AnanasDesign [ABOUT PAUL]

Home Portfolio About Paul Pricing Services

INTRODUCTION

Curent and past websites + Graphics

TRAINING & EDUCATION and a little about me.

Pricing for graphics, JavaScript, and maintanence by the hour.
New websites by hour or page.

What AnanasDesign can do for you & a few tips!

L

iving in the Silicon Valley during the dotcom boom offered me the opportunity to learn from some of the best instructors of web design in the country. It was a time when business worked with collages to train a badly needed work force for this fast growing industry.

My studies have included every class offered for Photo Shop, Illustrator, and Flash. I have taken advanced coursework in HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, CGI, XML, website promotion, and e-commerce.

I have devoted a great deal of time working with CSS (cascading style sheets). With the new browsers CSS is a powerful design tool. Through self study I have a strong understanding of what this extension of HTML can do.

Althought I have a few on this website, I try to stay away form stupid web tricks. Like the tricks on this site it takes away form the professional design of a site.

Remembering the words of my first HTML teacher at Foothill Collage in Los Altos, CA "this is art not science and the one word of advice I can offer you is, 'PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE'.

Talking to clients and would be clients who are just learning computer operation. I get the feeling that new people feel that computers are a time saving device. Believe me, thay are not! It requires hundreds of hours of studying and practice.

Thinking that all one needs to do is to learn just what they need to learn to acomplish a few tasks in a sofware program will fine themselves forever lost in a cycle of non-productive efforts, with usually less than desired results.

So depending on my academic load, I would take only one or two classes a quarter, leaving me time to learn and practice my art as quarters can be short. With a full schedule, about all the time you have is to show up to class and do homework.

Building and maintaining a website is a group effort. For one person building a website requires one to be able to mulit-task on many levels. It also takes a love of the art that is web design, from graphics to coding.

--ooOoo--

One place I could practice was on my own personal home page. Every new idea I had with my increasing knowledge, I tested and placed on-line here. It quickly turned into a monster and within 2 years I had a website of over 250 pages. Needless to say I learned how to organize files and folders to keep track of things. I learned how important navigation is for a website. A site must be easy to move around and the viewer should be able to return to a page viewed earlier with a single click from the current page.

I still have my old homepage on my machine (PC), and use it as a way to store scripts I can incorporate in future websites. Clients are always in need of something new, and that's my favorite activity-being creative.