Bruno Abrantes

The worst mistake you can ever make in your career is to stop being a student. This is certainly true for most professions, but is particularly important for Web Design. This industry nowadays changes at a lightning-fast pace, and in order to keep your design chops in tip top shape, you should devote a nice chunk of your work week to reading books on the subject.

The problem is there’s a big ocean of books out there, so which ones should you invest your time (and money) in? I’ve compiled a handy list of 15 must-read books to improve your Web Design education.
(…) more after the jump ›

Today I needed to provide a couple of quick and dirty budget estimates for a potential new client. If you do any kind of freelance work, you’ve probably had to do this at some point in your career. The Web Development Project Estimator, designed by the guys over at Astuteo proved to be a quick and easy solution for the task. Using this web application, you can easily lay out the tasks you’ll be performing and how long they should take you (and I emphasize should, because this number is almost always off the mark). Multiply the number of hours by your standard rate, or choose special rates for special tasks (Design Revisions I’m looking at you!), click View Estimate and you’re good to go. Simple, usable applications always get me. In a good way, I mean.

If you’re familiar with designing for the Web, then you’ve probably heard about the principle of Graceful Degradation. This concept focuses on being able to provide a fault-tolerant system, assuring that a system can continue to operate should one of it’s components fail.

Translate that into the Web world, and all it means is that you should somehow support older browsers. You develop using the latest and greatest and then, by the end of the project, you test your product on older browsers, making fixes here and there. Also, you frantically strive to design a wholly equal experience for all the browsers you “support”. What ends up happening is that you get a relatively watered-down experience in all platforms, all because of the need to support older browsers. (…) more after the jump ›

If you build websites and enjoy coding according to Web Standards, then you’re probably aware that the XHTML 1.0 Strict specification leaves out a rather common attribute: target, which is used inside <a> tags to specify how the hyperlink should behave. With a value of “_blank“, the hyperlink would open in a new browser window (or tab), which is recommended if the link navigates away from the current site. (…) more after the jump ›

In today’s issue of A List Apart (which I featured yesterday) there’s an excellent article written by Leslie Jensen-Inman about the state of Web Design teaching at the higher education level. The article is quite in-depth, including some thoughts from established web professionals on why students who come out of college with a degree fail to live up to industry expectations.

Having had a Web Design education myself, I can sure relate to most of the points Leslie makes during her very well written and researched article. For example, back in 2006 my school was still teaching its students (including me) how to layout websites using a rather sinful combination of Dreamweaver and tables. As Leslie says, however, this was probably not a fault on the part of the educators themselves, but rather it’s the learning institutions that must strive to make funds available so its educators can get up to date on technologies and best practices.

If you’re interested in these issues, make sure you read the article and join the discussion!