The last time I attended An Event Apart, it was 2008 and the conference was in June. So I’m just glad I was able to get a ticket, even if it was only for A Day Apart!

A Day Apart is the HTML5/CSS3 workshop that [...]]]> Today I attended A Day Apart in Boston! My only regret is that I was unable to attend for Monday and Tuesday due to not realizing how early in the year the conference was this time around.

The last time I attended An Event Apart, it was 2008 and the conference was in June. So I’m just glad I was able to get a ticket, even if it was only for A Day Apart!

A Day Apart is the HTML5/CSS3 workshop that is tacked on to the end of the standard An Event Apart conference. In the first half of the day, Jeremy Keith, author of HTML5 for Web Designers spoke to us about HTML5. We started with an overview of the history of HTML and then went over the syntax and what has changed (or hasn’t changed) since HTML 4, as well as a kind of quiz on the new elements. It was a lot of fun and gave me high hopes for the rest of the day.

I was at first a little unsure of what the CSS3 portion of the day would be like. After all, I’ve already been using some aspects of CSS3 quite regularly, and others I’ve known about for some time even if I haven’t used them in a real website so far. However this portion of the day was really surprising to me! It was Ethan Marcotte’s turn to talk, and he went over a variety of CSS3… some of it I knew already and it was nice to get an overview, but some I hadn’t ever used or really noticed being used before. I learned a lot and also got even more excited than I already was for the new emerging technologies. I was a little disappointed that his talk ran a bit long and had to be cut short in order for the conference to end in a timely fashion, because I was particularly interested in hearing what he had to say on responsive web design. However, he does have a book coming out next month called Responsive Web Design, so perhaps I’ll get some of my answers there!

By the end of the day I was pretty sure I was going to go home and spend all night changing all of my personal sites over to full HTML5 and CSS3 support. That is… unrealistic, to say the least. However, it’s great when a conference/workshop can give you so much excitement and hope for your industry! I am looking forward to converting this site and perhaps my other, geeky non-web dev blog into HTML5 and also to include more CSS3, but somehow I don’t think that will all be done in the next two hours… :)

It really struck a chord with me because this idea of horizontal ambition does not seem to be widely practiced, or at least not talked about. When I started my first job in web development, starting as the person who hand edited the front page of csmonitor.com, I had this in my head and I still have it now. I have little desire to [...]]]> I just read an article today by 37 Signals’ Jason Fried, Why I Run a Flat Company.

It really struck a chord with me because this idea of horizontal ambition does not seem to be widely practiced, or at least not talked about. When I started my first job in web development, starting as the person who hand edited the front page of csmonitor.com, I had this in my head and I still have it now. I have little desire to “rise up the ranks” as it were, to become a manager or anything higher than that. I don’t doubt that I could manage people if it were needed but… why? I look at managers around me and managers who I’ve had in the past, and I see people who are stuck in meetings all day and hardly get any time to do anything else. Even people who are supposed to be managers and programmers rarely have any time to actually program (and if they do, they don’t seem to be doing a whole lot of management).

I understand that some people like that; some people enjoy the money and power that comes with management and perhaps even the act of managing itself, whether it is a project or a small group of people. Things may change for me in the future, but as far as I can tell, I’m not one of those people, at least as far as life in the work force goes. I started at the Monitor knowing basic CSS and HTML and I thirsted for more knowledge, to learn more so I could do more and be better at my job. When I compare myself now, almost 4 years later, to the person I was back then, I am so proud at how much I’ve grown and I can only hope that in 4 more years I can say the same in a comparison to the person I am today.

I always want to learn more – I want to become a JavaScript expert. I want to learn more about web design and someday feel confident enough to call myself a designer, not just a developer (though I do really love design). I want to dive into the new technologies and use them in my everyday work. I don’t want to become a manager and get stuck in meetings all day and have to worry about passing out tasks to other people. The only career move I can think of maybe coming after a front end developer or designer is… full time freelancer – but I don’t see that happening for some time. That’s a really scary decision to make! But in the meantime I am reading blogs and books and trying my best to keep up with my industry, because I want to be the best at my job that I can be.

I hope that more companies adopt this policy or at least just give it some more thought. I realize that some people want to progress vertically, to be promoted to higher positions in the company, but I think there are also a lot of people out there like me, and it’s nice to see a businessman actually acknowledge us!

