About the site

I had my portfolio site online 4 years back. For nearly two years I maintained it properly, then I got busy in an animation project and decided not to maintain the site anymore, the domain got expired and Version 1 of SonicMedia vanished. A long time later the animation and other busy engagements where over and I wanted to revamp my site. But, I was disappointed to see that the domain was already registered by a domain reseller. The redo of the site was postponed again.

For the past few months I wanted to experiment with “DIV Based Layout” with CSS instead of the “Table based layout” that was used by me and at my office. I tried to persuade a switch over but the programming team was a bit skeptical about the relevance of this change. I wanted to try it ASAP and thought, “aha why d’t I try it on my own site, so that I d’t needs anyone’s consent…” thus started the work of Version 2 of SonicMedia.

Playing around with the “DIV Based Layout” was fun. I read many reviews and tutorials explaining the ‘pros and cons’ of this layout system, done my own experiments to reach an assumption that, trying to completely avoid <table> tag is not necessary. It is not a deprecated tag yet and is quit handy in some cases like displaying results of some database queries and all. Also I found it quit annoying that there is no straight forward ways to vertical align things using the “DIV Based Layout”.

Another thing I noticed is that, Most of the companies who switched over to “DIV Based Layout” made their site visually very basic, claiming they are trying to make it elegant and easy for user… TA DA. I am a bit suspicious about it… and believe at least half of them where trying to make designs that will be easy (or possible?) to code using “DIV Based Layout”. I am also not ready to accept the argument that it is for web2 ready sites. Using bigger fonts, simpler navigation etc are alright but web2 does not mean that your site should look bad.

Trust me it is absolutely unnecessary to take any frills out of any design to make it DIV friendly. Everything you can do with regular Table based html coding can be done using DIV style too. Actually if you club them wisely you can do more. I will try to put some tips for beginners in my Scrap Book shortly.

About my career

I started my career as an html coder at Omega InfoTech, one of the leading web design firms in Kerala, India at that time. I did not have any prior experience in html or web designing at that time; Even then I applied for the post of graphic designer, and got my first job. The appointment was based on drawings I presented at the time of the interview.

Two out of the four companies I worked till date where newly established, and this gave me opportunity to work closely with the management in developing and maintaining the business at a respectable level. This scenario also demanded me to work in every aspect of web development (excluding programming) and team development.

I worked with the management in preparing Employee Manual, Essential Office Documentation, Growth Plans, and Formulating Marketing Strategies. I take it as a compliment that some of these companies still follow development ideas that I formulated while I was working there.