There Is Another

The previous title mentioned two Ladies, and then I ended up talking geek about the New York Times. You know, the Gray Lady. But it turns out Brides.com, another site with which I helped recently, also just launched, and isn’t she radiant? Three months with Brides, four weeks with the NYT, and no break in-between. Boy am I exhausted. (While all that was going on I was also squeezing in a couple little projects [1] [2] [3] for Rodale Press, but that’s another story. If you haven’t heard much from me lately, well, that’s partly why.)

I should probably mention, since this is sort of my bread-and-butter right now, that both sites make strides to bridge the gap between general usability and use of web standards for presentational markup. That’s what the design briefs said, anyway. The reality, as they say, is a-whole-nother thing.

Two Ladies

I started working at the New York Times a few weeks ago. Immediately I was made to disappear into the whirlwind of activity involved in launching their first major redesign in five years… and already the fur is flying. I’m amazed at how many places [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] make “news” of this. Read down at people’s feedback: that’s my favorite part. Some people sound downright passionate. Me, I’m just glad I can finally get home at a reasonable hour.

Lest anyone be misled, this design and its functionality was determined way before I came into the picture. Heck, that’s not even my department: it’s this guy’s. (And as he also points out, he didn’t design it either. He’s new, too.) As I like to say, they just brought me in at the end to sprinkle some pixie dust over everyone else’s hard labor. Still, I’ve been so busy trying to make the damn thing work that by clicking around today already you’re probably more familiar with the site than I. Let me know if you see anything you like.

The Big O

K makes a good point, below. In my eagerness to get lost in wordplay I probably didn’t get to the point (which, if you know me, doesn’t shock you in the least) and, worse, conceivably mighta been misunderestimated by more than one person. I didn’t mean to appear either to lionize “immigrants” or excoriate “ugly Americans” (however either of those two terrible concepts may be represented in the public imagination) categorically. I did mean to say what actual writers and pundits have said better, that US is a nation of immigrants (all nations are, really, if you think far back enough, but I’m getting ahead of myself) and that to this day undocumented immigrants keep this country afloat. Mostly, I meant to express appreciation for the significance of the recent marches and a completely gratuitous dream for a Star Trek future where we all just, you know, get along. Where I grew up in Puerto Rico people yell and pout as much as anyone but I never saw institutionalized racism and elitism until I came here and it still shocks me that movements of this sort should actually be necessary.