Designing for the web

what I do and how I do it

sandindesign

I've been interested in web design and development for the last nine years. Since 2002 I run my own company called Sandin Design and since 2006 I also work at Republic Factory - a really lean communications and design company here in Göteborg.

So, why did you end up with an interest in web design, you might wonder. I guess that I get to be creative, do something visually appealing and at the same time work as a problem solver. I like all three.

The “Fire Desire Feed” Project

One of the reasons behind the latest redesign of this website is the fact that I'd like to test a one of my projects, a web-based blog publishing software, in the line of fire. The CMS is far from finished and is currently being developed under the name “Fire Desire Feed” together with a friend of mine.

firedesire.com

Fire Desire Feed publishes the news on the website as well as through valid RSS 2.0 feeds. The idea was to build an easy-to-use and web-based system. Features include publishing and editing of articles, comments and images as well as some other candy such as live previews of the articles. Other convenient features are planned to be integrated in the near future, and before the release of the 1.0 version.

The software is not available for public use yet, but a couple of my friends are helping out testing the system at the moment.

Web design according to standards

Web standards have become very popular the last years. This is a very good thing, since a website design based on standards has a lot of advantages compared to the ones that don't in terms of file size, accesiblility and compability. Not to mention that your site will work in all future versions of todays browsers and on mobile phones and PDA's. So, you see, it's all about gold and glory...

Sticking to validated XHTML and CSS, makes life a lot easier in the long run. Your productions works on all major and up-to-date browsers, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 (well, almost) and 7, Firefox, Safari and Opera. No mather platform, you're site will work as it is intended to do - if you do it right...

If you want to know more about web standards, there are a lot of really good sites on the web - take a look at the links on this page. If you're like me, and like to read a good book once in a while instead of staring at the screen, I've collected some of the best ones around under the next heading.

Recommended web design books

There are hundreds of books that's avalible dealing with web design based on XHTML and CSS. You'll find some of those books at the Sandin Design webpage. The only different thing about those, copmpared to many of the other books out there, is that they are good. Really good. So, if you think that I'm a guy you can trust - buy these and you don't have to end up disappointed with a feeling that you just threw away your precious coins on yet another book that only is going to be an expensive bookcase decoration.