Web standards like CSS3, HTML5 and the foundations of the Web as we know them would also not have been possible without people (just like readers of this post) spending time researching use cases, writing proposals, implementing features and catering to existing and future requirements that could be used by everyone. When you think about it, both standards and open source projects have had a large hand to play in the Web as we know it today.
In this article I’d like to talk about how you can help give back to the Web and a new project that seeks to make this process easier: MoveTheWebForward.org. If you’ve ever thought about contributing to the community but weren’t sure just how, I hope this serves as a good starting point for your journey.
Smashing Magazine: The Smashing Guide To Moving The Web Forward
I’d done freelance work in evenings for a few years and had a rough idea what I needed and what I wanted to charge. Some folks agreed the rate I had thought I would charge whilst others said I was under-charging but I found there was very little to support this. We just don’t talk openly about what we charge as a profession.
With this in mind I hosted a survey for a fortnight inviting freelance people in the UK that work in the web to provide some broad demographic data (age, location, skillset) and an indication of what they charge per day.
Freelance Rates Ascertaining Quotient, 2011
Are you fed up with hearing about yet another Silicon Valley Web application built with fairy dust and funded by magic pixies? If so, this post is for you. Most of us will never get to work on a Web application that is funded by venture capital and for which the business aims are a secondary consideration. For us, developing a Web application is about meeting a particular business need as part of our job working with some large organization.
Smashing Magazine: How To Build A Better Web Application For Your Business
When an error is so subtle and hard to find that it is almost beautiful, I would call it an oversight. This happens when a block of code is forced to handle a completely unforeseen and very unlikely set of circumstances. It makes you sit back and think “Wow”: like seeing a bright rainbow or shooting star, except a bit less romantic and not quite as impressive when described to one’s partner over a candlelit dinner.
This article discusses some of the spectacular and beautiful mistakes I have made, and the lessons learned from them.
Smashing Magazine: My Favorite Programming Mistakes
I think many aspects of what makes for a great programmer depend on what you’re working on and the people that you’re working with, but I’ve seen some common traits in people who have had a lot of success in software development that I felt were worth sharing.
Treehouse: What Makes A Great Programmer?
It has been said that more of the world’s population has access to a cellphone than to a sanitary toilet. But of the planet’s estimated 5 billion cellphone users, a privileged minority have smartphones; a paltry few, iPhones. If you spend hours thumbing through pages of apps, scoffing at less-than-perfect software upgrades and grousing about screen resolution and pixel density, it’s easy to forget that the very concept of a mobile phone is a miracle. It’s a device that shrinks your day to day world into a single point, making you simultaneously accessible to and able to access nearly everyone you know, instantly and everywhere.
Gizmodo: The Most Popular Phone in the World