Appriciation of one's past
Most of the people who regular this website run professional, well-built sites of their own. I've been privileged enough to see many of them first hand :). Most of you quite rightly comply with web standards, and are highly passionate about the quality of your work. Good for you. As a standards enthusiast myself I've gained first hand experience of both sides of the coin; standards vs. non-standards. CSS vs. table based. Even hand coding vs. WYSIWYG editors.
Recently I took a look back over my old portfolio work. Things I'd done a few years back when I was naive to CSS layouts, accessibility, standardisation, and even cross-browser compatibility beyond IE5&6. Take this site, for example. Version 1 doesn't even work outside IE! My first e-commerce website took 14 months to build and consists of over 150 static pages... most amusing thing now is, it's complete shite!
One thing you realise though is how valuable these memories are. It is important to understand where you have come from in terms of personal and professional progression, in order to evaluate the path where you are going. I recently touched on this with John Phillips in a post on his blog.
You perceive the work you are doing now as light-years ahead in terms of structural quality. But who's to say we wont be thinking that very same thing about today's websites in two years time? You just never can tell. That's what makes web design such an exciting industry to be involved in right now :)
One thing's for sure though; people are still moving towards web standards. Many have not, but then again, before long these individuals will either be forced to comply by competitive pressure, or get a new job. The web will be a better place before long if things keep going the way they are, and I for one cannot wait.
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- Dated: 04 December 2006
- Comments: 3
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About the Author
Steve Tucker is a 23 year old web developer living and working in Huddersfield, England
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02/04/2007 
8 Comment(s)
On 05/12/2006 J Phill said:
150 static pages?! Wow, that must have been a headache at best.
On 05/12/2006 P.J. Onori said:
Looking back at one's work from the past is definitely a study in comedy and humility. I wince every time I happen to run across my old portfolios. Great topic Steve.
On 05/12/2006 Andrew said:
When I did my most recent design, I decided to record the various iterations that the site has and will go through and set up a history page in my design area.
It really does help to look back and realise the steps you took to get where you are as my designs build on the previous ones.
I remember the first site I built for an actual client. This wasn't very long ago and I was pretty much into .Net at the time so, although it didn't need it, I used .Net to build it.
A year or so later I went back to it and realised, to my horror, that it didn't come close to any standards, wasn't accessible, or even approaching it and didn't work in Firefox. Oops!
I have since updated the design a little, and recoded the lot. Although each page is still an .aspx page there is no .Net code in it at all.