Category: Web Design

Categories
Co-op Technical Web Design

The Corporate Life

So I’ve been working at my summer job. Similar to most reasonable people, I like telemarketing about as much as Marmite (that is to say, not very much at all). However, I do get to work on their website code, which is currently absolutely abysmal. Things like the same stylesheet declared twice or unused inline styles in every page is quite sloppy, so it’s been satisfying cleaning things out. The only irritating aspect of the job is the awful fonts and dated layout which I’m supposed to live with. I’m not allowed to change the page layout because it’s “been approved” by the high ups. Blech.

Of course this means I’m replacing all the yucky table code with CSS. Don’t tell anyone, they won’t notice I’ve been coding the layout because it will look exactly the same, but now pass W3 validation. I hope I can fudge that layout rule at least a little bit though, the navigation bar I made for the top is about 100x nicer than that awful splotchy Goosebumps font.

P.S. If you ever come across an opportunity to use a PCI video card with an already-installed AGP card, save yourself three hours of Googling and hand wringing. Set the PCI card to be the “Primary” in the BIOS and everything will just work. Kind of like a Mac.
[nerd quotient: fulfilled]

Categories
Technical Web Design

OSX on a website. No, really.

JavaScript has certainly come a long way.

In between the innumerable midterms I’ve had in the past two weeks I’ve been learning a bunch of web technologies, including PHP, MySQL, and CSS. A cool trend I’ve noticed has been the consistencies between all of these languages and things I have already learned. PHP has classes and functions, just like Java/C++, and CSS has a very straightforward, logical structure. Programming is definitely a difficult skill in general, but things like this help.

Since my first major project idea is unacceptable to CSH, my second idea is happaning instead. Simply stated, it’s going to be a Major Project database where people can log in and edit the projects they own or view a list of upcoming projects. I hope its up to par in time…its already taken forever and a day so far just to learn the skills necessary.

Categories
Web Design

when coding gets you down…design

I had a lot of homework to catch up with this weekend. Instead of doing that, I learned a lot about the new hotness that is CSS. Turns out its the secret to making awesome sites in much less time than used to be required.

I’ve only been kind of slacking with this site redesign thing but its going to be pretty cool when its done.

Web design is one of those fields I’d love to do as a ‘real job’ if I expected to actually get a ‘real job’ as a designer. But maybe thats just the half empty glass talking.