News By Tom Brownsword

I can hear it now and it is an excuse. Call me an excuse-laden “loser” if you want because I’ve decided that integrity is more important than rushing stuff to market that goes against what I stand for.

My current project uses tables for the HTML page layout; however, I’ve become an advocate for standards-based web coding. Tables are for rows and columns of data; they are not really meant for page layout and can cause accessibility problems. So that project has been put on hold while I re-write the interface to not use tables.

I’ve also gone back and added some new knowledge to my skill set so that I can do page layouts without tables and will create a new tool that will enable me to quickly and easily prepare a text document to be posted to a web site, nicely laid out, using cascading style sheets (CSS). After I do a few videos to go with this script, this will become my first product and it should be ready within a week or so. If you create your own web pages, this product will save you time and money; if you outsource your web work, knowing what’s contained in this video will help you as you plan your projects and prepare specifications.

So what’s the big interface deal with my current “almost ready” product? Nobody else will see my ugly table hacks, will they? Perhaps not — but one of things I learned back in my Army days is that Integrity is who you are when nobody else is looking. And it doesn’t really matter to me who looks “under the hood”; what matters to me is that I did it right.

And Right it shall be done, even if it earns me the “loser excuser” label. At least I’ll be able to sleep at night and look at myself in the mirror this morning, which is more important to me than fast cash.

Thanks for listening (and understanding),
Tom