michaelpruess.com

About

Mission Statement

To provide slick, high-quality, efficient web designs to those who desire them.
To aid people in the creation and maintenance of their websites.
To increase the number of well-made sites on the internet.

Michael Pruess

I'm eighteen years old and I start at U.C. Berkeley in January 2009. I live in Berkeley, California, and for many years now I've been interested in what can be done with the internet. I joined my first web forum in the seventh grade and, a couple years later, began teaching myself XHTML. Using my primary passion (writing) as a premise, I created a website for myself, and then went on to build pages for a handful of friends. I enjoy creating things which don't take up physical space but deliver value nonetheless; that is why I love writing, both text and HTML. I dabble in art—mostly grayscale sketching—on the side.

My Philosophy

The only good flash on a website is a dead flash. Superfluous visual effects of any kind are better off never choking the performance of a web browser. I believe in XHTML structure, CSS styling, JS for saving space, PHP where it's called for, and not much beyond that. Also, I generally don't use images as a structural part of a site's layout, though this is more due to more practical considerations. Sites look terrible if said images display even one pixel off from what was envisioned, which occurs quite frequently given how different web browsers deal differently with placement and spacing.