Portfolio of David Turner » General Posts http://davidturner.name Thu, 26 May 2011 11:31:56 +0000 en hourly 1 The Tools I use to get things DONE http://davidturner.name/tools/ http://davidturner.name/tools/#comments Sun, 26 Sep 2010 13:25:21 +0000 David Turner http://davidturner.name/?p=632 It’s a pretty common thing on blogs these days to post up topics along the lines of “[X] Applications you NEED on your Mac”. I get the reasoning behind the idea of it, as well as other list style posts, but I’ve always decided to stay away from them on my own site because this is a place for me to talk about what I do and how I do it. Whilst I do post up links to stuff I find interesting, it is always things I find to be unique or different, not a list of things for you to look over.

To that end what I’m writing about is going to be something of a list. It’s not the stuff you need but takes a look at the tools I use to do the jobs I do, the software I use to get things done. There are some sites that do this kind of thing as a regular thing, such as on Grace Smith’s Blog, which is pretty much where I got the idea for this post from.

Why these apps specifically?

Let’s be honest here, not every app that sits on your computer, or mine, is there to help meet a specific goal, or to get a specific thing done. A lot of software that people use daily serves more as a distraction than as a tool to complete a task. A lot of things I do on my Mac aren’t related to getting work done but with keeping in touch. Such things tend to end up distracting me from my work, which is the opposite of what I want to talk about today. So instead of covering all the pieces of software I use on a daily basis, I’m instead going to take a look at the software I use when I’m getting stuff done. Without further ado, here’s the software I use when getting stuff done.

Breaking things Down

When looking at the Apps that I most frequently use to get my work done fall into one of three categories:

  1. Utilities
  2. Applications
  3. Tools

Each of these usually help me in different fashions. Utilities are, most regularly, Apps that are left to run in the background, that do things without me having to tell them to, Applications are the Apps that I use pretty commonly to achieve specific goals and Tools are the pieces of software that I use to help me keep things in order. As each type of App serves a different purpose I think it would only be fair to approach them as separate aspects of my routine.

Utilities

TextExpander

TextExpander Logo

TextExpander is one of those little pieces of software I didn’t even know existed, and had never even thought about the usefulness it would provide. TextExpander allows you to set up custom snippits of text that can be used to speed up writing things. One of the most common uses, for me, is to help in speeding up web site coding. For example, typing in ;html5 generates the following block of text for me:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8" />
  <title></title>
  <!--[if lt IE 9]>
  <script src="http://html5shiv.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script>
  <![endif]--> 
  <link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" href="style.css" /> 
  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="" />
  <meta name="description" content="" /> 
  <meta name="keywords" content="" />
  <meta name="copyright" content="" /> 
  <!--<meta name='robots' content="noindex,nofollow" />-->
</head>

<body>

  <div id="container">

  </div><!-- #container -->

  <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>
  <script>
    $(function() {

    });
  </script>

</body>

</html>

That certainly seems like a lot less work than coding it all out by hand. The fact that the HTML5 syntax is a lot easier to remember would help in terms of coding that out, but it’d still take a while. And that’s just the tip of what TextExpander is capable of. Rather than provide an in-depth look at the capabilities of this particular Application, which would be an article in and of itself, I’ll direct you to take a look at the following resources I’ve found useful in the past:

Useful Sites related to TextExpander

LESS.app

LESS.app Icon

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m quite the fan on using LESS in my development process. LESS.app is the reason that I’m such a big fan of it, because I can make use of all the benefits that LESS has to offer, whilst serving the result as nice and clean CSS, just to ensure nothing goes wrong.

MAMP/MAMP PRO

MAMP PRO Icon

MAMP and MAMP PRO are, to me, the best way to set up and manage running a local testing server. I use it to handle/tweak and test all sorts of server-side stuff. Whilst MAMP is probably more than enough for most purposes, I’m quite fond of the way MAMP PRO integrates nicely with MAMP to make things just that little bit easier. Plus it makes some of my Windows based friends jealous.

Suitcase Fusion

Suitcase Fusion 3 Icon

Suitcase Fusion is a Font Management tool. You don’t install fonts using it, you turn them on and off. It also has plugins for popular software, such as Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop and Quark allowing the software to automatically enable fonts that recent versions of these applications need, automatically. Because the fonts aren’t installed, you don’t need to worry about any system lag from having too many fonts installed, which is another plus.