CSS3 is something I’ve been excited to use for ages and recently started using on various projects, because, as this book will hammer into your head, all websites do not have to look exactly the same in every browser. Every once and a while they might have to [...]]]> Handcrafted CSS was a great addition to my collection. The earlier chapters were mostly review of things I’ve already learned from blogs and practice, but the latter chapters especially were invaluable to me.

CSS3 is something I’ve been excited to use for ages and recently started using on various projects, because, as this book will hammer into your head, all websites do not have to look exactly the same in every browser. Every once and a while they might have to – but for the most part, it isn’t a big deal if the more ‘modern’ browsers like the latest version of Safari get rounded corners and IE8 does not.

In this book there are a lot of examples of CSS3 techniques that are available for use today and work in the recent versions Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. It shows what it will look like in Internet Explorer (both 8 and older versions) and also if your site does in fact have to look the same in all browsers, also gives some methods for achieving the same (or close enough) look with JavaScript or some hacks, and always with a graceful degradation in old browsers that don’t support even that.

The CSS3 sections of this book though were not the ones that I felt really taught me something, though they are certainly useful. I really appreciated the section on “clearfix” since it had another method for it that I hadn’t heard of before… but mostly it was the last two chapters that caught my attention.

The second to last chapter is on ‘the fluid grid’. It was packed with information and really easy to follow, and demonstrated how we, the developers, can translate a fixed width website into a fluid width beauty, including methods for images that I didn’t know worked! I’m really excited to try out a fluid width website soon, perhaps experimenting with my own.

The final chapter is just on those little extra touches that can go a long way toward making your website a finished product. Fancy ampersands, @font-face, simple jQuery stuff… lots of basic things that can give a site a bit of polish.

The whole book is written in a friendly and very readable manner; it isn’t dry at all! I was also happy to note that in some sections that looked like code segments one might want to copy and paste onto their computer had web links provided so it didn’t have to be copied by hand out of the text.

All in all it was an enjoyable read and a valuable addition to my collection of web development books.

<ul> <li><a href="#">Music Production</a></li> <li class="odd"><a href="#">Guitar</a></li> <li><a href="#">Songwriting</a></li> <li class="odd"><a href="#">Bass</a></li> <li><a href="#">Arranging</a></li> <li class="odd"><a href="#">Keyboard</a></li> <li><a href="#">Voice</a></li> <li class="odd last"><a href="#">Theory, Harmony &amp; Ear Training</a></li> <li class="last"><a href="#">Music Business</a></li> </ul>

Here’s the CSS:

#courses-and-programs ul { list-style: none; margin: 0; padding: 10px 0 0 0; font-size: 1.1em; font-weight: bold; border-top: 1px dashed #ccc; } #courses-and-programs ul li { margin: 0; padding: 0; border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc; line-height: 1.8; display: inline; float: left; width: 47%;} #courses-and-programs ul li.odd { margin: [...]]]> I had a ul with top padding of 10px with a variety of li’s inside.


<ul>
<li><a href="#">Music Production</a></li>
<li class="odd"><a href="#">Guitar</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Songwriting</a></li>
<li class="odd"><a href="#">Bass</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Arranging</a></li>
<li class="odd"><a href="#">Keyboard</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Voice</a></li>
<li class="odd last"><a href="#">Theory, Harmony &amp; Ear Training</a></li>
<li class="last"><a href="#">Music Business</a></li>
</ul>


Here’s the CSS:


#courses-and-programs ul { list-style: none; margin: 0; padding: 10px 0 0 0; font-size: 1.1em; font-weight: bold;
border-top: 1px dashed #ccc; }
#courses-and-programs ul li { margin: 0; padding: 0; border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc; line-height: 1.8; display: inline; float: left; width: 47%;}
#courses-and-programs ul li.odd { margin: 0 0 0 10px; float: right; }
#courses-and-programs ul li a { text-decoration: none; padding: 0; margin: 0; }
#courses-and-programs ul li a:hover { color: #333; }


Removing the floats and the width made the padding disappear. I thought it was kind of odd and started looking into it more… and then I noticed the CSS on the ul with the top 10px of padding. I removed it on a whim, and IE6/IE7 found themselves magically fixed. I was getting an extra 10px of padding on the top of the li’s just because I had it on the ul.

Thanks, IE, for assuming that I wanted that extra padding on every li! Anyway, it’s fixed now, and instead of padding on the top I am using margin :)