Chambers Technology Group

What does a front-end web developer do?

Lisa D Chambers — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:02:00 +0000

Front-end web developers, the “artists” formerly known as web designers are the bunch of people in the company that make sure that the data coming from the backend gets displayed on the browser. They also make sure it looks as closely as possible as the design, that , CED came up with, and that the user can navigate through it, accessing the data.

They don’t need to know about complex OO programming, tricky database structures or how a path is done in Illustrator. They get data from the backend people and an example how the result looks like from CED. All they need to do is to hack some HTML or XSLT together and link the different documents. Piece of cake.

Web developers don’t have it as easy as it sounds though. True enough, markup languages are easy to learn and scripting languages are not much harder, but there is an aspect of uncertainty, that has to be taken into consideration, when judging their skills.

As a web developer you work in an uncertain environment. What looks good and works on your computer can be a popup hell and dire to look at on the machine next to you or on the machine of a customer. The first is not much of a problem, just ask your colleague to upgrade his browser, the second, however, is a problem.

As a web developer, your work can be wrecked by users and customers in many ways:

They canuse a browser that is completely outdated set his browser font to “very small” or “very large”

use a video card that displays 16 colours only run a resolution of 640×480 pixels and still have the large font setting run a resolution of 1024×768 but still keep his window as large as 200×200 use loads of toolbars to make the area of the screen available for your site pitifully small turn off any scripting support for safety reasons turn off images to load the pages faster

use a modem with the speed of two tins connected through a wire use a PDA use a text-only browser and if the site does not work with that, they’ll blame you for it.

In other words, you never know what is going to be the mean of display at the other end. What to do about that? Don’t fret, there are standards that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) defined a long time ago. Just follow these standards and you are safe. The only problem is that the browser industry keeps telling their products follow these standards, but, in reality, they don’t. So by doing the right thing, you do the wrong thing. By following the standards, you make sure that your site will perform fine in future browsers and display units. On nowadays and yesterdays browsers though, there might be loads of issues. What you do need to do is to make sure your site is following the standards and still looks OK on older browsers.

This is the perfect option. Another would be to define a certain browser and platform environment. This is possible when we are talking about Intranets and B2B sites, but B2C means you are in trouble.

You are really in trouble, when the design you got was done by a designer who is not firm in web design. The web is a media, not a sheet of paper. Designs that look really nice on paper (and impress customers) might not work on the web. Same as screen layouts do not work on television or game consoles.

Users are able to resize the text part of your page, or, in newer browsers even add own rules of display onto your site (through own stylesheets). This means that every layout, that relies on fixed font-sizes, and text, that can only use up a certain area, is doomed to fail. You can go the other extreme and keep everything flexible, which may result in really ugly texts, with lines too long to be readable. This is a minor issue though, as, when the user has a problem with that, he can simply resize his browser window.

In any case a good web developer needs to know a lot about the media he works in. He needs to know what browser/platform configuration breaks your page when you use which technology which technology or elements to use to create the navigation in what to do to avoid wrong display on browsers how to keep the size of the final document small how to convert graphics so that they are small in file size and yet good looking how to deal with data coming from the customer in various and sometimes rather exotic formats how to keep his work from stalling when there is no data coming in that he can use.

How to communicate to colleagues or customers that the amount of final data in the product does not really fit the design (which is a case of bad planning to begin with, but it does happen) How to keep up with the rapid web development market and techniques. These are the most obvious bits. Another obstacle a web developer has to tackle all the time is the media and software market hype. At every computer fair and in magazines software companies advertise products, that help you do a web site in 20 minutes without knowing anything about code. For good measure you can also add all the multimedia you want and connect it to the database, you don’t know anything about either.

When looking at these ads one starts to wonder why people care about hacking in their HTML. Front-end development is considered a task that can be fulfilled by any application or even the export filter of a graphics development program.

True, these applications do put out HTML and Javascript. True, the results look good. Wrong, they can replace a web developer. They can replace a “web designer”, someone who hand-codes “HTML designs”. When talking about HTML designs, I mean web sites without any other purpose but being eye candy. Standalone, plain HTML documents, a few links, some rollovers, but no back end connections or interactvity.

Sites that are nothing but an ad can be safely done with them. As soon as you need the site to fulfil a specific task, be really optimised and fit the other components in your development framework, these WYSIWYG editors (like Dreamweaver, Frontpage, Adobe Pagemill and so forth) stop being that handy.

