Welcome to the all new CSS Wizardry. I am Harry Roberts—a 19 year old web developer living and working in Leeds. ‘Work’ is the exciting new startup Venturelab where I work on a range of projects, dealing with design and development with particular focus on accessibility, semantics, usability, clean xHTML, sensible CSS, grids and typography.
24th February, 2010 in Projects, Typography
Yesterday I released Type Tips, a collection of short and simple tips to take your web typography to the next level. The project has been some time in the making, with me first mentioning it back in early January. For one reason or another I only got started on the project last night, but I ploughed through and released a first version within a few hours.
By Harry Roberts in Projects, Typography. Tags: Design, Tips, Tricks | 3 Comments »
19th February, 2010 in Typography, Web Development, Writing
A while ago I had the idea to express some old sayings in a silly, geeky way, using code and logic to express logically, the meaning behind some well known phrases. I got Illustrator fired up last night and decided to finally got a few made. They’re kind of obvious really, even a non-developer brain can make sense of them, and deciphering the saying is pretty simple, but I think they’re cool nonetheless.
By Harry Roberts in Typography, Web Development, Writing. Tags: Design, Development, Writing | 9 Comments »
17th February, 2010 in Business, Web Development
…then Harold Shipman would look like a reasonably nice chap… The attitudes of many web developers and designers are frankly quite scary. The web design game’s quality and value is constantly undermined from people outside the industry, but the disregard from within the industry is—although admittedly less frequent—a lot more unforgivable.
Here is a little tongue-in-cheek post taking some of the things an offending designer/developer might say, but from the lips of a surgeon. After all, I do love a good analogy.
| Web designer | Surgeon | Lesson |
|---|---|---|
| Web designer | Surgeon | Lesson |
| I validate all my code. | I make sure my instruments are clean. | Some things are just a given. Proper code isn’t anything to show off about, it’s just a standard part of a decent service. You’d be worried if a surgeon made a point that his tools were sterile, it’s just something you’d expect. |
| I’ve not done this before, but I’ll give it a go. | I’m usually a rectal surgeon, but I’ll give neurosurgery a shot. | If you can’t do something, don’t! You wouldn’t want a surgeon trying unfamiliar practices on you, especially if you’re paying. Why would you charge a client to experiment new things on their site? |
| The code’s not the best it could be as I was pressed for time. | I was in a rush, so I bodged the operation. | Lack of time is no excuse for poor code. I commented on this one before. |
| This won’t work in IE6, it’s too old to support. | Madam, you’re quite old, I don’t think I’m going to do this operation. | You may not like IE6, but it’s unavoidable. You need to learn how to work with, and then do so. |
| I’ve just got a copy of Dreamweaver and I want to start web design. | I found some old scalpels—got any ailments I can tend to? | Being a developer is more than owning the right tools—it’s about years of hard work and education (formal or otherwise). |
If you can think of any more, please feel free to add them in the comments. And this is just a light-hearted, jokey post. I’m not comparing the importance and responsibility of surgery with that of web design… honest.
By Harry Roberts in Business, Web Development. | 7 Comments »
4th February, 2010 in Web Development
Earlier today I registered the domain http://ʎɹɹɐɥ.com. Or did I? Upon reading an article by Sam Brown, which in turn linked to an article by John Sutherland explaining how to register such domains, I wanted one. There are a few levels to this trickery. There’s the ‘Oh I totally understand how this works!’
, or there’s the ‘I don’t want to know how it works, I just want it!’
level.
By Harry Roberts in Web Development. Tags: Domains | 8 Comments »