I observed Comanche County Telecommunications webmaster Ismelda Garza at work. Ismelda works at the only local internet company, and she and I had worked on a couple of projects previously.

Ismelda is a person who does a great deal of planning before she actually sits down to create at the computer, a process which I find very difficult. She, in effect, does a storyboard for each page she wants to create, and uses crayons to color code as she goes. I found this very interesting, because the bright colors make connections immediately apparent, and also give an idea of each page's final "look" in the very early stages of development.

I was pleased to find that Ismelda uses Macromedia Dreamweaver, as I do, and somewhat curious to see that she uses Fireworks, since I find Photoshop more to my liking. Although Ismelda likes the capabilities of Photoshop, she feels that for simple graphics, the tight intergration between Dreamweaver and Fireworks makes it a more efficient system.

As with most of us, writing raw code is something that Ismelda avoids as much as possible -- she uses it only for items like forms that will be used over and over.

I was impressed with Ismelda's ability and approaches to the same problems that we TATCers have been facing for the past year. I suspect my webmastering class will be using her as a resource and field trip opportunity in the coming year.

Ismelda's work can be viewed at:

www.cctc.net