Nidahas » Musings on design, web standards and free software from a Sri Lankan geek.

From a Grasshopper to the Masters

2005.06.03

I was an internet laggard. I didn’t grow up with computers, and until quite recently, never thought I’d find it difficult to manage without one. (This is Sri Lanka. We have bigger problems than slow internet connections, although it is the one problem that annoys me the most.) But things change fast. It scares me sometimes when I think how recently I got to write my first html document.

Reading for a degree in IT did help, but it was those many hours I was busy browsing (cutting lectures, of course) that finally got me on the path to become a web designer. The web fascinated me. No, not the X rated stuff, but the underlying code (gasp!). The semester I seriously got in to what I really wanted to do, was also the semester that I got the lowest GPA.

Starting late, however, also meant that I started by doing things right. The very first site I contributed to, which was the first version of Vesess, was done with web standards. I’ll never forget that day two years ago, in our new office in Maharagama, we ran the site through the W3C validator and it congratulated us. When we managed to make it XHTML 1.0 Strict, Venu called me to share the good news.

If it weren’t for Jakob Nielsen and Jeffrey Zeldman (I found them in that order) I would have ended up one of those “Java programmers” or “Software Engineers”. Instead, I ended up doing something that doesn’t have a title. (Are you a Web Designer or a Digital Designer or a Web Developer or an Information Architect or a Front-end Architect?)

Jakob Nielsen made me look at web applications in a new way. I read his Alertbox articles, and his books, Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed and Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. His views influenced me so much so that I ended up being a usability freak. Artistic expression became difficult, and whatever I did ended up looking shit.

Zeldman, and the courageous WaSP made me look at the web in an entirely new way. I never got to read his book, or any book on web standards for that matter. But the guru himself, and his many desciples, showed me that code was poetry, through their blogs. Their views influenced me so much so that I ended up being a web standards freak. When Design Fab Five came out with Design eye for the usability guy I felt relieved.

May 31st marked 10 years of Zeldman on web. June 1st marked 10 years of Jakob Nielsen at Alertbox. The point of this rather self centered post was to say, Thank you, Gentlemen. You defined what I do today.

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