How bad do you want to be good? (cringe)
In 2002 I took a few web classes at a community college in the bay area. I dropped the design class, being too busy to handle everything, and knowing enough of standards to realize what we were being taught violated the way the web was meant to be used. I later dropped the flash course, convinced I would never learn such a complicated and technical program, and having a new scheduling conflict that kept me from regularly attending the weekly class.
The courses I didn’t drop were online classes dealing with HTML and JavaScript, back when JavaScript (as I understood it) was superfluous trickery. HTML, though, was solid. I was just cleaning out some files, and I found the assignment timeline for the course. Here are some highlights:
Assignment Description
During the next 8 weeks you will create your own “Web Site” by creating a number of pages, linked together to a “Home Page”…Week 3: Tables
Start a new homepage called “altindex.htm” that uses a table to align the title, graphic, text, and menu…Week 5: Images Maps
Use Paintbrush to create a simple site map graphic. Use the graphic to create an image on a new page…Week 6: Frames
(Do I even need a follow up to this one?)Week 7: Forms
…Your form should ask for things like name, address, interests, comments…
Given that this is the most successful academic experience I’ve had with the world wide web, is it any wonder that I’ve since shied away from pursuing formal web design education?
But here we are seven glorious years later, and web design has advanced at a much more maddening pace than my skills have. I feel like an SVA billboard, which I hate on so many levels, and salivating over brilliant web design while occasionally dipping a toe into css doesn’t narrow the gap between current ability and mastery. I need to take a class. Perhaps several. And they need to not cover frames.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:55 am
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