So far, this web design thing seems to require great effort to produce “stuff that works,” yet in the end just looks like all the rest.

How many sites have I seen with the same fixed, under-800-ish pixel wide, centered layout with a single masthead image, a horizontal navigation bar, then a two or three column layout with some blog entries, some links, and some pictures? Oh, and a footer.

They all validate, they’ll mostly show up on a monitor without a horizontal scroll bar, and the layout won’t break on a big monitor, but I look at a site that took multiple hours of work and think, “That’s it?”

The learning curve has been surprisingly steep, at least if you want to know how to actually work up a page yourself (rather than using someone else’s template or CMS theme).

fn1. A note about the title of this entry: it’s Shakespeare, from “Macbeth — Act 5, Scene 5”:http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/macbeth/macbeth.5.5.html. Grand and auspicious, I know, but I enjoyed the sound of it.