TheJoey.Net

One thing that was really driven home during my first year of grad school was the importance of reusable code. Not to say that it wasn’t taught to me as an undergrad, because it was; this year it just seemed to hit harder. As a freelancer in a niche market (small businesses, facebook apps), I tend to generate a lot of similar code. Just recently (within the last few months), I’ve started to generalize that code into reusable PHP objects, and it really helps.

I point out freelancers in the subject of this post because I feel, at least starting out, it’s not something freelance programmers (or designers for that matter) think to do. I know my concerns were more getting those jobs so I could code, not the process of coding. But whether it be a list of objects you can use on each site, or a HTML/CSS template with variables for the title, key words, headers, etc., you can save a lot of time in the long run by taking the extra time to abstract out the details and come up with something general you can use over a number of different sites. I, for example, have general code for: XHTML/CSS templates (NOT the design, just the general tags that should be applied to every site), [basic] contact forms, [basic] google maps, database objects, image uploading objects and XML parsing objects. Right now I am taking the time to look at other code I’ve done to see how I can generalize it.

This doesn’t only save time in writing the code either, but in testing. If you have core code that you know works, you don’t need to test for the general cases, or debug that code; just what you’ve added to customize it for that site or app. It’s stuff like this that will increase your productivity and your profits in the long run.

So generalizing code helps- and not just with time, but productivity and profits. And just about anything can be generalized to some extent. So the next time you code, take an extra moment to think how you can abstract away the details of that project (the variables if you will), and how much of what you are doing is reusable.

posted on June 24th, 2008 in Code, Design, Productivity| | show comment » « hide comment

Last week, popular web development website A List Apart (ALA) released the results of it’s 2007 Web Design Survey. I’ve spent the last few days reading over the 82 page document and found a good amount of the results interesting.

• Over 80% of the respondents were White Males
• 48% came from the USA
• When asked if they were excited by their field, 43.6% said Fequently, 35% said Very Frequently, meaning 78.6% like what they do most of the time.
• About 20% want to start their own business as their next move.
• Of that 20%, 89.9% were men.
• 47.9% are in the salary range of $20,000 - $80,000, where 52.3% have been in the industry 5 years or less.
• 1/2 of the people in my age group (21-24) make less than $20,000. Something to consider is most people who graduate college are 21 or 22.
• ALA found that Job Satisfaction increases with age. I think this is because when starting out, (for me anyway), you’re not doing the cool and exciting stuff you’d like to. My internships consisted mostly of fixing HTML, and not any real development.
• Of those who saw an age bias, Under 21 and 21-24 combined made up for 70.2% of the respondents.
• 22% of female respondents saw gender bias, where only 1.5% of male respondents did. (NOTE- that is 22% of the females, which made up ~16% and 1.5% of the males, which made up ~84%).

What was most surprising to me was how big the gap between male and female respondents is. I knew the computing field is male dominated, but I didn’t think it was that one sided. This survey also gave me a pretty good idea of what I can expect as a salary once I get out of Grad School. You can download and review the results here, and if you are a web professional, I strongly recommend it. It’s extremely informative.

posted on October 23rd, 2007 in Computer Stuff, Design, Links, News, Thoughts, Websites| No Comments »

Over the summer I did a good amount of web design. I have been developing websites for almost 7 years now and have been inventing and reinventing my process as I’ve gotten older, more mature, and a better developer. This summer I got to evaluate my process to see what I should change about it- how I can make it better. I’ve come up with a five step process to take me from start to finish. Number one, Planning, is by far the most important part.

A problem I often run into is that user requirements, what a client defines as necessary for their website, change a lot. Recently one client I was working with changed the entire scope of the site, changing the necessary information being posted on it and thus changing just about everything about the site. That is why it is critical to nail down the details as much as possible before any coding starts. Sit down with your client, face-to-face when possible, and ask them to describe in as much detail as possible what they want their website to accomplish. Take down notes and write any of your questions or thoughts down. Then try to formulate something for them. This doesn’t have to be on the spot, and probably shouldn’t be. Schedule a follow-up meeting to make sure you interpreted what the client said correctly.