Apps

Coda & TextMate

I’m covering these two Apps together because, whilst I use them both, it’s probably a bit of overkill. I owned Coda before I ever tried TextMate, which I now use as my primary editor.

TextMate

TextMate Icon

TextMate provides a very powerful text editor, which can be extended quite a bit. Ultimately, though, it’s still a text editor, regardless of what you extend it with. So it’s perfect for coding a project together from start to finish.

Coda

Coda Icon

I find Coda to be really useful after a project has been completed. It has a lot of functionality I don’t often use, such as books and the ability to preview things. What I love about it is how well it can track files having been edited. This is really handy for post-completion tweaks, where uploading single files is easier than uploading everything again. This is something else Coda can handle, as FTP is something it handles in addition to tracking which files have been edited, making it very easy to upload changes.

Alternatives

Transmit

Transmit Icon

Transmit is a fantastic FTP App by the same people that make Coda. It has a great amount of functionality, such as saving FTP connections as drives you can browse on your machine. It’s also a fantastic piece of software in terms of upload speeds.

Alternatives

Sequel Pro

Sequel Pro Icon

Sequel Pro is an App that I use for handling MySQL Databases. Whilst PHPMyAdmin is a usable tool, I find it rather difficult to use, and finding things can be a pain. Sequel Pro gets rid of this issue for me, making moving around databases and tables a breeze.

PixelMator

Pixelmator Icon

PixelMator is an image editor. As a Web Designer & Developer I often have to work with images. I don’t often use Photoshop though, as it by far exceeds the what I need to do. I tend to develop sites in code, I work with it faster so the client’s tend to benefit directly from this. Instead I use PixelMator for my day to day image editing needs, as it has all the functionality I need from an image editor and it’s much lighter on my system.

ScreenFlow

ScreenFlow Icon

If you’ve ever seen any of my videos on Vimeo then you have seen the end result of ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow is a video recording, and editing, App. It’s not as fully fledged as some editing apps out there but then, for most people, it doesn’t need to be either. It allows for recording of video and audio from the machine, as well as from a microphone and the webcam as well. Pretty much all the tools you need to do a screencast.

Tools

Things

Things Icon

Things is the app I make use of to keep track of what I’m doing, and for when. It’s a to-do list, and a very good one at that. I don’t know where I’d be without it.

MacJournal

MacJournal Icon

MacJournal is what I use to organise my thoughts, and help me keep track of more generic things. Things helps me do things, MacJournal helps me keep a list of things I still want to do at some point.

Bonus Utility

Dropbox

Dropbox Icon

Dropbox might seem like a weird addition to this list, but it’s a fantastic tool for me, as it helps keep all of my files in sync across multiple machines. This includes settings for various applications that I’ve mentioned during this article. Without it many of my tools would lose a little of their charm. On the off chance that you don’t already have a Dropbox account, clicking here to get one will give us both a bit more space.

Wrapping Up

So yeah, there you have it. A brief look at the software I use to get work done for the people I work for. I didn’t really go into too much detail on any of the apps I use, I feel that you’d be better served by trying them yourselves rather than trust in my word.

If you have any apps that you use that I’ve not covered or mentioned here, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Other Blog Posts on Apps

]]> http://davidturner.name/tools/feed/ 0 SEO and what it means for you http://davidturner.name/seo-means/ http://davidturner.name/seo-means/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:00:51 +0000 David Turner http://davidturner.name/?p=564 When it comes to web design, the actual design is only one aspect of the project. After all what is the point in having a web site if nobody ever sees it? This is where Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, comes in. SEO covers a series of things that can, and should, be taken under consideration when publishing a site. A lot of things covered are pretty common sense or are easy to implement in a site.

Why bother with SEO?

Websites are only as good as their ability to be found. There is little point in having a fantastic website if nobody ever sees it. This is why SEO is so important, because it’s a part of the process that helps people to find your site. Search Engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo all go to great efforts to find and index as many web sites as possible and do a very good job of it, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t help.

I don’t claim to be an expert when it comes to the topic of SEO. I don’t know it all and I won’t claim that I do. What I know covers the most common elements of this topic but, typically, this information is good enough for the majority of sites. Even if this is not the case it is always a good idea to cover your bases before trying more advanced things.

