Things Feel Like 2003/2004

I may be off on my years, but things in our little community of designers and developers is really starting to feel like 2003/2004.  Those years had a sense of community that was both encouraging and inspiring, something that made you proud to be a member.  People were blogging long form (imagine that), online publications like Stylegala reviewed and featured great websites, A List Apart (seemed to be breaking new standards related HTML/CSS/JS techniques every few weeks.  If you were a web nerd, like myself, as I said, it was inspiring times.

Enter 2007/2008 and the community takes a daily dump with the latest “CSS Gallery” site.  We were reduced to browsing our version of porn, glossy buttons and semantic code.  We didn’t talk any more, we didn’t discover and selflessly publish new ideas and techniques, we didn’t critique and encourage our peers; we browsed lists of lists,  consumed, yet didn’t produce, we lost the plot.

On the other side of this story, we have today.  Ideas are buzzing, communities like Dribbble are emerging,  community exercises are developing and many more that I’m aware of, are coming soon.  It’s exciting times.  Things feel like 2003/2004.