Last year I gave a quick overview of the last decade and then a bit of a roundup of my site. This year I’m being much more lazy and I’m simply going to list my three favourite websites I built in 2010.
At a rough guess I’ve probably does some work on at least 50 different websites, some just small tweaks to existing sites, some blogs and other full redesigns. These three sites are the latter, not only designed but also developed by myself.
Yesterday I saw a few tweets from people remarking how they will have to change their footers copyright statement from 2010 to 2011, given those who were tweeting about it I was surprised that they hadn’t previously been implementing a more dynamic solution. These are supposedly experts in our field.
Luckily a few other bright sparks quickly suggested a solution that is certainly much better than having to change hundreds of sites each year.
< ?php echo date('Y') ?>
The above simply outputs the year in a four digit format. Simples.
As some of you may know the cost of VAT is increasing in the UK on January 4th, less than a month away. A couple of years ago this would have been alien to many, certainly in my lifetime the VAT had never changed, it’s always been 17.5%, right? But with the recession it’s yo-yo’d up and down the last couple of years, with the change always coming at the most inconvenient time of the year.
So with the fairly widespread coverage and lengthy time to prepare most companies will surely be well covered to deal with the change in VAT next month. Unfortunately for us this is a little idealistic. After previous experience the bright sparks at Bronco decided to act early rather than wait for the inevitable phone call on the 4th, our first day back to work after 2 weeks off, asking us to make the necessary changes to their ecommerce website.
There is a massive divide between what can be taught about the web and what is actually going on in the trenches. Still I see numerous web courses of varying levels seemingly teaching old practices, it’s understandable that in a fast moving industry the academics are struggling to keep up but there’s no excuse to still be teaching table based design, for example. Some professionals are trying to help Universities provide more up to date curriculums but I wonder if there’s another approach.
Personally I love the idea that I could help someone with the knowledge I’ve gained whilst in the industry. Sure I’m not as well versed as those on the conference scene but I’m pretty positive I could have taught an 18 year old me better than some of my lecturers. The problem I see is there is a gap in the information being passed around in our community, with so much at a high level that it is making it difficult for many newbies to figure out where to start.