Random UI thoughts and local web sites

After a very long time from last week I had been spending time on doing some HTML and CSS work. Incidentally I was playing around with JQuery UI parts - Was pretty impressed on how easier this has become. Years back when Ajax became a fashion,  when we wanted to build nice looking sleek modernist sites we used Dojo and if I am not mistaken at that time jquery was at its infancy. Today of course both these projects had matured well and is much more stable. Its impressive to note how interesting open source projects grow to these levels within a few years from their start. They had now build an eco system around them and continuing to grow.

These had made it so easy so that the developer doesn't have to have any clue of how Ajax message passing happens. At the initial stages - we had to write the java scripts to handle the newly introduced XML tag for this at that time. I remember at that time lecturers of the earlier generations complaining that our generation is escaping away from any low level programming, justifiable complain since we didn't do much on C and were more inclined towards Java and PHP when it came to projects. I am sure the next generation is moving another level of abstraction higher.

Although this level of sophistication is available I cannot still believe why most of the local news web sites resemble "thorans" (pandols). Having blinking xenon lights on the web sites and trying to mimic the psychology of  attraction towards colorful flowers in web design, a concept from the pre-Y2K era.

I just checked the Daily mirror site it had more than 10 blinking things on the homepage. Ada derana also has 10 and makes sure that its not lagging behind in the blinking "competition". Did someone say simple - minimal design - Oh sorry he is dead now!