So many technologies, so little time.

As I was reading the lecture last night I was very happy to hear about using JavaScript again. And by “again” I mean that once I used to be proficient at JavaScript to make my designs “fly” and impress. Then, I stopped using JavaScript, I actually stopped using many Web things in favor of paper publications.

It sounds weird but, at the very beginning of the appearance of the Web, when publication designers like me transition to become Web designers, we felt prompt to meet and move to a happy-medium with the new computer engineers, who were the expert techies with the programming languages. Designers like me learned HTML and JavaScript from being challenged by these techies that our designs “can’t be done” and so we proved them wrong by learning a few tricks, like mouse-over, and pop-up windows that were not grey and ugly. It wasn’t hard-core programming at all, but the experimentation, I think drove these technologies to better themselves as we asked for more.

We thought that with the introduction of the computer we will have the paperless office and therefore all print designers will become Web designers and we will all look back at our books and say: remember that? Well, remember when we THOUGHT that? Well, instead of making the paper obsolete, the computer brought in the use of more paper and more paper. And so former book designers like me, after a few years using to publish Web pages, were called back to the market to be print publications designers again. And in the market, we are rarer to find than Web designers these days. And yet, the technology we use has also changed (for instance, we don’t have PageMaker now, we have InDesign). And also the print technology has advanced too, we have digital prints and/or color photocopies that print out very high quality prints and full volumes. So, I also had to bring myself back up to speed (though it took me a couple of hours for it seems print technology is more natural to me).

And so with the necessity in the workplace to use my many years of experience in publication, I folded my newly found experience with HTML and the Web in a drawer some place in my mind a few years ago. And as I come back and opened that drawer I find that things have changed and my HTML is vintage. The proud tags I attached are old and musty. Revisiting it, I found that to make text bold, I should not use "b" anymore, but "strong", or that "i" is now "em" and so on and so on and so on.

Likewise, as I was looking at JavaScript samples last night I was reminiscent to my earlier tries. Oh, yes, I thought. That and that and that can be done! There is nothing impossible for technology. It all depends on our time.