Hey, all, I'm still alive, just been writing on my other blog: blogthemes where I attempt to tackle the subject of "How to Customize a Mindsay Wiki Page" amongst other things. blogthemes started out as a place for some of us blog theme designers to congregate and has been in serious need of revival. Once again, I wanted to share with you guys how much fun it is and how simple it really is to trick out web pages using CSS. I've noticed that most books and sites that cover the subject of "how to's" utilizing Cascading Style Sheets are usually very dry and hard to decipher for us creative types. I'm learning disabled, so with it already being hard for me to read, I'm very visually oriented and require a more hands-on approach when it comes to learning new and unfamiliar things. Over the last five years I've managed to just watch what other designers have done and tried to figure out their work by eyeball rather than just trying to look up the syntax in a book. I've also managed to find a lot of technician friends whom have helped me interpret things down to my level.
Basically what I'm saying is, if someone like me can figure out things without the help of a textbook, I think it's possible for many other very intelligent and design-saavy people to learn, and possibly pick up the process of CSS much quicker than I did. So, yeah, no excuse for those of you out there who produce lovely photographic images and equally lovely custom headers for blogs who whine that they can't understand CSS! I don't want to be the only person on Mindsay making themes -- and actually submitting them to Mindsay for default use. I see a lot of really great design work out there but so few people submitting their blog theme designs to Mindsay. I haven't harped on this before, but after I took a look at the winners of the mmca for best designed blog and such, I realized that those who won do make great designs but don't submit said designs to Mindsay for default use, they just offer their designs to Mindsay bloggers on a more personal level. Plus there are so many who weren't nominated, at the very least, who do deserve your appreciation. I'm not making a gripe that I didn't win, I just feel like I wish I knew what Mindsay blogger designed what and when so that I can offer my appreciation. Also, I'm not complaining about some Mindsay designers who decide to provide headers and design tips to others on Mindsay on a more personal level independent of Mindsay (in other words, they offer to create designs for folks, but don't offer to submit their free designs for the entire Mindsay community), I'm just thinking that there ought to be a place in this community for ALL Mindsay blog theme designers to show their stuff and make it available to the rest of the community. Right now all of the Mindsay bloggers providing tips and tricks are spread out, making it difficult for the beginning blogger to find ways to customize their blog the way they want to. It would be nice if we could submit blog theme designs like we now do wiki pages; by just hitting a "new theme" button or something like that to make the themes available as soon as possible to those who want to use them.
I'm also very open to communicating with other designers and I get just as excited to see new designs and themes that aren't my own. There are so many possibilities, so many themes, so many design challenges yet I haven't taken up... CSS is just one way that cuts out all the guess work with regular HTML, leaving the ground open for those of us who don't want to think too hard on the syntax and just want to get into the best part of design; seeing our images fall right into place the way we've imagined and hoped they would.
What do you think?
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