he gets annoyed with the messy code or with how that other programmer solved a certain problem, so he stops whatever he is working on, and writes the whole thing himself. One of those times I had a program of several hundred lines of code, and Ryan wrote his versions that did exactly the same thing, and was about 15 lines long. 15 lines!!
Code is poetry…. and Ryan is a poet.
That reminds me of a dialog from “clientsfromhell”. It goes like this:
Client: “I want this form to email me the information.”
Programmer: “No problem, we can install a script to take care of that for a small fee.”
Client: “A script? Do I need a PHP? My son has a PHP and wrote a script that was 15 inches long. Do you charge by the inch?”
Charging by the inch…
Everything can easily be done in a more complicated way in order to seem more complex to the untrained and uneducated eye, but the true artist and the real genius programmer will always do it in less.
Finding the ultimate web hosting company is the eternal quest of any website owner.
If you have the necessary resources, then a dedicated server is certainly a splendid solution, but being in the web design business I also try to familiarize myself with various hosting companies, in order to collect personal experiences which can then benefit my clients, or you, if you are reading this blog.
So… I had a look at several of those websites which offer “unbiased web hosting reviews”, or so they claim, and interestingly, I come across the same hosts at the top of each list, over and over again. The same ones are being rated and reviewed, and not even by that many people. It almost makes it seem like there are no other hosts out there! One of these “great hosts” has obviously redesigned an old standby domain, they don’t have any credibility online whatsoever, except on these unbiased review sites.
My conclusions is… the source is either one and the same (meaning the same company or group is behind all those hosts), or a few hosting companies joined forces and built themselves websites to advertise their collective services.
Of course they had to add a few of the “big ones” and the odd “loser host”, otherwise it would look too suspicious.
So my search by these means was fruitless, but at least I squeezed this blog post out of it.
I don’t want to name any of these sites and help them out additionally by advertising for them here (even if it’s negative advertising). Just be careful and pay attention to details.
I would like to start this off with a sincere explanation and to applaud those behind the actual creation, compilation, and execution of jQuery. It is a wonderful library and provides functionality to help make the web a more magical and beautiful place. However, I cannot bring myself to use it… that is obviously not true to an absolute because this blogging application uses it… and here I am using the blog. But I can’t bring myself to use it for my own projects or for our clients’ projects. I like the saying “write less, do more.” But the fact is you have to learn quite a bit to develop your own uses of the library. So, since most of the people who are actually developing the menus, slide shows, and such already know JavaScript, why are they using the library instead of simply writing the JavaScript for that particular object, widget, add-on, or whatever you want to call them?
I understand that there are designers that need the library because they are not developers and cannot/will not learn to write a specific script to handle the smooth opening of a drop down menu or the fading of images in a little slide show. I get it… honestly… but I hate looking up and getting TONS of Javascript warnings and errors in my pages. Just accessing the front page of jQuery.com I get the following:
Most of those are “just warnings” and not errors. So… “no harm, no foul“. The real headache is that most of the above warnings have to be there. If you attempt to go through and “correct the mistakes” something isn’t going to work right… or you are going to have errors instead of warnings.
Here’s what I find funny about it though… Java scripting is A LOT like Flash Action scripting and most of these designers have a fairly decent understanding and knowledge of Action scripting. JavaScript is a bit more strict as far as its syntax but other than that it is almost identical.
So, most know how to use the setInterval/clearInterval functions and can run a loop to move something on an X or Y axis… or even make something fade in or out… maybe they don’t know the similarities? Maybe they don’t see the point? Maybe it is just me and I am a stickler for these things which I shouldn’t really care about?
I am pretty sure these warnings and any possible CSS errors aren’t affecting your site’s search engine placement as Google seems to be a fairly large supporter of jQuery. Plus their own Google analytics API scripts might even be worse, concerning warnings and errors, than jQuery. So why am I all in a huff about it? I’m not really… I just like clean neat error free code… be it HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ActionScript or PHP. It makes my job easier and I don’t see the point in loading a library full of stuff of which my particular project only needs a fraction. Also, if I am writing my own script, for whatever, and something isn’t working exactly correct I have to wade though all of jQuery’s warnings to find out if my script is returning any errors or warnings… and just keep my fingers crossed that they aren’t all mixed up and I overlook one… an important one. You know, the one that causes you to bang your head against the wall repeatedly saying “Why isn’t it working? It should be working…”
Yes, yes… my rant is done… I feel much better. Thanks for listening…
I had a great idea for a website, connected with a particular domain name, so I went and checked if the domain name is available. It’s not… I got a “Page not found”, but the domain is taken. A brilliant domain name sitting there completely useless. I checked a few alternatives, and saw much of the same, until I came across this guy’s website. A terrible website that looks like it was created in the mid-90s, and guess what he does for a living?!
He is a web designer!
Ugh…. so I am wondering, yet again, for the who-knows-whichth time…
I looked at the source code of his page and saw template tags all over. A template!!
What inspires a non-artistic person to call themselves a web designer, and furthermore, if that is what they want to be, then why do they use someone else’s template for their site? As if all of that isn’t bad enough already, why do they at least not get a good looking template?
I wish this was a singled out case, an exception, but it’s not. I love coming across a well designed and well-coded website, even if it wasn’t designed by me. It doesn’t happen so often (ha ha), but when it does, it makes me truly happy! It also inspires me to create something grand(er).
Likewise, coming across an uninspiring site, especially one supposedly belonging to a design firm or a freelance designer is kind of sad.
And… some people will pay this “web designer” to design their website.
Maybe it’s like with being in love. Maybe there is really someone for everyone, even when it comes to web design.
I must say that Sabina’s explanation makes perfect sense to me but she doesn’t really need me to talk about her talents and vision, which make her the superb designer that she is, as there are tons of clients that have given their two cents in testimony to that fact.
It has been my experience that the designer’s work speaks out and is generally the first thing noticed and either appreciated or criticized. So, I probably won’t be saying too much about Sabina’s designs as, I think, they pretty much scream perfection and that doesn’t really need to be pointed out. However! What I would like to point out and give a little insight upon is her awareness and attention to the construction of a page. There are a lot of designers that are simply real good graphic artists but their attention to the construction of pages are not as appealing as their visual designs. I, on the other hand… being a developer, have a slightly different approach to websites and their design than most. Since most of my work is a “behind the scenes” kind of thing… I do just that go behind the pretty visual facade and “check out what’s under the hood“. Most would say “Yeah, but who cares? Nobody sees that!“, but if they start to put any kind of thought into what exactly search engines see, they would change their mind. The construction of a page is every bit as important as how it looks to the visitors because most visitors won’t be coming to your site without the ever important search engine. It is Sabina’s attention to those details, and beyond, that put her above the rest of the designers that would eventually even come close to her caliber of expertise as a designer in the strict visual sense of the title.
When it comes to self-promotion, Ryan is traditionally about as good at it as me, maybe even worse (which is really really bad!). However… I have no problem talking about him, and maybe he has no problem speaking about me.
So other than sharing my own views and opinions on matters of design, code, etc., I will from time to time write about Ryan. About him as a coder or a designer, from my unique perspective, as I have worked together with him for more than 10 years now (it went by much faster than it sounds).
All posts about Ryan will be tagged appropriately…. so, there’s something to look forward to!
A super-sweet quote by WordPress.org
This is just what the world has been waiting for: yet another web design blog!
We are so happy and so very very proud to be the first official web design blog on the world wide web! You must be perfectly thrilled to be here.