Cheers.

As for CMS I found Joomla! had me spending more time resolving code conflicts and modules than actually designing. I have since moved to WordPress for the majority of my work and love it.

There is a big picture, usually at the top of the website, that extends fadingly down, towards the content.

No dynamics. Everything is static and sucks. Basically there is a menu at the top and that is it. Every page that you open looks the same. Is it good? The critiques say that it is. I say that it is yawningly boring!

Here are some samples:

http://www.webdesignerwall.com/trends/best-of-css-design-2008/

They look professional just because the web designers did have time to spend with that, unlike others like me, who do it as a hobby and try to learn web design in a few minutes a day.

My website is a mess, I agree. It looks unfinished, some pages look awful because I don’t have time to update them, but I have always tried to have some ideas, my OWN ideas, not to copy what is “in”.

I love HTML frames, something that official web design critique says that it’s not “allowed” anymore.

I love IE browser, it doesn’t make problems to the web designer and neither to the users, let’s be honest about that. IE is great because most features are displayed there in the correct way.

Many people though, think that using Mozilla and all kind of not professional browsers is “cool”, just because they think that it is “trendy”.

I personally stick to IE, because I like that many javascripts work in this browser.

And since my website is a non-profit one, whoever wants to check it, should press the IE button, instead of messing up with all kind of weird browsers.

Another thing is that it took the hell of a lot of time to learn even that messed-up knowledge that you see there.

Anyone who start web design should start in this order: learning HTML, CSS, DHTML, and a bit of javascript, which isn’t as easy as it seems. Even modiying already made javascripts isn’t so easy.

Then you see what you can do afterwards. It will take the hell of a lot of time to grasp the meanings of these anyway.

I personally love flash-based websites. Whoever doesn’t have adobe flash player installed and therefore isn’t able to see the website, is worthless using a computer anyway and should either throw the PC through th window, or jump from the closest buiding himself.

Flash is the future of web design, but I find it difficult to purchase it and then to learn it. For a flash professional-looking site you also must have very high quality graphics displayed there, which, if you are not able to draw them yourself, you’re screwed.

Here is a random example:

http://www.gotmilk.com/

The question is who is going to make all that animation for you, if you have no skills to draw?

The sad conclusion is: Only plastic artists are able to make a good website. The rest just insert pictures and use that annoying grey colour just to not be criticised too harshly.

Back to flash based websites, they still require more time to load, but the computers are more and more performant and so this problem will be solved. Animation is the future of web design.

As about me, maybe I could subscribe to the worst website contest, after years of web design, but with all the risks of the free animated gifs and so on that I have on my web pages, I will never adhere to those static standard templatised websites.

They do suck, literally! There is no difference between them and a magazine printed on paper. Internet should make a difference. And that difference is that it is wired and so it should be dynamic!