etc.

I went back to my old library school yesterday and after about four hours there, it felt like I’d never left. But in a good way. Not a lot has changed (how much can change in 10 months?), the one difference I did see that I would have loved to have seen during my tenure there was the addition of paper towel dispensers in the washrooms. It was nice to be back, and I anticipate spending a lot more time there in the next few months. More on that soon.

I had a total of 13 responses on my non-scientific poll on HTML coding and software use. The results: 6 respondents said they hand-code only (many of whom started out with one of the HTML editing software packages), 3 respondents both hand-code and use the software, 4 use HTML editing software only. The results sort of made sense, but I expected a lot more designers to hand-code only. But then I was hoping to hear from someone who designed websites for a living and no one copped to that. The reason why all this came up in the first place was because of that conversation I mentioned. There were 4 of us involved and all 4 of us did some web design/maintenance, and out of the 4 of us, 3 said that they used only Dreamweaver (unless they had no option and were stuck with a computer that didn’t have the software on it, in which case they used WordPad). The only one who didn’t was me. And while I too started with Dreamweaver, I started to find the software constrciting and annoying very soon after I started feeling comfortable with HTML. I just assumed everyone else felt the same. The 3 individuals I was speaking with said that using the software helped them keep up with new web design trends and new HTML/CSS versions (by upgrading their software), and that without the software upgrades they would feel antiquated and disconnected from the wider world of web design. I didn’t agree. I don’t feel antiquated or disconnected at all, even when I have my nose stuck in a text editor, because “View Source” is my very favourite web-learning-tool. Ultimately, while I didn’t agree with them, I attributed the difference in opinion to differences in learning venues; they learn from software, I don’t. If you still have something to say on the matter, I’d like to hear from you.

And you can get your pie here.