The Eighth Wonder of the World

I used to be a hand-coder. I used to write my own javascript. Somewhere along the line, I lost the ability to do so. Or rather, I can still handcode; it's the javascript that befuddles me. My metamorphesis from handcoder to Dreamweaver begin about 3 years ago. I was given responsibility to develop and maintain our department's website. The site was huge and when I left the company, it numbered over 700 pages. I knew from the beginning of the project that handcoding was an impossible task. Along came FrontPage.

FrontPage, MS's HTML editor, is seriously the work of the devil. With its proprietary tags and crazy templates, the program made me nuts. I went back to handcoding. And then came Dreamweaver. I fell madly and totally in love with the program. Mostly because it allowed me to use both the WYSIWYG and the notepad view at the same time. The handcoder in me loved the idea of being able to tinker with code when the tough got going and I didn't feel like reading Dreamweaver's manual to figure out how to open up a pop-up window measuring 450 by 450 with no scrollbar or menus. It was ideal. And in addition, because I didn't have browser compatibility issues at work, I got to play with DHTML, which is rather like a javascript-enabled HTML on crack. It was a lovely, lovely thing. Unfortunately, my mostly computer-illiterate, non-web surfing coworkers did not appreciate the idea of adding a bookmark to their favorites with a click of a link or the fact that the pages were dynamically generated based on login information.

Feeling completely unappreciated for my efforts, I was amazed to learn tht Dreamweaver could write javascript for me. How wonderful is that? I stopped writing my own javascript. It was quicker, given the fact that the company website was not my only responsibility, to just have Dreamweaver do it.

The other day, I was trying to set up a browser-check/redirect script based on a script I'd written way back when. It didn't work. I'm still trying to figure it out. The old me would have been able to see the problems immediately and be able to figure out what was going on. I think I was a bit cocky in installing the script and so it's now paying me back for being absolutely blinded by my own reliance on the Eighth Wonder of the World.