What to Consider

There are several aspects of SEO that need to be considered but they all come together to produce the result you are looking for. These are:

  1. Content
  2. Updates
  3. URLs
  4. Links
  5. Titles
  6. Meta Tags/Description
  7. Load Times
  8. Site Map

Content & Updates

Plenty of Content

Seems like a lot of stuff, doesn’t it? Some aspects should already be covered purely by you publishing content. The first two points, Content and updates are perhaps the most important aspects of making your site Search Engine Friendly. If you want people to visit your site you need to provide a certain type of content and it needs to be of a high quality.

At the same time, if you want people to come back to your site again then you will need to continually add new content to the site. This can be easy if you maintain a blog with a group of people but can seem overwhelming if, like I do, you maintain a blog by yourself.

In these instances you need to keep calm. Quality is ultimately the key when it comes to being findable, regardless of quantity. If you post too much, and with too poor a quality, you will push visitors away. By contrast, if you hold off from updating until you have a finely crafted post then you are more likely to have people return, as people will become accustomed to you producing a high quality of content. This leads, quite nicely, to the next point on the list.

URLs

Links to Site

URLs are what you see in your address bar. You can tell the difference between a link that bears SEO in mind as they make sense. The difference between a url like http://example.com/?section=1&id=15 and http://example.com/blog/post-title/ is evident. The first is… who knows? The second, however, is evident that it is a post in a blog.

In addition to this most search engines can’t tell the difference between http://example.com/ and http://example.com/?section=1&id=15, the question mark tells the search engine spiders that the url is http://example.com/ and the rest are variables that affect elements of the site. As for what those elements are, be it an image or the content of the site, the spider doesn’t care.

It’s always good to have search engine orientated links to make sure that search engines can find everything your site has to offer. It also makes your pages more memorable to users, in case they wish to return at a later date.

Links

If you don’t want a link you post to benefit the site you link to, add to the a tag. This is a good idea for use on comments sections of blogs.

Links form an important part of making sites findable, as they help connect different pages and sites to one another. Search Engines pick up on this too and links to other sites help improve the ranking of sites within the eyes of Search Engines. This is why comment spam is so common, it’s an attempt to leech page ranking off of more reputable sites. A lot of sites, especially bigger named blogs, are very good at pointing people to high quality content, be it on twitter or on their own blog site in a post on a related topic.

These links are great in terms of helping with a site’s ranking. It’s not just links from big named blogs that help though, links from pretty much any web site that provides a good level of quality will help increase your site’s credibility and ranking on Search Engines.

This flow works both ways however. Linking to poor content will bring the ranking of that site up but it will also lower the ranking of your own content. Think before you link. If you’re not sure how a link will affect you, add a to the link which will result in no benefits/drawbacks to yourself or the linked content.

Titles & Meta

These areas are being bundled together because they all relate to the same area of the site… the <head> element. This section contains code that isn’t actually visible on your site’s layout but that has an impact. It’s where CSS lives and is also commonly used as the area of the site that JavaScript Files are linked from. I’m sure that the majority of people reading this will aware of the title tag as well as the meta tags and meta descriptions that can be inserted here, even if they’re not 100% certain of their uses. Let’s see what we can do about that

Titles

Title tags are used to put some related text into the tabs and browser so that users can help identify the site at a glance, amongst other things. Search engines also use them as the content for links to your sites when displaying search results. This makes it important that you ensure that the title element of your site is relevant to the content as, on search results, this is the first thing the user will see from your site.

Meta Tags & Description

Meta Tags & Meta Descriptions aren’t quite as useful as they used to be, thanks primarily to what is referred to as “Black Hat” SEO, which is essentially trying to attract visitors to your site by trickery. Meta Descriptions are still of some use to search engines, though I highly doubt that they have any impact upon your actual site ranking, they are used by Search engines to provide a brief intro to the content of your site so should be included if for no other reason than this.

Meta Tags are unlikely to help with site ranking much these days, if at all. With that said, it is better to keep them in your site in case they do have any impact upon search engines.

Speed — Load Times

Speed is Important

Google, and I’m sure other search engine companies will soon follow suit, has recently updated their search engine algorithm to factor an element that isn’t defined by links or by content, but by how quickly a site loads. This is both good and bad, depending on where you stand. It’s good because it further puts the emphasis upon content, and not how beautiful the background is on the site. It also helps force people consider just how quickly content loads in a greater detail. There’s nothing more off putting to a visitor to your site than waiting for the content to load. Putting an emphasis on load times helps force designers to consider this when designing.

