Tag Archives: ryan

Web Design – Then and Now

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A long time ago, when I was a young kid, just about to become a teenager, I learned about HTML and how it could be used to create websites. So I took it upon myself to learn HTML. Soon after, I created my first website, TS Aviation, a flight simulation community for Microsoft’s Flight Simulator. I was proud of it. Though, was it better than any other websites I’ve seen on the web? Very much no. The site was made up of tables, only a few images here and there, and little to no feeling of structure. Everything just kind of flowed.

Around when I was 13, I began learning C++ and decided to make a little site to showcase my little programs. The programs weren’t much, but I enjoyed making them. So I “created” TS Software. Sadly, the Internet Archive doesn’t have a complete save of the site with images and everything, but it does have this. The site was a nicely formatted site with a navigation bar, header space, content area, and even a sidebar. Everything had rounded corners and a nice flash animation for the header. I didn’t make it though. I made none of that. I found the site design online somewhere.

Why did I not make the TS Software site? Well, I wanted it to look good, because it was my first little “company”, and I knew I did not have the skills to make it look good. All the “good” websites had rounded corners, nice logos, and other images. I didn’t have that skill. And I still don’t (even though I own Photoshop now).

There was a large barrier to entry to making a “good” website a few years ago. Needless to say, images made your website better. I saw that you couldn’t just make a website with just HTML and some CSS. Images were king.

Now, we have HTML5 and CSS3.  Rounded corners? No problem. Gradients? Done. It becomes very easy to make a good looking site easily. Making tannersmith.me a few years ago would have been impossible for me. I would’ve had to have several images to create the effect. After learning CSS from Ryan Ashcraft and CSS3 after that, making the design was very simple. No images were used in the design itself.

I don’t have to use Photshop or Gimp to make a good looking site. Yeah, it might help with certain details, but it’s not required anymore to produce an original, good looking template.

What does this mean for the web? It means that people can get a good looking site out on the web faster and easier. It means I don’t have to sit down and learn how to use yet another product after I’ve gone through the hardships of learning HTML and CSS.

The web should be somewhere anyone can easily create a site to publish to the world. With HTML5 and CSS3, it’s easier to make a good looking website which means more people can make websites resulting in a web with more content.

The Social Network

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Over the weekend I saw the new movie “The Social Network” with my roommate and a friend from high school. I had not really planned on seeing it, but the desire to see my friend from high school convinced me to go see the movie even though it was late on Saturday.

What did I think? I did not get the movie. I saw the story, I understood the story, but I did not get why it needed to be the movie. Perhaps I saw the movie in this way because I have for some time saw Mark Zuckerberg as a guy who was not exactly the best of people and not exactly the most inspiring of people.

It is quite interesting as just the day after I saw the movie, I found a few articles online discussing the movie, Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg both from the New York Times.

One article discussed the truthfulness in Zuckerberg’s portrayal in the movie which is questionable for the fact that very little is publicly known about the beginnings of Facebook and the movie reveals so much.

Another interesting article discusses the generation gap of those who saw the movie and what their opinions were on Zuckerberg. Scott Rudin, one of the producers of the movie, perfectly shows what the article was about:

The older audiences see Zuckerberg as a tragic figure who comes out of the film with less of himself than when he went in, while young people see him as completely enhanced, a rock star, who did what he needed to do to protect the thing that he had created.

I asked my roommate, Sunny, if at the end of the movie he saw Mark Zuckerberg as a jerk or a hero. He replied that “he was mostly a hero, but also a jerk”. Sunny also made the point that at any part of the movie, the writers of the movie could be push the movie in any direction to create a better storyline for the audience. I asked another one of my friends, Ryan, what he thought of Zuckerberg – a jerk or a hero. “Hmm… A jerk but on the inside a nice guy. Not a hero. But an opportunist,” Ryan responded.

I find it interesting how the article displays that the current generation see Zuckerberg as person who seizes the moment to do something revolutionary without having extreme resource commonly found in large Silicon Valley business startups. Does the movie show what the current generation’s mindset is? I kind of think so. Are we now more focused on taking chances to make sure an idea moves forward and not the legal and moral consequences that could result of all the chances taken? I do not really know the answer to that question. It is something that exists in unique situations, but I am not sure if it can be said for the entire generation quite yet. There is still not yet enough data.

I really would like to know what my readers think of the entire situation. Who is Zuckerberg? Does the different views of him tell something about the generations that make the views? How much do you think the movie Zuckerberg differs from the real Zuckerberg?