The Standards of Tomorrow Are Obsolete Today

March 18, 2009
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Advancing the Web – Part 1 of 2

CSS 3 and HTML 5 are somewhere down the chute, and will eventually be widely supported. Both are highly anticipated. Both address a lot of today’s problems in the web design world. But neither is good enough.

I know I’m not the first to bang on this drum. In fact, I’m basically about to parrot back the biggest complaints. The reason for this is that I haven’t seen the problems of both specs brought to light in the same place, which seems like a rather glaring mistake; they need to work hand-in-hand. Solving the issues of only one does not fix the whole problem.

Continued…

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Design in the works

March 11, 2009 — One

I know I said a while back that I was working on a redesign for this place. It’s true; I am. Just one problem: At about the same time, I received a Wii for my birthday. I hate to say it, but that thing is like crack.

So yes, the design is in progress! And it’s blue! (Which may not be a big deal to you, but I kind of secretly swore to myself when I registered elucidblue.com that I would never actually use blue in the site design. I just couldn’t resist, though, once I drew this idea up. Hope you’ll agree when the time comes.) The current theme annoys me more and more. Even worse, the HTML isn’t really semantically correct anymore, since I did a quick hack to break out of the particular structuring of the site I had been using. So I am eager for the change.

I’ve got the mock-up pretty much done in Photoshop, and will commence with construction soon. Of course, this week at work, I’m building the redesign of our system’s site, so it does feel a little silly to come home and do the exact same thing I did at work. What can I say, though, I love it.

Programming and Technical Debt

March 2, 2009 — 2

Jeff Atwood just wrote a very insightful article on Technical Debt. Go ahead and check it out; it’s a quick read:

Paying Down Your Technical Debt

I am afraid of portions of our codebase, because I know we have a lot of debt there. In fact, right now I’ve got a coworker who’s digging through a piece of our system where I took out a pretty hefty “loan” some months ago. I’m sure it sounds a bit evil, but I’m glad he’s the one paying the interest right now and not me.

As someone with a level of interest in human psychology, it just makes me feel good to realize why I feel the way I do about certain projects. My current project is one where I’m paying down debt. It really feels a lot like that car loan I’m only four payments away from finishing.