Site Map

Ensuring that your site has a site map isn’t strictly necessary with most sites, as search engines will typically follow all links through your site, indexing what you allow it to. A site map simply helps speed along the process for search engines to find content on your site.

Conclusions

Optimising sites to be a bit more friendly is something that isn’t that difficult to do and is something that anyone developing a site should definitely put some thought into when getting ready to launch. For most Content Management Systems have some functionality, or plugins, to add the vast majority of this functionality to sites. It requires a minimal amount of effort for a rather hefty amount of gain.

Further Reading

]]> http://davidturner.name/seo-means/feed/ 0 HTML5 vs Flash? http://davidturner.name/html5-flash/ http://davidturner.name/html5-flash/#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:23:30 +0000 David Turner http://davidturner.name/?p=588 For quite some time now there’s been this whole spiel going on about how it’s HTML5 vs Flash in a battle to the death. About how HTML5 is going to kill Flash, that Flash is on the way out. That there’s no reason to rely on Flash for X, Y and Z. I’m going to post my own thoughts on the topic, so bear in mind that what I’m saying here is my own opinion and is, by and large, completely unsupported by anything even remotely close to facts.

HTML5 will kill Flash… except it won’t

Like I said, HTML5 is being hyped to kill Flash. The problem with this claim is that it won’t. HTML5 and Flash aren’t mutually exclusive and they can co-exist with one another. What I believe that HTML5 will do, however, is help realign how content is displayed on the internet, help improve how it is displayed on the internet, ensuring that the correct tool is being used for the correct job.

Site Design — A History Lesson

Browsers Wars - An epic starring IE and Netscape

Flash based web sites came about in and around the era of the browser wars, when making sites work on various browsers was virtually impossible. “Best viewed in Internet Explorer” is a relic left over from this era and, if you’re like me, it still makes you shudder. Flash provided something that nothing else did, consistency. This became less of an issue as time went by, with tables becoming the norm for layouts before moving onto CSS for layout and styling, the point we are at today.

Flash Design/Layout/Content?

The problem, however, is that as time moved on and browsers became better capable of providing a consistent layout across browsers not everyone wanted, or perhaps felt the need, to update their skills. This is, to me at least, why we still see flash powered sites and why we see sites laid out using tables. Both served their purpose and the technology for both still serves their purpose in current design. Their time for being used for laying out content, however, is long gone.

Content should always be as searchable as possible and as style-able as possible. Flash provides a limited functionality for styling and virtually no capability for search engine friendliness, though this is slowly changing with time. HTML has always provided a good quality of search engine friendliness, and CSS affords better control over the layout of a site than tables ever did.

What is Flash for then?

Like I said originally, HTML5 and Flash are not mutually exclusive. Using one does not exclude the use of the other. There are some things that can be implemented better, or only, by Flash. A few of these include:

  • Truly Immersive Experience
  • Securing Online Video

Some sites require a level of interaction that is only available using Flash. These instances are usually few and far between but when they occur you should use the correct tool for the job. Whilst JavaScript Libraries are leagues ahead of where they were in the past, they still aren’t capable of delivering the same level of experience to the end user.

Whilst HTML5 provides tools for embedding video content into a web page, it doesn’t afford any capability to secure the content. Anything embedded using the HTML5 option is able to be downloaded similar to how you can save images from a web site. Flash provides a better capability for securing video embedded online.

Why is this so important? Big Media Companies are beginning to stream their content online to their viewers. The last thing they want is to make these files available for download, as it would only serve to lose them money which, at the end of the day, is what their primary focus is.

Wrapping Up

HTML5 won’t replace Flash, but it will give people that wish to use them more tools with which to deliver content. Got a podcast you share on iTunes? Why wrap your content in flash when you can use the same file in both places? It’s less problematic and several browsers will support the h.264 codec iTunes uses (Safari, IE9 and Chrome currently). It’s less work to provide the same experience in multiple places.

There’s a whole bucket of things that HTML has over the Flash format but, at the same time, there are plenty of things that are better implemented using Flash. What needs to be done is make sure that the right tool is being used for the right task. Right now, I feel, Flash is being used as the wrong tool for a lot of things.

