Over the last few months I’ve noticed a trend for websites to feature an embossed style, with large text and other UI elements given an embossed look to add some depth to the design. I admit to being a fan of this style, and have begun incorporating it into recent designs. With the emergence of CSS 3 techniques such as box-shadow and text-shadow have made it easier to empty this technique without the use of images and below are some of the best examples at the moment.
Drupal and WordPress are the two Content Management Systems I use regularly when developing sites, and as WordPress updates to 2.9.1, Drupal has recently released the alpha version of the upcoming Drupal 7. Having heard a lot about the progress over the last few months, and of the contribution to the D7UX project by Mark Boulton, I was curious to see what the alpha version would be like and yesterday I downloaded a copy to play with in a local environment and there are a few major noticeable differences from previous versions straight away.
There’s always been a debate within the web industry about whether it’s better to gain a university education or to gain a job within the industry in order to build up a portfolio of work and experience. Having been at university for just over a year and gaining work experience at the same time, I can see both sides of the argument. Whilst I’m enjoying my time here, there are areas where the course could be significantly improved, with the latest set of modules described below:
Web Standards:
This module was essentially all about valid code and practices for accessibility and usability, all basic and essential things to know for any web designer/developer. I had a slight advantage for this module having known a lot of the areas discussed previously and knew all about the table layouts v CSS layouts and validators etc. However, it baffles me why this module wasn’t delivered in first year instead of the HTML module we had to endure with the tutor telling us that inline styles and table layouts were still ok to be used if we wanted.
MultMedia:
This module was all about Flash and ActionScript 2.0, which although useful and good to know it is not something that interests me at all and do not enjoy Flash work at all. The module is called Web MultiMedia but rarely ventures out of Flash and there is a lot more to multimedia on the web than that.
With the emergence of HTML 5 and the video and audio tags coming into effect within browsers, this could be a new era of multimedia embedded into sites but this has not been mentioned at all. The emergence of web apps such as Spotify etc have changed the way music is consumed on the web, and the Kindle has changed the book industry and popularised e-books.
Designing Interfaces:
This module was interesting and probably the highlight of the semester, with a lecturer who knew his subject and was passionate about it certainly helped. A lot of theory was introduced to the way that interfaces are designed and considerations were analysed in order to produce the most effective and attractive interface.
The highlight of the semester for me.
Law:
We had to endure a law module which was interesting, but too generic to really get me interested. The area of contract law is obviously essential to the industry as a key area is the relationship between client and designer and a good solid contract is key to this relationship. However, there was no mention of intellectual property or other law specific to computing and the internet which was a disappointment as this would have been more relevant and interesting.
The current semester has just started this week and new modules include Web Scripting, Marketing and Information Design which has the potential to be an improvement on the previous one. This post has turned into a bit of a rant about the failings of the course, and although it’s not all bad, I can see why people skip the university route and head straight for industry.
Photo Credit: Yellow Arrow