I do not bill myself as a designer because I have so little experience designing things. But this month I was hired to create a small, informational site for an engineering firm. My plan was to hire a designer and give them most of the budget while limiting my involvement to the contact form script.

However, my designer was busy, so I figured I would tackle the project myself.

The design was not that hard. I just modified a template from Open Source Web Design. The fun part came when I decided to write a fade-out, fade-in routine to highlight the strengths of the company.

I am covering ground already worn bare by more competent javascript developers, but I decided to write it myself both as a learning experience and to avoid the bloat that comes with some of the javscript libraries.

Two hours later I had the amazing effect you can see below.

The cat sat on the mat.

A shortcoming is that is fades to white. Maybe, I should add another variable in the script so the background color can be set. On the other hand, it gives it a sort of glimmer on this background.