Frontend & Web Design Blog

As an end of the year gift to myself, I recently purchased a membership over at Think Vitamin Membership. I was mainly looking for some tips & tricks related to jQuery, but what I got was a whole lot more. The amount of training videos available is outstanding and covers everything from HTML and CSS to PHP, JavaScript, and more!

It’s been one crazy year for me and my family, but overall it’s also been a great one. I have moved around the globe (TXL to SFO for you frequent flyers) and my new job has been challenging, but a much-needed change. This time of year I like to reflect on everything that has happened this year and look forward to the year to come.

Today, Google released an interactive online book that explains things like HTML, browser extensions, and much more. While this is probably very helpful for less tech-savvy web surfers, I am more excited about the underlying technology, HTML5 & CSS3. The site is a great example of what is possible with the latest updates to HTML and CSS.

I’ve been passing around these videos at work, so I thought I would also share them here. Both are from the Fronteers front-end conference that was recently held in Amsterdam. There are a lot of videos available from the conference but these two really stood out.

Even though I am not writing that much these days, I am still reading like a madman to keep myself up to date on upcoming technologies. One thing, I was not looking forward to reading was the 900+ page spec on HTML5. Thankfully, a book I have just recently finished helped solve this problem, so I thought it deserves a few words.

So it has been some time (5 months – ouch!) since I have written a blog post and let me say, I’ve missed it. The reason for such a long pause is due to the fact that I have relocated from Berlin Germany to Silicon Valley USA and started a new job. That’s right, I am finally back states-side and the past few months have been a bit hectic, to say the least.

After some months of working in my spare time, the switch on the Postcards from Berlin beta website has finally been switched to the on position. The idea for the site is the brainchild of Gabriel Shalom & Patrizia Kommerell, who were nice enough to ask me to collaborate and help out with a bit of design & front-end development.

I recently came across an article by Shannon Noack in which she wrote about common misconceptions about web designers. She mentioned how people have the misconception that designers are living large based on how much they charge. After reading that, I began to think about how in our industry we’re forced to prove ourselves in ways that wouldn’t ever be asked of in other industries.

Last week the amazing Andy Clarke put out a call to designers to create a fictitious business card for an upcoming book he is working on entitled “Hardboiled Web Design”. The idea was to create a business card for a fictional detective agency and to be as creative as possible. After a week of submissions and 81 designs being submitted, Andy has announced his favorite designs!

As I get back to work today after enjoying the holiday season and a bit of time off, I am thinking of how glad I am that 2009 is finally behind us. The past year was a rough one for a lot of people, myself included. Don’t worry, I won’t depress you with the details. Instead of looking back to the rough year that’s now over, I am going to try and focus on the insanely busy year that is ahead.