Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself.

Greetings! Josh Gilbert is the name! I was born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska and with the exception of the better part of a decade spent in South Carolina, I’ve lived here the entirety of my life.  I’m a second generation geek; my father was raised down the street from Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in California. Consequent my father’s passion for technology, I could type my name before I could write it and began writing software at the age of seven. My own interest in programming was rekindled with the advent of the World Wide Web  in the early 1990s and I’ve been doing freelance programming and web design since.

I’m taking this class largely  to satisfy a program requirement, but I have ulterior motives. Most of the content I’ve designed avoided multimedia outside of static graphics. When I first learned HTML, use of audio and video required third-party plug-ins which few users bothered to install. I’m generally allergic to Flash, which left me with limited options. With the advent of widely accepted audio and video standards under HTML5 and related specifications, I’m giving more thought to the integration of  multimedia into content.

As to specifics, I’m looking forward to the assignments involving vector graphics. With the adoption of smartphones, tablets, and other devices, the resolution independence of vector graphics is becoming an increasingly important advantage. That said, I’ve not employed much by way of vector graphics into content that I’ve designed in the past. Additionally I’m looking forward to learning more about  the use of Fireworks and other similar tools in content prototyping. I’ve  never employed the technique in web design, instead resorting to a more brute-force approach.