Intricacies of Design

Many under-informed people believe that good web design of dynamic HTML content is as straightforward as using a word processor (lay: Microsoft Word). Believe me, I've had these kinds of arguments from more people (who talk more than they do) than you can imagine at my workplace.

The truth of the matter is, in this day and age where

• a good, user-friendly interface has taken a huge bump in importance (thanks for spoiling the market, Apple),
• features in embedded devices (routers, etc) increase in complexity,
• web technologies are maturing and constantly evolving,
• the ever-present lack of cross browser conformity to web standards,

developing a good, consistent web UI is significantly harder than say, developing applications written in C/C++/VB/Python.

It is hence also appalling that designers (web and industrial) are seemingly getting lower pay (in Singapore) than marketing/sales/engineers. Please correct me if I am wrong - I really hope competitive market wages exist for good designers.

Actually, the main motivation for this post is a link that I have found while doing some research for CSS. I came across Web Design From Scratch which turned out to be easy to read and understand. I would recommend this site to web designers and developers young and old.

I may not be doing the multitude of web design websites justice by listing only one here. So I welcome comments and suggestions from readers about good, easy-to-understand websites on web design.

I have been involved with web development since 2003, but unfortunately, I have not focused enough to be very good (I am still a programmer rather than a designer).

I'm also soliciting substantiated opinions on good Javascript frameworks/toolkits - I have Prototype and script.aculo.us in mind. A co-worker suggested Dojo which I have not had the time to read about. Please let me know your suggestions.