]]> http://davidturner.name/html5-flash/feed/ 0 Sometimes LESS is MORE http://davidturner.name/sometimes-less-is-more/ http://davidturner.name/sometimes-less-is-more/#comments Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:51:08 +0000 David Turner http://davidturner.name/?p=557 CSS is an important part of any web design. Without it the content of you site would be a very plain looking black and white design, with blue links. It’s not that it isn’t usable but that it’s not very visually appealing, which is why CSS is so important. It affords people the ability to provide a unique and visually moving site design.

As a result, every web designer worth their salt needs to have a pretty strong knowledge of how CSS works as well as how to use it. If they’re anything like me, they’re also looking for ways to speed up the process.

Helping Speed things up

For a while now there have been emerging technologies to do exactly that… speed things up. Technologies such as SASS, compass and LESS all provide server-side technologies to allow you to code better, and smarter, code.

All of these technologies are based on Ruby though, and so far as I’m aware it’s not an overly common technology on servers, I know it’s definitely not installed on mine. There have been PHP and even .NET powered versions of these technologies available but, to me, these is an added level of complexity that I don’t want to have to deal with. Recently there has even been a javaScript version of it released. Unfortunately, I prefer not to make my site entirely reliant upon JavaScript.

Fortunately, for Mac users at any rate, there is a fantastic application for Mac users that allows for the use of the LESS Platform to be used to compile .less files into fully functioning .css files, ready for deployment on the web. So what’s the benefit of this? LESS allows for a few things that can be of great use in CSS terms. Examples of these include:

  • Variables
  • Mixins (think functions in PHP or JS terms)
  • Nested Styling
  • Includes — keeping code you don’t need separate until you’re done
  • Adding values together (mixing colours together)
  • Basic Math functionality (addition, subtraction, division and multiplication)

Whilst I’ve not had reason to make use of all of the functionality of LESS, in particular mixing and altering values with math, I have already found the other aspects to help speed up my coding. I’ve put together a few mixins for various CSS elements I frequently use that let me code multiple lines of CSS with very little effort on my part. Things like border-radius and box-shadow suddenly become a lot easier to implement without forgetting a browser-specific tag, as it’s all generated for me.

There are a few problems with LESS though, which I hope will be fixed in the future. My main gripe currently is that I cannot use a mixin to create the font: css element, it simply refuses to work because of the syntax. I’ve also had a few instances where values (such as 14px/20px) have been divided instead of expressed as I want them. These problems are the exception rather than the norm.

Unfortunately for those of you working on Windows Machines, I have yet to find any equivalent application that can be used locally whilst developing your CSS. If you happen to find to find one feel free to let me know in the comments.

Conclusions

I’ve only been using LESS.app in the development of my CSS but I’ve been finding it to be a fantastic tool for helping speed up my development of sites. If you’re working on a Mac I would highly recommend trying it out!

]]> http://davidturner.name/sometimes-less-is-more/feed/ 0 Events & Revelations http://davidturner.name/events-revelations/ http://davidturner.name/events-revelations/#comments Mon, 24 May 2010 22:35:42 +0000 David Turner http://davidturner.name/?p=358 This past week has been quite the experience for me. I’ve been sorting out a few things that I’ll be doing this summer, primarily visiting people, but I’ve been dealing with clients, and both attending events as well as signing up for a few more that I’d like to attend over the coming months. Which is really what is responsible for this post today.

BarCamp Belfast — A Mini-review

Barcamp Belfast was the most recent event that I attended, after an infuriating night of sleep deprivation. The people who organised it also provided coffee to attendees and I’d like to thank them for it. I think I might have died/passed out otherwise, which would have caused me to miss some fantastic presentations and, in one case, a pretty cool story about just how powerful social media can be.

Some of the presentations that were given reaffirmed what I held to be true but I thought that, since the event as a whole has had me reassess some aspects of what it is that I do, and why it is that I’m doing it, that I would provide a little bit of information about each presentation that I attended. I feel that I should apologise in advance to some of the presenters that I attended, as I honestly can’t remember the names of everyone I listened to, nor the necessarily correct titles for the Presentations.