The worst nightmare for a front-end developer is to be confronted with markup code generated by these programs. A script or application can never optimise like a human being can, the code is bloated, unreadable and not logically structured in most of the cases. Keeping in mind that the outcome was meant to look great for 20 minutes work, why would it? The user never sees the source code. The developer does, and it’s his job to keep it as small, fast and readable as possible. Especially when you remember, that he might have to hand it over to another developer for changes.

The availability of web content is amazing and great, but also has a downside to it. Content and code can be published immediately and is available to everybody. This is very nice and actually one of the main reasons to make people start web developing. After all it’s easier to create your first web site than to try and get some time on TV or radio. The downside of it is that content gets published without any quality testing. Any enthusiastic developer, with more drive than skill. creates some new, cool design or effect, and publishes it on his web site. As it is cool and new, other developers see it, and implement it as well, to stand out from the crowd. Looking at this effect closely makes it obvious that it only makes sense in a very restricted browser environment and only for some content. Sometimes it might not even make sense at all. Nevertheless it becomes more and more spread and used, and sooner or later customers will see it and want it as well. Or colleagues see it, don’t realise the flaws it might have (as it works on their browser) and offer it to the customer.

Then the web developer gets asked to implement it, and gets blamed when it does fail in the quality test.

There is no such thing as free lunch.

Also there is no such thing as a perfect web site that you assemble from free content from the web without knowing what you do. Script libraries and personal developer sites advertise their content much like software companies. They claim their products have perfect output. Truth is, you can find anything on the web, and that is great, but make sure you test it thoroughly before you even think about using it in a product someone pays you for.

To conclude, the web developer is the developer on the project that has it all: A very unstable display environment, a skill set that needs to range from code to design and usability, and the blame when the end product does not look the way it should.

It’s a hybrid position, you are someone that paints with code. Programmers don’t accept your work as real code, and designers don’t consider it design.

Now you might be at the point where you ask yourself: If that is such a horrid position in the development circle why bother taking it?

Well, the love for the media I suppose. The challenge to make things visible to users and not exclude a lot of them. The hybrid position in between programmers and designers and dealing with both. The satisfaction of seeing things you have done online and realising that people use it. The immediate satisfaction of hacking in some funny words with brackets around them and controlling the layout of a text by doing so.

It is a position that needs constant improvement, and interest in the media you work for. The days of front-end developers that attend a 2 day course and make a lot of money the week after are over. Now it is the job to clean up the mess those “web designers” left behind. To work with design and backend and project managers to make sure the customer gets something that is looking good and works fast and reliable. So next time you think about smiling about those tag coders or HTML monkeys (I saw that as an official title in a work contract) you are welcome to try it yourself. This article was copied from http://www.onlinetools.org/articles/fed2.html and is the truth. This is my world.

Search Engine Results 2009

Lisa D Chambers — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:39:00 +0000

Every two years, SEOmoz surveys top SEO experts in the field worldwide on their opinions of the algorithmic elements that comprise search engine rankings. This year features contributors from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, the Ukraine, the Dominican Republic and many more.

31 Days of Oscars

Lisa D Chambers — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:58:32 +0000

view the entire site here – http://www.tcm.com/2010/31Days/index.jsp

random

Lisa D Chambers — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 09:18:00 +0000

THE MEDIA IN THE UNITED STATES……….

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UN climate group admits ‘error’ over Himalayan glaciers prediction

Lisa D Chambers — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:47:00 +0000

Rajendra Pachauri (pictured), chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said that the group’s alarming prediction that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 was “a regrettable error”.

Full Article Here

Haiti Patients Land in Georgia

Lisa D Chambers — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:22:34 +0000

ATLANTA — Georgia has received a group of six trauma patients from earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The group was flown into Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta Tuesday night.

Yep, our dobbins air force base is transporting really hurt haitians and putting them in hospitals around the area that can take care of their long term needs as well as critical victims living on the brink.

The critically-injured from Haiti include a 18-month old girl with a head injury and a U.S. Marine. Military officials say patients will be dispersed to specialized metro Atlanta hospitals for treatment — sites including Atlanta Medical Center, Grady Memorial Hospital, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite and Marietta-based WellStar Kennestone Hospital.

Darn that Global Warming!

Lisa D Chambers — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:26:26 +0000

Wintery mix could be headed to Ga.

ATLANTA (AP) – Enjoy the sunshine now – rain and even snow could be headed for parts of Georgia this weekend.

The National Weather Service calls for rain with a chance of snow in Atlanta and Athens Friday and Saturday. It follows a weekend of record rainfall in parts of Georgia.

Sunday’s heavy rain caused minor flooding and flight delays, but tornado watches and warnings expired without any reports of tornadoes.

The flooding forced the closing of U.S. 78 near Hewatt Road in Gwinnett County and in Peachtree City, firefighters had to use boats to evacuate a handful of residents from a condo complex.

