Are you as overwhelmed as I am?
Tuesday September 2, 2008
I'm still trying to decide if I believe that Web 2.0 isn't a load of horse manure and people are starting to talk about Web 3.0 (whatever!). You may have just switched to full-time CSS layouts instead of tables, and people are now saying that sIFR or something else is more important. And as Emil over at Friendly Bit says, "A good Flash developer can get a wow reaction by the time you’ve chosen doctype (or at least by the time you’ve booted IE6)." So maybe we should be learning Flash? I have been vacillating between learning Ruby on Rails or how to fine-tune my Web photos, both taking the photos and manipulating them to make them even more interesting. And that's not even scratching the surface of the new XML languages I could learn or design techniques I should master. Luckily, I still find it fun, so even when I'm overwhelmed, it's a good overwhelmed.
Comments
As someone who’s been doing this for 14 years, “yes”, I feel overwhelmed at times. It’s always learning something new. I’m not a designer, but the need to make even a small form look good requires that I know CSS pretty well. Then there’s learning ActionScript, it’s even more difficult to pass a FLA file back and forth from programmer to designer, than web templates. So when I get overwhelmed, I back off for a while and get refreshed. Then when I start again, I’m as passionate about learning as I’ve ever been.
As I think Jeffrey Zeldman suggested web 2.0 is just a phrase created for some to try and rebrand the web, personally I think it would be silly to try and make a trend of it the web is technology based of course there will be many changes and advances, dose that mean we should try and slap a version number on it every few years? I wonder what version fields like medicine and avionics would be in if they had version numbers applied to them, the though is pretty humorous to me.
I think usability is the key to a website myself, though an amateurish appearance can be a turn off. If something like Flash, AJAX or RUBY-on-RAILS will help improve the usability, bestir thyself. Or wait until something even easier and better comes along if you don’t have nagging bosses or commercial needs on you back.
Yes! I’m overwhelmed. I’ve been a developer for 17 years (working with web for 7 years) – but it is harder and harder to keep up… where to start?
Yep, this is me! I just graduated college in Dec 2006, doing web design since 1999-2000. It is very overwhelming.