home > about james fryer

James was born in Manhattan in 1971 and attended the Rhode Island School of Design where he received a Bachelor of Fine Art in 1994. James continued his design education a few years later and received a Masters of Industrial Design from North Carolina State University in 1998. One year earlier in 1997, James began developing web sites. This continued his long tradition of self learning.

James both hand codes and uses WYSIWYG editors to create web sites. The advantages to this methodology are: control, flexibility, and speed.

A common tool for web site development is Flash. Flash is easy to use and a powerful tool, but it has several limitations:

1. It break too easily. If one problem crops up in the Flash file, or the way it is integrated into the site, the whole site can become broken and unreachable. Very bad.
2. Flash is largely inaccessible to people with limited sight or other physical challenges, as they cannot be interpreted by programs to make them easier to use.
3. And probably most damning, Flash sites are not at all well indexed by Google and other search engines, which means that the site will not rank as highly (if at all) in search results which in turn reduces traffic to the site.

That said, when used in moderation, Flash can be a useful tool for adding small animations or movies.

James works on both PCs and Macs. This is naturally advantageous, as each has its own strengths and James leverages them to their fullest. It also affords him the ability to check his work in all the most commonly used browsers so his clients do not have the embarrassment of a client saying, "But I am using so-and-so browser and I cannot see that, or your site looks terrible in my browser." This is becoming more and more of a concern as the once dominant browser Internet Explorer loses more and more market share to other (and let us be frank, better) browsers like Firefox and Safari.

Though he focuses mainly on web design, James also has a strong history in product design with work in consumer products and especially, furniture. He has worked extensively developing manufactured products in wood, metal, and plastic including a specialty area of plastics: rotomolding.

James approaches all things as if they were art, and as Oscar Wilde once said, "Art has no other aim, but her own perfection."

James lives in Katonah, NY with his ridiculously intelligent wife Jennifer (that is Doctor Jennifer to you) and too many pets to name and little Robert.