Last month, I did a sit-down interview with an aspiring web designer, fielding all sorts of questions and offering my own insights as I enter my fourth year in the industry. At one point, we hit the subject of the importance of web standards, structuring and coding layouts to work in every browser and future-proofed to an acceptable degree, and why tables should not be used to do layouts anymore.

This is where I heard a statement that kind of jarred me.

“Oh I know, I make MySpace layouts….” - it brought my brain to a halt.

It wasn’t anything personal with her, but it was the realization I had that there are likely 1000s of young people just like her also doing the same. Some people are even making a career / making money off making MySpace layouts.

So why is this harmful to impressionable minds?

For starters, MySpace was never designed with the intent that a user would be able to toss the site theme in favor of something of their own design. To make one, you basically have to unlearn everything you knew about HTML and CSS in regards to site layouts or themes. For those who haven’t done anything with websites before, learning all the ins and outs of how to get a myspace layout to work are filling their heads with useless crap. Other social networking sites such as Virb are designed to allow the user to apply their own stylings in a non-insane way. I was actually quite impressed with Virb because it also allows you to disable all custom layouts at your discretion- something MySpace can’t do.

My best advice to her was to ditch MySpace layouts all together, and purchase a cheap web hosting account with Wordpress. She would then at least have full access to change anything in the site layout while learning invaluable knowledge and design at the same time. That’s how I got started 12 years ago on Geocities (remember them?).

Could you imagine if there were sites that let you code your own add-ons, and it required you writing some screwed up PHP or Coldfusion that wasn’t accepted anywhere else in the world? How about a home builder who didn’t follow industry standards when building your home?

Can you believe some colleges still teach web design using tables and code generating software? Crazy isn’t it? It was like that when I was there and from what I’ve heard, not much has changed.

The thought of people having to do absurd CSS and table structuring just to make the myspace layout look a certain way just disturbs me. We have standards for a reason, and one of those reasons is to not repeat the sordid browser wars of the 90s which is where a lot of that mess stems from.

So for all you folks out there looking to get into web design, young or old, if you’re going to do something do it right. Refer to the giants: Zeldman, Meyer, Snook, Cederholm, etc… strive for greatness.

RSS is one of my favorite technologies on the internet. It allows me to quickly gain and overview of the newest articles at my favorite sites like CNN, Tech-Crunch, Digg, Slashdot and others. Today is RSS Awareness Day.

What is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated regularly. An RSS document (which is called feed) contains either a summary or the full content from a website.

The main benefit of RSS is that it enables people to stay connected with their favorite websites without having to visit them. Once you subscribe to a particular RSS feed, you will automatically receive updates from the website that publishes the feed, whenever they release new content.

From this, I can access these news feeds at any time from my PC, iPod Touch, or Treo. I am able to stay informed of the days news as it happens, without all the distraction or clutter of advertisements, slow websites, snarky comments and the like.

Back in 2005 5% of the Internet users said they were using RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online (according to the Pew Internet Project).

Feedburner recently reported that they track around 60 million RSS subscribers. Even if we bump that number to 70 million RSS users (counting people that use RSS with other applications or platforms) this would still convert to a meager 5,4% of the Internet users around the world, as of today.

What is the takeaway message? Only a very small percentage of the Internet population is aware of the RSS format and its benefits, and that number is growing slowly over time.

By creating the RSS Awareness Day and celebrating it every year we should be able to get the general public exposed to this format, hopefully increasing the usage of RSS feeds and related applications among Internet users.

More information: http://rssday.org/spread/

Some of the best examples of using RSS feeds to enhance your productivity and general ‘awareness’ of whats going on can best be experienced on a ‘Start Page’ site like Netvibes or PageFlakes. You can add multiple RSS feeds to your page and view many at once, instead of crawl through each site individually, which would take a lot longer. This way you get a bigger overall picture and can zero in on the news stories that pique your interest rather quickly.

They just can’t get enough of us at DesignSnack.com!

The last FOUR submitted websites are now on the frontpage of approved featured websites. Espuma Restaurant, Delaware State Fair, Wilgus Associates - Delaware Real Estate, and BayBall Classic were well received.

More to come!

Update on the blog I posted a few days ago. Inclind sites are making the rounds on various design showcase websites.

American Portable, and CKY Alliance are now being featured on various websites, including designsnack.com and screenalicious.com.

It feels great that our clients websites make the rounds like this on top websites. For our clients this just adds to the traffic they receive, spreading the word of their service, product or existence on top of the hefty search engine optimization work we already do for them. We have the top graphics design team on the penninsula combined with the best application programmers in the area.

This bodes particularly well for the two projects that got featured, as American Portable is expanding around the nation every month with franchise operations from here to California. CKY is on the cusp of releasing their new album this Spring on their new label, RoadRunner Records. CKY has always done things their way, on their terms. Inclind knows just how to handle their web presence and coordinate it with marketing, web content, and the fans. Like all of our clients, they love us and we love them!

Want to be successful?

If you feel your website is bland, boring, or isn’t doing for you what you’d like it to do, contact us or give us a call at (302) 856-2802 and talk with us.

Launched 3 websites, featured on design showcase sites, and Friday I turn 25. Doesn’t this week kick a little ass!

Keep on the lookout, Inclind is everywhere!

Tom Brown, our Graphics & Illustration Director, has two sites that are newly featured on designsnack.com and screenalicious.com. You can see the sites on the right side under “Approved”.

DesignSnack and Screenalicious are websites where people upload websites, the community votes on them, and then site admins determine who gets “approved” through their guidelines and placed on the front page. Tom submitted two websites, his personal site at tbbjrgrafx.com, and a recently completed project of Inclind, Gavin Goodfellow.

Also submitted was American Portable, well received by the community there as well, which is pending approval.

Way to go Tom.

Inclind Inc. developed and designed the new Georgetown Public Library’s website at www.georgetownpubliclibrary.org.

Susan and I were pleased to have attended the library’s groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday, September 19, 2007. We were able to capture some footage of the memorable moment.