KaiSchaller.com

Turns out CollegePublisher is a nightmare for XHTML/CSS guys like me. On the one hand I can understand that they’re trying to divvy every individual component into its “object”, but having to edit countless, separate boxes full of code isn’t exactly easy when you’re trying to redesign a whole site. The main problem is keeping track of which code is going where. Add into this that there’s object-oriented code everywhere and you’re staring straight into a big mess.

To be fair, I’ve only glanced through the system. I’m still clinging to the hope that I’ll be able to keep track of everything, not to mention be able to do the things I want to do once I have a design to work with.

UPDATE: [Sept. 10, 2007, 8:00 PM] To CP’s credit they responded very quickly to a request I made over the weekend and had a test domain set up and ready to go for me by early Monday. I requested this so I can play around with the system without breaking the live site. Thanks CP! :-)

I’ve gotta be honest with you, I’m starting to loathe this orange theme. I suppose this means it’s high time to redesign. That even sort of rhymed!

I have a couple of ideas of what I can be doing to practice my design skills.

1. Find a few designs I really like and try to recreate them without re-using graphics or looking at the source code.
2. Keep a running list of websites that I think are horribly designed (ahem, MySpace) and dream up a redesign for them.

Definitely good practice, methinks. Now it’s just a matter of finding the time… oh how I long for summer.

Here’s the way I want things to work out over the course of the next year and a half: I’m going to take a 5 hour chemistry class over the summer in order to be able to fulfill all additional graduation requirements during the fall semester. This means I’ll have my BS in computer science in December and be done with school for the time-being. After that I will take some time to visit my family in Germany — I haven’t seen them in a couple of years and would like to before I dive into my career. All of this time I’ll be working on my portfolio (for web work) so that I can find a decent (and fun; fun is very important) job in the San Francisco Bay area. This means improving and fine-tuning the XHTML and CSS knowledge I already have, but also getting a much better feel for design.

I think one of the biggest challenges will be getting the ideas in my head to be accurately converted into a PSD; there’s always been something lost in the translation because I “build” them differently depending on if I’m thinking about a design or actually trying to create it with Photoshop.

While I have a very heavy course-load this semester I’m still finding the time to do whatever I can in my free time. Currently I’m reading CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions by Andy Budd, which is an incredible book. So far it seems to be the most practical CSS book I’ve ever read, maybe I’ll be able to give a full review of it once I finish.

That’s it for now, I’ll keep you updated.