Sorry, Bill. It was fun while it lasted, but I've fallen in love with another browser, and I'm never coming back. You can blame Christian Watson. He introduced me to Firefox.

I have to admit, I was skeptical at first. But I've found Watson's Smiley Cat Blog to be an invaluable resource, and he'd never steered me wrong before. So I downloaded Firefox and gave it a whirl, intending only to use it to check pages. The relationship got off to a rocky beginning. I couldn't get Firefox to work with HomeSite, which was terrifically frustrating. But once I figured out what I (yes, me) was doing wrong, I couldn't resist trying out some of the extensions for designer/developers and, well, one thing led to another and... You know, you never intend for these things to happen.

1. You suffer night sweats and heart palpitations after dreaming you are being chased by swarms of angry divs.
2. You refer to colleagues as Strict, Transitional, and the Future Unemployed.
3. When blowing out your birthday candles, you wish first for your site to validate, second for world peace.
4. You experience guilt and remorse after using three break tags on one page.

A few months ago when my daughter was four years old, she stood beside my desk chair and asked, "Mommy, where's your wipes it?"

I looked up from the computer screen. "My what, sweetheart?"

"Your wipes it."

It's been almost exactly four months since I decided to "go professional" as a web designer, and I'm suddenly seized with the desire to pause a moment and take stock. In four months I've come a long way. For one thing, I no longer feel like I'm drowning. That's good. I still might only be treading water, but at least I'm not lying at the bottom of the pond.

In the first article for their new Digital Web Magazine column, "Web 2.0 Design: Bootstrapping the Social Web," Richard MacManus and Joshua Porter discuss the future of the web and its impact on design.

[The] Web 2.0 world...is not defined as much by place and is less about visual style. XML is the currency of choice in Web 2.0, so words and semantics are more important than presentation and layout. Content moves around and is accessible by programmatic means. In a very real sense, we’re now designing more for machines than for people.