NeonBlue Dreams
Time management and modern web design

A few days ago Gill over at JBVoices posted a blog entry about a graphic she’d happened upon on the web, showing a pie chart of a time breakdown for modern web design which had amused her greatly. It amused me too.

For those requiring a text version of the image, the breakdown reads thus:

2% – Time spent actually designing anything
35% – Time spent trying to get the layout to work using only CSS before giving up and using tables
8% – Swearing
2% – Time Spent making the site W3C compliant
43% – Time spent trying to get the bastard to work in Internet (expletive deleted) Explorer
5% – Time spent wishing a slow and painful death on Bill Gates plus more swearing
5% – Time spent looking for that one extra space in the Javascript that Firefox is throwing a wobbler over
JBVoices

My own breakdown would differ somewhat I have to say, partly on the grounds that I hate JavaScript with a vengeance, and I’m crap at writing it (as I’m sure my OU tutors would agree), and do not have the time or resources to check it’s accessible in all situations/combinations of browsers/assistive technologies, so it’s easier to avoid it and achieve the same effect using other methods (e.g. CSS). For me therefore I’d replace the JavaScript with PHP.

As Gill also said in her entry, being the stubborn cow that I am, I refuse to resort to tables, and will chip away with CSS until it damned-well works, and I have to say I must be doing something right, as under the skilled tutorage of Gill, Carol and Helena when I jumped in feet-first and launched myself from M$ Frontpage into “doing things properly”, I developed a fairly good grasp of CSS, and recently something’s obviously “clicked”, because I’ve been finding CSS layouts a lot less time consuming to initially put together (though that’s not to say that I don’t spend ages tweaking things here and there to accommodate horrible browsers and generally knock things into shape.

There are also a couple of differences in my method of working, and the stuff I end up lumbered doing, so without further ado (I obviously had far too much time on my hands that day!), here’s my very own version of “Time management and modern web design”…

And, again, the text version…

• 2% – Time spent actually designing anything
• 18% – time spent trying to get the layout to work
• 8% – swearing
• 12% – time spent making the site W3C/WAI compliant and checking accessibility
• 14% – time spent trying to get the bastard to work in Internet (expletive deleted) Explorer
• 6% – time spent wishing a slow and painful death on Bill Gates plus more swearing
• 5% – time spent looking for the semi-colon in the PHP the server’s throwing a wobbler over
• 6% – time spent staring blankly at the screen, waiting for inspiration to strike/wandering the web in search of inspiration
• 5% – deciding which colour scheming tool to use/deciding a colour scheme
• 1% – changing all the CSS for the new colour scheme I’ve just changed my mind over
• 5% – Searching for accessible/compliant [insert name of widget/feature here] script/searching for prior bookmarked script
• 4% – Trying to make sense of the client’s latest vague design request
• 5% – Searching for stock images to replace rubbish ones provided by client/to meet request, “Oh just put whatever you think there!”
• 4% – Time spent correcting appalling images supplied by client
• 2% – Time spent on phone beating client into submission over appalling design request
• 1% – Time spent deciding on suitable music for coding to (essential to the design process)
• 1% – Time spent wishing real life was more like “Hackers” and I zoomed around on roller skates
• 1% – Wishing I’d chosen something easier for a career…like brain surgery

Of course, hurling obscenities at the screen comes as an optional extra with all the categories, possibly with the exception of the talking to the client on the phone, as they tend to get a bit miffed if you start swearing at them…

…and of course like 67% of all statistics, these figures are dreamt up on the spot.

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