Advanced SEO for Developers by Barry Adams

Barry’s talk, on the topic of Search Optimisation for Developers, didn’t really tell me anything more about the topic than I already knew. Having helped launch a few sites I’ve done a fair amount of research into dealing with SEO, making use of various best practices to help ensure that nothing negative is happening. The topics he covered included:

  1. URLs
  2. Code
  3. HTTP Status Codes
  4. Content Management Systems

Whilst the subject matter is pretty well known to me, I understand full well how important proper SEO can be for a website and that not everybody attending would be aware of what you should and shouldn’t do. It was also nice to be reassured that the things I’m doing are correct, and aren’t just me claiming I’m doing it right.

Start With Who by the Web Standardistas

Web Standardistas
Photo by Vectorfunk

Up next was the highly dangerous talk on User Experience, given by the Web Standardistas, which was as informative as it was dangerous, with sweets flying around like bullets. They covered, and shared, a great many of their top secret information on what it is that provides a great User Experience. I don’t know why they’d so something like this with so many students there, and expect it to remain a secret though.

Their presentation covered all sorts of important aspects of User Experience, including things like Sprinkles, Space Dust and the 4 Ws. Oh, and how to not get killed by flying chocolate.

Impact of Social Media by unknown

This session wasn’t so much a presentation as it was of a story. It was the story of an American band that came to perform over here in Northern Ireland, shortly before the horrendous explosion of Iceland in 2010. After having things fall through on their trip, such as accommodation things were looking pretty bleak.

The story covered how, from a single message on twitter, the band got on the news both here, courtesy of the BBC and UTV as well as a live broadcast with CNN London, and got to perform some very special gigs as well. It was quite amazing and reminds me of a more impressive version of how Conan O’Brien sold out his cross-America Comedy Show with a single tweet.

Find your Creative Bandwidth by unknown

This presentation, given by another person whose name I cannot remember, covered how he came to the decision about what kind of work he should do, in such a way as to use it to help those attending help define, or perhaps refine, what they thought themselves. It is primarily this talk that is responsible for this post, as it is what got me really thinking about what I was doing, what I wanted to do and why.

CRAP Web Design by Lee Munroe

Whilst Lee Munroe wasn’t the last person giving a presentation his was the last one that I stayed around for as, by this point, I was really feeling the side effects of no sleep. His talk was about CRAP Web Design, a process that can be used to help produce better work. His focused on Checklists, Reuse of Code and ensuring you have the Perfect Client. Unfortunately I didn’t catch what the A of it was meant to stand for, though I was conscious for the whole presentation and found it quite interesting. The only question I had left after his talk was “What if I don’t like beer?”.

Getting the Brain Gears Working

Getting to Grips with HTML5 - Post on the BGC

As I mentioned above, the presentation on Finding your Creative Bandwidth really struck a chord with me. It, alongside a few other presentations, got me thinking about several things, and asking many questions. I’m going to go over them briefly below. I should warn you, some of the questions have some pretty strong language.

What fucks me right off? — Straight to the point. This is the question that sparked the following questions. I find that poorly coded sites really irk me. During the talk on finding out what your creative personality is it was the presenter’s opinion that things that anger us do so because we can visualise something better. With regards to this, I really feel that I must agree.

Why do I do what I do? — I like to code, to see a design grow from nothing. I also enjoy the process. I can, and do, produce well coded sites and want to create them not just for myself, but for others. After all, what is the point in having a skill if you don’t use it?

What makes me different? — I’m constantly seeking to improve myself. I push myself to always improve upon my work, my code and especially, of late, my design. I rarely settle for what I have when it comes to my capability to produce code or design. My best site is always my next one.

What is my selling point? — I feel that my selling point isn’t that I’ll necessarily produce a site that is a thing of beauty, though I am working on my design skills, but I will produce a site that works.

What do I want to achieve? — I want to help ensure that the web is a beautiful, not just visually but in terms of code too.

What am I changing? — On the whole, I’m not changing anything that I have done. I’ve always worked to produce high quality, clean code. And I’m going to keep doing so.

How am I changing? — Whilst I’m not changing anything that I am doing in terms of code, I do plan to change how I approach things to do with code. I intend to help more, and provide more information online with the ultimate goal of helping those who see my work to improve the quality of their code.

When is this happening? — It already is. I’ve been working on, and posting, a series of articles on the topic of HTML5 implementation in the here and now. As I write this, Part 1 has already been posted over on the BGC Network, with follow-up articles being worked on to follow up from it.

I think that’s everything that I had wanted to talk about. BarCamp Belfast was a fantastic event, regardless of how tired I was and proved to be highly informative, hopefully for others but definitely for myself.

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