Glorious Blue
Once again, Brightwind is blessed with a suitable design. I am pleased. I can rest…
But first let me share: one of the things I have learned from designing my own websites is that you have to be very patient with your computer. Sometimes you come up against strange problems, where the code you’ve written works fine in a reasonable web browser, but when you load it up in the browser most people use, then things look inexplicably unlike what you intended.
You could, of course, just write code with only that most popular browser in mind, but then it would look strange in all the other browsers. You have to remember that many people use an alternative operating system, and the most common browser, that is the version with most of the problems, is only available on windows. To compensate for this, most of the alternative systems and browsers try to adhere to a set of web page coding standards, so that people like me just have to write one set of code and can feel relatively confident that most of it will look the same no matter what system someone is using.
Of course, web pages can be extremely complicated, and various systems’ web browsers have bugs, so things don’t always work out like you would have hoped. But the fact that they make a strong effort to adhere to these standards goes a long way to make the web designer’s life easier. Unfortunately, Microsoft has neglected to update their Internet Explorer at the same speed as other systems’ browsers, so the poor program you are most likely to be using has many problems that have been lingering around for years. If you try to design according to these standards I mentioned, Internet Explorer quickly begins to feel like the old, broken-down car you have to take to work everyday. You spend more time fixing problems with it than actually using it. (If you’re using a windows computer, by the way, fear not—other, much better browsers are available to you, and offer you many more interesting features too.)
So anyway, there I am, studying the code for hours, trying to figure out why Internet Explorer doesn’t like it. Finally, at three in the morning, I have to give up for the night and try to sleep even though I have unfinished problems to solve. I hate that feeling—trying to sleep with unfinished creative work to do.
But then in the morning, I look at it again, and new ideas come to me. I see new possibilities that were not there the night before. It seems like just a few little tweaks and the whole thing starts to look okay no matter which browser I use.
So one moral of this story is that more and more people can use better browsers and allow a better experience both for themselves and for web designers.
And the other moral is that being patient and giving yourself all the time you need to work something out is really the fastest way to do it. Banging your head against problems late into the night leaves you with a sore head and the same amount of problems to solve in the morning. Letting it be for a while saves you both the headache and the lack of sleep.
