Just finished reading a book on site design – the one I exchanged DHTML and CSS Advanced for. Thankfully, this tome was much closer to what I wanted when I went out (on a whim, really) to conduct some book-learnin’.
Sites usually have two parts: the backend work (keeping, processing, and managing all that content) and the frontend design (all those pretty pictures, navigation, colors and text). Traditionally, software engineers dealt with the former and graphic designers dealt with the latter, with very little overlap in expertise.
That is, sites can be either ugly with lots of features or pretty but contain simple, static content. Of course, there are experts gifted in both areas, but it’s hard finding people equally good in both areas.
I consider myself 80% programmer, 20% designer – and this site demonstrates it well. I spend most of my development time creating new features on the backend database and scripts, and relatively little time on how the site looks beyond making sure that it’s presentable and clean. It’s not ugly, per se, but it can be a bit plain and boring.
So the book – The Zen of CSS Design – is filling a gaping design void. It reminds me how a good design is like a well-programmed piece of software: if it’s good, the end user will recognize quality but has trouble pinpointing the exact properties that make it good.
Once I get my other book on AJAX and go through that, it might be time to step back, exhale, and think about v4.
You may also notice that I’m trying to keep the paragraphs short and succint, to make for better ergonomics and web reading. Yes, I should have figured it out sooner. No, I still enjoy rambling, multi-page paragraphs.