GuitarAngel.net

I personally think it's ridiculous that they don't have the wireless network set up in the communications building on campus. I mean, its the freakin' communications building...and it even says on the website that they have the funding for it. So hop to, chop chop!! Lets get moving! I want to be able to actually get work done while "listening" to my digital media professor give lectures on things I already know.

I'm actually in class right now and this Javascript guest speaker guy is quite boring, I mean, he doesn't even have any color on his PowerPoint presentation, and you know for that he loses like 10 points. Ok he just made a good point though...he's talking about how its unrealistic for programmers to think they don't have to use design tools to do their work and how lots of them think that only wimps and newbies and etc only use stuff like Dreamweaver, etc. I hate it when people make me feel like I'm not a good web designer just because I use Dreamweaver and/or other tools to help me work with the web.

I've been coding ever since I was 12 years old people, its not like I don't know how to literally hand-code things here. When I was younger I pretty much learned how to do all this stuff by hand in two different situations. One was on my grandmother's WebTV system...and if anyone has ever used WebTV they know that its only a keyboard hooked up to your television and nothing else. So I couldn't really use the copy and paste feature for code, I had to write down every single symbol and character on dozens of notepads and notebooks that I kept and that i STILL have somewhere. So writing it down like that helped me learn the raw HTML, etc. The second situation was my parents computer with few dozen floppy disks. I didn't have my own computer (or one that I shared with my sisters) until I was 15 or 16. My first web page ever is still alive and viewable here! That is the labor and sweat of my 12-14 year old web career. It breaks every rule of design, but it still showcases my desire to grow in skill.

I had downloaded a trial version of Adobe Illustrator and I made the majority of my graphics. And noooo I didn't use the easy builder option that Angelfire gives you. I wanted to be able to manipulate whatever I wanted to in the code so I always wrote in the advanced template, which was just the one huge textarea with all the raw code I could mess with. I had frames, animations, Flash, Javascript and a few other goodies. There are coding aspects on that page I obviously wouldn't use on my website in present day though...like music and alert boxes, etc, but I still like how its a part of my past.

So don't tell me that I don't know what I'm doing. I could sit there and write out an entire web page with graphics and links and whatever without using the WYSIWYG programs. But i choose to use Dreamweaver because I don't want to code a page in Notepad and then have to upload it again and again and again every time I make a page just to see that one little change when I can just press F12 on my keyboard and have an example preview page come up as if it were live on the web, I don't even have to be connected to the internet...and then Dreamweaver has that lovely find and replace feature where if you have hundreds of lines of code you can find what you're looking for in a snap.

If you don't have a design program then next best thing (to my knowledge) is to use Microsoft Word which has that feature...and that's probably not a good idea because Word is definitely NOT a web savvy program. I never usually use all those shortcut-insert features where you can add lines of code...I write it all out myself or paste from previous work I've done. I can make my website skinnable (or viewable in different layouts) by using the same basic code template that I created and just moving around the options, adding new features, updating the CSS file for each skin. Whenever I want to make a new layout now I just copy and paste the "index.php" from a previous style and add in the new graphics and changes for the new one.

It's just my opinion, but those people who sit there and re-code everything in your basic raw HTML program again and again and again are just wasting time. Sure, people will admire/respect you somewhat for literally pouring your life and many long hours into creating your webbie masterpiece but visitors want immediate content and updates, they don't like waiting. If your page doesn't load or it doesn't have a change here or there or a new layout because you've been coding the change in there for the past three days isn't going to make them wanna hang around and wait. Its like the whole "the customer is always right" dealie. In some ways web designers have to bow down to the visitor because isn't that a point and focus of making a website? To reign in the masses to adore your glorious talents? Of course! ^.^

So time is of the essence and everything requires the need for speed. I'm not saying just throw things together and beat them around in order to get them looking semi-presentable in order to please the visitor...I will sit there for hours myself, even in Dreamweaver, and fine-tune my website to reach my high perfectionist ideals. I'm just saying that Dreamweaver and other design tools help to chop off some of the extra time spent on making a website, etc, and is a great help to those who are building visitor-friendly sites.

I've been to a great deal of personal websites where the owners abhor the use of Dreamweaver and declare anyone who uses it not a "real" programmer. Lemme tell you that half the people who actually use the program already know how to code and are just using it as a time-saver. A newbie who wanted to create a website probably could figure out how to use the program after a little while, but it was created for those who already know how to do all the stuff. Someone who's never seen a line of HTML or JavaScript couldn't just waltz into Dreamweaver and create a good web page. So we aren't newbies and we aren't stupid and we aren't just "virtual wannbe" programmers because we use a program to help conserve time.

That is my rant for today. I'm gonna get a kick outta those people who read this entry and think "whatta geek!", because i am one! I don't care, it is a definite truism. I have a t-shirt that says "I read your email" and another one that says "Ubergeek". Woot! ^.^ I like being a geek. Yay for geeks. My favorite online store is Think Geek! ^.^

Have a lovely Friday Eve!