At the follow-up meeting, propose something. Most clients will not be computer savvy and will rely on your input. Don’t be afraid to make suggestions as to what you think will work or more importantly, what won’t. They see you as the expert (because you are) and the input is usually welcomed and valued. It’s also important at this follow-up to make any final pre-development changes and tie up lose ends. Add the proposed website/requirements to a contract and both of you sign it and initial each page.

Once this happens, and you have requirements nailed down and decided on, it’s time to move to part II- the mock up.

posted on September 1st, 2007 in Computer Stuff, Design| No Comments »

A few weeks ago CNN launched the redesign of their site, and in my opinion they really nailed it. With a cleaner design and new up-to-date features, the new CNN is really a leader in the major news industry websites.

Design: Looking at the old design, You can tell the new CNN is much much cleaner and more organized. With a full width header and fixed width content, everything looks more spread out and less crammed. The user is not overwhelmed by the massive amount of content CNN has to offer. They also decided to tone up their color scheme a little, going with more consistent reds, whites and lighter blues, like teal. This makes the site conform better than their previous design. Finally, a quick look at their source will reveal significantly less tables in the new design. This puts them way ahead of other major media sites.

New Features: I feel the best part of CNN’s redesign is the fact that their new features are more user oriented. They offer a great number of videos, blogs, podcasts, polls, RSS Feeds, hot topics and even comments to allow the user to make the CNN experience their own, which is a huge plus. My favorite new feature, however, is the “Local” box on the homepage.

The CNN Local box gives you weather reports and headlines from whatever zip code you decide to put it, and I find that awesome. Instead of having to navigate away from CNN, I can get all the news in one place. It also pulls from a number of local news sources for your area, which almost serves as an RSS feed for your zip code.

Over all, CNN’s new design is pretty nice. While they could have gone totally tableless, I think the new features and mostly tableless design puts them way ahead of their competitors. The new website keeps me coming back even if their brand of news isn’t mine.

posted on July 20th, 2007 in Design, Websites| No Comments »

As a web developer, I feel I know a little bit about design and functionality on a website. Lately I have been noticing my use of a website depends heavily on design and functionality, as I’m sure it does for most people whether they realize it or not. Take, for instance, how I get my news online.

Here are screen shots of both CNN and Fox News. Click the images to go to the sites. While Fox News is more my brand of news (surprise surprise), I find myself going to CNN more often. This is because I feel CNN has a nicer, cleaner looking site. CNN’s logo blends nicely with the rest of the banner, unlike Fox’s, which just looks like it’s thrown there. There isn’t too much going on ‘above the fold’ for CNN. With Fox, it’s a different story. For example, Fox offers 27 links in it’s main navigation. CNN offers 20 (which was actually more than I thought). CNN’s navigation is also contained to one, solitary line. Fox has theirs on two lines, each a different shade of blue. Below the fold on Fox is even worse.

Where CNN offers more stories organized in a pretty nice fashion, Fox offers links to all of their shows and a litany of thumbnail images. I feel that I get much more information from CNN’s homepage, which is what the user wants. Plus, CNN’s links are much friendlier. If you’ll notice, a link to a story on CNN appears like this, after ‘cnn.com’: /2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html. Year, region, month, day, name of story. Here is a link following ‘foxnews.com’: /story/0,2933,266463,00.html. This is not informative, nor very nice looking. But news isn’t the only problem area. Because of GMail, I never use my school’s email system.

What got me thinking about this was Google asking students to take their survey about campus email. I am a staunch user of GMail and tell everyone I know to use it. It’s a good interface, easy to use, lots of space and has great IM and Calendar integration. I was also able to make it a one stop shop for sending and receiving email from the multitude of email addresses I have. “Royal Mail,” as the University of Scranton calls it, is not a good experience. It’s poorly designed and not very intuitive. Unless you change the settings, you get oldest mail first, and deleting a lot of email at one time is not easy. But the biggest annoyance I feel, is no search. GMail has excellent functionality here, allowing me not only to quickly find mail, but the search also allows me to use GMail as a file server. And with near 3GB of space, I have the capacity to do so too.

Design and functionality is everything on the web. If your site doesn’t make the user experience easy, you’re app is dead in the water. GMail has turned me away from my school’s lousy email system, and CNN’s design helps me tolerate their particular branding of news (though CNN isn’t nearly as bad as MSNBC).

posted on April 16th, 2007 in Design, Thoughts, Websites| No Comments »