The rain delayed flights at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and wind gusts as high as 44 miles per hour were recorded near Atlanta.

Information from: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, http://www.ajc.com

stars line up for haiti / technology steps up

Lisa D Chambers — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:08:16 +0000

MTV will broadcast what it says will be the biggest telethon in history to raise money for the Haiti relief effort. Organised by Goerge Clooney (pictured), the show will feature some of the biggest names in film and pop music.

Stars are lining up to perform and donate huge chunks of cash for tonight’s MTV “Hope for Haiti” telethon event.

Organiser George Clooney, along with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, will each donate $1 million to the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, which was started by former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Firms mobilise funds for Haiti quake victims via telecoms, the Web

Read the entire article here

Telecoms giants and high-tech firms have mobilised new technologies to help the survivors of Haiti’s massive earthquake through online resources, mobile phone donations, new wikis and donation websites.
By News Wires (text)

AFP – Online maps, mobile phone donations, wikis and a slew of websites are being deployed as telecoms firms, technology giants and startups set aside their rivalries and put the latest tools to work to help earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

“Technology is playing a key role in mobilizing support for the victims of the Haiti earthquake and also in coordinating relief efforts,” said Akhtar Badshah, Microsoft’s senior director of global community affairs.

Badshah, in a blog post, said Microsoft had donated 1.25 million dollars and was working with NetHope, which brings together Care, MercyCorps, WorldVision and other humanitarian organizations with technology companies.

Flurry Madness

Lisa D Chambers — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:23:08 +0000

I received a hilarious email from a friend last night about the onslaught of our “snow storm 2010″. Names will remain anonymous, but suffice it to say it’s a police officer in one of our local districts.

FLURRY MADNESS

It’s snowing and we’re all going to die.

That’s right. It’s all over now because we could have over an inch of snow. You and I both know that means certain death and the end of civilization as we strangely know it. Many years from now our fore and aft fathers will speak of the 2010 Flurries of Death that swept northern Georgia.

“I can remember my great-grandfather. He had so much more to give. He was killed by a flurry. Never had a chance.”

And to think we were worried about the H1N1.

As I sit and write, flurries are falling to the ground, plotting, waiting, waiting for just the right moment.

God help you people in your cars!! Go as far as you can! Don’t look back! Save yourselves! Flurries everywhere—must……keep……driving……. Everyone will be gone soon. Most have abandon their buildings, cars, and the toll booths for the already paid-for GA 400. Soon the city will look as barren as the desert, or worse—Detroit.

But not the weather people. They’re with us to the end— or until the ratings tank.

Nope, they’re here and they’re sleeves are rolled up and those ties are loose and in some cases, their TV hair is slightly mussed. Yes! SLIGHTLY MUSSED!! It’s crunch time and you’re gonna see every wicked flurry on a variety of mapping images, from satellite imagery to the one with the big arrows and spikes that look like grand-opening flags at the J.W.

Whitlock’s Used Cars lot in downtown Cuba, GA.

Damn you flurries!! I’m still in the office as hundreds of semi-informed corporate people flee Sandy Springs in what is best described as a near panic or great reason to cut out early.

It’s dark now. The flurries are starting to climb up the building, looking for any survivors of the initial onslaught of one-to-two-thirds of an inch of snow dropped during the initial flurry attack. I’m locked in the building, alone except for my lava lamp and my Obama coin bank that says “Change.”

I’m watching the weather people on TV. They’ve been at it for hours, including commercials, and the stress and strain is starting to show. Ken Cook is running around with his shirt off, throwing tomatoes, like hand grenades, at the camera. He’s wearing a fez and calling himself Yul Brenner. “I am the King!!”

Paul Ossmann is bench pressing camera two and doing impersonations of Arnold Schwarzenegger while Dagmar Midcap is wearing a Viking helmet and tap dancing to the tune of “A Night In Tunisia” by Dizzy

Gillespie. “Stomp Time Steps, Shuffle Time Steps, Traveling Time

Steps, and Cramp Roll Time Steps” she yells while trying to light a can of tofu for heat.

We’ve already lost Glen Burns and David Chandley. The flurries got them while they helped Jeff Dore find his banjo in the almost one-half inch of flurry.

Damn you Jeff Dore! When the spring comes and the almost half-inch of snow flurry slowly melts, partially due to global warming, and you find the last of us, the ones who couldn’t get to the milk and bread in time, tell them of our fight against the flurry—and then turn my lava lamp off.

The Earth, below us, drifting, falling

Lisa D Chambers — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:29:50 +0000