!!blue’s blog

Yeah, when someone at your work says to you, “We need to make sure that’s fixed” they really mean, “You need to make sure that’s fixed.” So why do they say we when they mean “you?” When I say “we” I mean “we,” as in, ‘I’m capable of doing this as much as you are so either one of us can do it. It’s cool.’

Some people say “we” and mean, ‘You have to do that because I don’t want to/don’t care/don’t know how.’ Jeez.

Pierre Nel posted What’s in My Bag on his Flickr account which shows five out of ten web designer tools that I have.

1. Cederholm: Web Standards Solutions
2. Zeldman: Designing With Web Standards
3. Shea: The Zen of CSS Design
4. KNOPPIX – Live Linux Filesystem On CD
5. USB memory stick

Last night one of my dreams involved many animals and a central theme. This guy from work and I were in a barn with his baby (he has kids but not a baby) and two horses. He would have the horses lie on their backs and he’d put his baby in between the two horses. He kept wanting to have me take a picture but the horses wouldn’t last long on their backs and stand up again. I was scared for his baby, but he seemed fine with it. After putting the horses on their backs again, he sat in between them with his baby and my dog sat there too. But the horses were scared of my dog and almost kicked her while trying to get up yet again.
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Adobe buys out Macromedia for $3.4 billion and I don’t know what to think. Firstly I use applications from both companies and similar ones for different reasons. Adobe ImageReady for one thing and Macromedia Fireworks for other things.

Adobe posted answers to alleviate some fears: Adobe — Macromedia Acquisition Agreement FAQ’s (pdf) which includes the following mission: “for web developers, a better workflow with tighter integration and easier repurposing of content.”

I’m still reeling from the news and am scared to think what the worst could be. The optimist in me thinks of the possibilities. But, I remain, truly a web developer, scared.

UPDATE The web development community reacts:

• Adobe to Buy Macromedia
• Macromedia and Adobe Join Forces!
• Macrodobia
• Macromedia + Adobe
• Adobe Buys Macromedia
• Adobe gobbles up Macromedia in pure-stock buy out worth US$3.4 billion

I presented yesterday to a class of art students on all things web design, and I called it “Introduction to Web Design” . And I liked it and it was good.

It was a small class over at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The presentation I created was recieved with much love and appreciation. The questions that the students asked were along the lines of:

1. “What do you mean when you say that IE breaks the code?”
   –> you know the answer to that one
2. “What are the top browsers I should test on?”
   –> the biggies on Mac and PC: IE, Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, MacSafari (if possible Linux Konqueror)
3. “What are the steps I need to take to get webspace/domain name?”
   –> buy domain name; buy webspace; learn FTP; voila
4. “What’s bandwidth?”
   –> every time your webpage is visited it’s downloaded; monthly limit based on your host; depending on how you show video, it can be a huge drain on your monthly limit
5. “Do I have to pay to get X search engine to crawl my site?”
   –> no, it’s free; pay if you want top, highlighted results or to be placed as ads
6. “How can my website make money for me?”
   –> ads; sell your artwork (big discussion on shopping carts vs. PayPal)

It was so exciting to talk ab/t web standards and all that I’m passionate about. It felt great to explain why learning to code by hand is highly important before jumping into Dreamweaver (I explained that Dreamweaver has so many features and widgets that if you don’t know what the code means, you won’t know what it’s doing, why it did A or B, etc. etc). I touched on other important topics like: SEO, Accessibility and explained that these are tools that you need to be introduced to so once your familiar with HTML and CSS what the next steps are to take. I also explained the difference between stealing code and learning from and changing code.

I hope they call me in again next year.