Pegd.org Launches

My name is Art Lawry, and I’m a relative nobody in the world of web development and design. I don’t write books, I don’t speak at any events, and my portfolio… well, let’s just say that there’s only so much you can bring to the table when you’ve worked at one company your entire career.

Nonetheless I can’t help but love designing for the web. In fact, if I catch wind that someone might have the slightest idea of what CSS, AJAX, progressive enhancement or web standards are, there’s a good chance I’ll talk their ear off for the next three or four hours.

I’ve learned a good deal of my trade through trial, error, and standing on the shoulders of others in our field. I’ve been wanting to contribute back to the online community that has fostered my understanding of web design, but it took a little over a year’s worth of badgering by family and friends to get this site from daydream to actuality.

For those wondering, pegd is an acronym for progressive enhancement and graceful degradation and follows my principle of trying to make websites widely accessible and not dependent on any one medium to remain functional.

One final note: I wanted to acknowledge two sites that had major influences on the development of pegd.org. Khoi Vinh’s Subtraction, for his simple, typographic layout and Dan Cederholm’s Simplebits, for his em-based layout that grows and shrinks with changes in browser font size. Thanks to both of them for the strides they’ve made in their respective corners of the web.