meJoe.com

What is the best way to teach new Web designers about layouts? Is it easier for a fresh mind to understand tables (old school), Dreamweaver's “Layers” (WYSIWYG), or good old CSS?

I do not want to show them the old way. I'm not sure about making them too easy. I do not want to make things too complicated. Tables, “Layers”, and CSS all present some difficult decision when bringing new designers into our world. Does anyone have any suggestions?

After consulting with the expert on the subject, I have decided to go ahead an start with HTML.

A quick note about my sanity/kitchen.

All I need is some stability. This stupid kitchen is driving me crazy. I go to work, then come home from work to deal with more work! Throughout this remodeling ordeal, I have learned that thou shalt not touch your kitchen. Because it is the focal point of the home, the state of the kitchen is reflective of the home and it's inhabitants. A disorderly kitchen means a disordered family life. What does it mean though if you don't even have any walls up? Luckily it will soon be over. The countertop guy comes today!

We are finally installing our cabinets.

My kitchen is very nice, though it is half finished. We half-way installed the cabinets on sunday. Just one step closer to finally having a kitchen again (which we have been withought now for about 5 months)! You can save a lot of money doing things yourself, you can also drive your self crazy. I am almost crazy.

Being the new guy in that big organization is not easy. There is this blank moment (predecessor's tenure) in your mind that everyone remembers and forms their opinions on you/department.

The enthusiasm of the new guy is something everybody on the inside recognizes. Unusually precarious and safe at the same time, everyone is critical to your critique and wary of the mopping (of your predecessor's errors) you have to do at the same time. Things go wrong once and you can blame it on your predecessor, just don't tread on anyone's territory during your cleanup process.

Education is also a huge barrier. The bureaucracy of large organizations requires an immense education process to sell new ideas up the ladder. The addition of the horizontal axis that is team work and parrallel managers only serves to complicate matters.

This morning I had some great thoughts but have forgotten them all. Maybe I can get around to them a little later.

A brief commentary on working with these stalwarts of design.

Today I had a heated discussion with an individual about designing home pages. I am afraid I was out of line as the location and timing for the debate was not ideal. My points about home page design, however logical and supported, were not acknowledged though.

Aesthetic vs. technical Usable

The discussion flowded around the relationship of the aesthetic and technical in our web designs. Unarguable is the fact that Web design is a marriage of technical and aesthetic characteristics. There is a belief though that some how the relationship is inverse. I believe that there are very few technical limitations to a web page(with the right money and team), and that the aesthetic can work freely. Limitations only become a problem in terms of accessibility. Large images and one image home pages are not accessible because of the web's greatest limitation: bandwith (download speeds). Bandwith however is not a technical limitation. Any user can download very large images & graphics. The limitation is user patience.

100 people viewing small images is preferred over reaching just 50 with large images.

I also prefer design that takes the web as a medium into consideration.

Impact of Graphics / Content

The home page is not a magazine cover. Magazine covers compete with each other on newstands. On the web, once a user has loaded your page (ie entered utsa.edu), they have turned the cover page and are now looking for interesting content. Creating a splash page is akin to having two cover pages. If 18 year olds are interested in being entertained, they will visit Lee Dungarees or Coca Cola's Web sites.

Academia to the Rescue

There is a plethora of research and information about designing business and corporate websites. In fact, there is a whole industry that rights about this industry. There is very little about the education sector. I have been attempting to compile a list of must read articles for those who design education sites.

What should go on the homepage of a major organization? Everyone seems to know.

The redesign of the home page for a large organization. Everyone has an opinion and of course all think they are right. From publication's designers to secretary's. Your implementation time gets broken down as a result into about 10% design/coding phase and 90% in meetings, educating your coworker's, and campaigning. It is a kin to a political campaign, where your candidate is an organized mix of pixels and prose that represents certain unimportant issues that EVERYONE cares about. Approach it accordingly.

Realestate values in downtown Tokyo

Jakob Nielsen once stated, "Space on a big company's homepage is worth about 1,300 times as much as land in the business districts of Tokyo." Individuals from within large organizations often loose site of this daunting fact. The home page has to combine marketing, fresh content, and navigation, all in a usable and refreshing user interface, with a streamlined backend (low file sizes).

From this day forward, I will remember to appoint an official campaign manager.

Ranafrog.net has been replaced by meJoe.com. Why did I do it?

Welcome to MeJoe.com!

Due to problems with my Domain Name Registrar, I have decided to allow ranafrog.net to expire. It appears that during the registration process over two years ago, I (or they) mis-typed my email address. Can we say improved form validation? Such an important field should probably be repeated. Learning usability the hard way.

I grew apart from ranafrog.net though. It seemed clever at first (in spanish, rana means frog), but eventually grew into a nightmare as I would have to spell it out ten times a day. “No, rana… R as in Robert -A as in apple -N…”. AH! MeJoe is very simple. The spanish thing doesn't work though.

Interesting Coldfusion tests.

Visit my new ColdFusion run website. Features information about web programming in a different language.

Description of some test CSS projects that I have been undergoing.

Dear Web Browser:

This site will be updated to accomodate your technological lean and prefrences, and my personal desire to
create a mini-portal-like site dedicated to site usability, design, blogs, and various other known and unknown
electronic communication mediums (forum, galleries, experiments, etc.).

Visit the experimental site today!.

Please send suggestions and comments on the contact page. Constructive criticism is strongly encouraged. Some of the beta designs are radical tests in site construction. You have been forewarned! Your browser might not support some of the technology used, usability could be organized incomprehensibly, and some of the designs might be downright ugly. Please do not be discouraged from reviewing the site for these reasons.