Future Shock
Yeah.. I realize how far I'm behind everyone when it comes to web technology. I don't have a Flickr account, a delicious account, or use last.fm. I don't edit Wikipedia. Hell, I don't even use AIM anymore!
After spending the last twenty minutes looking at all the blog response on the Fidg't Visualization, I've come to the realization that I'm far far behind on everyone else with what's going on. Twitter? What's that. I barely even blog. The last time I genuinely felt I was participating on the interbutts was 1996 when I made my first Geocities page when I was in middle school. Good lord.
I believe part of the reason I haven't joined the "Web 2.0" bandwagon, with all its slick AJAX (I genuinely hate that acronym, what happened to my DHTML??) was because of my god-awful experience with working on websites in the early 00s.
In 2001 I worked at a company called Pinnacle, which later became B.I.G. (Brand Integration Group) where I was tasked to crop Maxim photos and screenshot images for FX network ALL DAY LONG. That was web-design to me. It consists of blind copy-pasting and if someone screwed up some decision making process (usually a higher-up... as there was no one below me!!) you'd have to go through each and every page to change type, or layout.
Eventually one of us got clever and decided to use Dreamweaver and automate page changes. Even that was flawed, since everything breaks down if for some reason something got left out of the pipeline. We then turned to Javascript (PHP was still in its infancy then I believe), and I was the only one in the whole damn company who cared to learn it to make my living hell of a life easier. Document.write() ftw!
But the real discouragement came from slime-ball clients. I guess this is the same in any industry but it's somehow more pronounced in web design. People would come up to me and simply ask me to do a web-site for them for free, assuming I'm a stupid college kid. And I was, I was pretty stupid. I had trouble saying no. "Clients" would include anything from family, friends, family-friends, to associates, student organizers, marketing slime, etc. Yes. This project will do well for your portfolio, but we cant pay you any money! And best of all, once you join us you're our bitch!
I'm sure you've heard this all before though. In any-case, I've avoided web-technology and its growth for about five years now, and I'm quite happy to say it's matured a lot since then. Maybe it's just my luck, but the clients I get now are much more understanding, forgiving, and respect the designers that they choose. I have a feeling that this whole "Web 2.0" is somehow my long lost brother that was a complete bratty miscreant as a kid, but has now gained some sensibility and can finally hold an intelligible dialogue.
After spending the last twenty minutes looking at all the blog response on the Fidg't Visualization, I've come to the realization that I'm far far behind on everyone else with what's going on. Twitter? What's that. I barely even blog. The last time I genuinely felt I was participating on the interbutts was 1996 when I made my first Geocities page when I was in middle school. Good lord.
I believe part of the reason I haven't joined the "Web 2.0" bandwagon, with all its slick AJAX (I genuinely hate that acronym, what happened to my DHTML??) was because of my god-awful experience with working on websites in the early 00s.
In 2001 I worked at a company called Pinnacle, which later became B.I.G. (Brand Integration Group) where I was tasked to crop Maxim photos and screenshot images for FX network ALL DAY LONG. That was web-design to me. It consists of blind copy-pasting and if someone screwed up some decision making process (usually a higher-up... as there was no one below me!!) you'd have to go through each and every page to change type, or layout.
Eventually one of us got clever and decided to use Dreamweaver and automate page changes. Even that was flawed, since everything breaks down if for some reason something got left out of the pipeline. We then turned to Javascript (PHP was still in its infancy then I believe), and I was the only one in the whole damn company who cared to learn it to make my living hell of a life easier. Document.write() ftw!
But the real discouragement came from slime-ball clients. I guess this is the same in any industry but it's somehow more pronounced in web design. People would come up to me and simply ask me to do a web-site for them for free, assuming I'm a stupid college kid. And I was, I was pretty stupid. I had trouble saying no. "Clients" would include anything from family, friends, family-friends, to associates, student organizers, marketing slime, etc. Yes. This project will do well for your portfolio, but we cant pay you any money! And best of all, once you join us you're our bitch!
I'm sure you've heard this all before though. In any-case, I've avoided web-technology and its growth for about five years now, and I'm quite happy to say it's matured a lot since then. Maybe it's just my luck, but the clients I get now are much more understanding, forgiving, and respect the designers that they choose. I have a feeling that this whole "Web 2.0" is somehow my long lost brother that was a complete bratty miscreant as a kid, but has now gained some sensibility and can finally hold an intelligible dialogue.