I’ve seen people use my web apps, which made me feel more happy then I had realized I would, and renewed my urge to expand on features, improve the UI and generally make it better.

In no particular order of what I’ve been up to:

• GhostLogger
• Code Academy
• Secret Santa
• Project Whiteboard

While I’ve talked about two of these before, I’ll expand a little more on the two I haven’t, and what I hope to achieve by working on them.

Code Academy

For those of you unfamiliar with code academy, it’s one of several start up’s that have opened their doors to a on-line way of teaching, in this case, coding. CA has rolled out Javascript (and now HTML/CSS) as their first languages, with Python and Ruby to come.

While I’ve enjoyed the JavaScript, filling in a few holes in my knowledge (mostly in objects and recursion), it’s lately been not much of a challenge. Still, I try to keep up to date on their weekly projects and courses.

Project Whiteboard

This one is still in the planning stages, so no navigation item for it yet. However, what I’d like to do with this project:

• HTML5 Canvas Whiteboard
• PHP/MySQL User database
• Minimal frameworks

Wait, minimal frameworks? Well, it turns out that there’s several JS libraries that contain for the most part, a fully working whiteboard. Some even have the information on the web-sockets to allow several users to access the same whiteboard and draw on it together (Which is, very cool). However, I don’t really learn nearly as much by leveraging a framework for this.

No doubt, my code won’t be as pretty, and without a pretty significant amount of time, not nearly as functional, it’s worth it to understand the core concepts of the HTML5 Canvas element and what can really be do with it. (Then I get to go play with all the neat frameworks

Sending email is both simple in terms of front end code, and so very frustrating in other ways.

Allow me to elaborate.

The Simple:

• Your code won’t have any fancy parts to it, say goodbye to JavaScript and non-inline CSS
• Tables, I’m sure older developers will remember the de-facto web tool from years ago (and oddly, still seen on some websites)
• No overlays or gradiants or fancy backgrounds, unless you want it to be a giant image (PS, that’s bad)

The Frustrating:

• Tables. Actually not just Tables, deeply nested Tables.
• No real uses of CSS, no classes, no reusable code, just dozens of instances of style=”….”
• You think it’s a pain to test just web browsers? Add in all those web browsers, and desktop email clients.

Though, all of that said, there are some neat things I’ve learned. For example, marketing emails are becoming more and more personalized, and the programming and set up behind those systems are fascinating. There are tools to test things like email comparability as well (Litmus is my weapon of choice in that battle).

For as old school as emails are (and they are), there are always those interesting nuggets in there, such as the amount of personalization of customization you can set up based on data rules. This of course depends on ‘how’ you send the emails of course, having had to write a PHP mailer in the past, and now using a ESP (email service provider), I have to say, it’s like night and day.

PS: If your ever finding gmail is adding white space around images that stack on top of each other, your solution is this, style="display:block;"

Well, I think so at any rate. Lately I’ve been building up a framework for this app, fairly basic so far.

• Two “views” on the application it’s self
• A submission to a web server from the application’s second view
• A web service to proccess the submission and write to a mysql database
• Another service to write the info into XML and pass it back to the application
• And finally the application’s first view, which pulls from the above web service for the infomation

See, nothing too crazy there, but what I’m looking forward to doing it creating a nice reusable chunk of code that I can continue to reuse and improve as time goes on.

There’s been a few interesting learning points thus far, such as, if you compile the application without the windows wrapper on it (the windows minimize, close, buttons), you need to write your own functionality for that. As a web dev that’s just something I’ve always taken for granted that the browser would provide, but now, it’s something I have to consider as well.

Drinking: JJBean – an African coffee, it totally escapes me which one now.

However, I am talking about Firefox, more specifically, Firefox 3.6, the last major edition before the 2.0 Gecko Engine. Why is this important? Because when building HTML5 pages several former HTML4 tags have been replaced with new HTML5 tags. I had wanted to take this opportunity to test the waters as it were, and since I had quite happily updated to Firefox 4.0 some time ago, I didn’t even imagine there could be a problem.

Then I received an email, asking why the site was broken. Shocked I dashed to my PC; it looked fine for me while testing. A few moments later my Mac was booted up it looked pretty darn good there too. Surely this was an IE problem, but all my IE testing from 7+ looked fine.

Apparently, HTML 5 support starts enabled on Firefox 4+, not so on 3.6. Since I could not really ask every user to update their browser (though I wish that was an option) it was back to the code to try and fix this. I suppose HTML5 isn’t quite ready for the spotlight just yet, but it’s getting closer.

Currently Drinking:
Stumptown: Ethiopian

Edit: Using something like Modernizer could have solved several of the problems I faced in retrospect.

For my part, I’m happy to see users using a website I developed and I rather feel like I helped, in some small web kind of way. Eightwest was from start to finish a fun website, developed without a CMS it was fun to go back to the basics with a simple site like this.

As a web developer though, your early projects can haunt you for a long time. Most developers have skeletons in their closet, the projects they don’t want to discuss. I’m no exception to that, yet it’s good to see where you’ve come from. To realize how far along your own road you’ve travelled already and of course, how far you still have to go.

I find, my problems begin while trying to network. Given the chance, I am happy enough to discuss the topics at hand with almost anyone, but getting there, I find challenging. That said, it is something I know I need to work on.

During Christmas I was given no small amount of advice and encouragement from my family, I spoke to my cousin, who attended a major coaching conference down in Florida while trying to get into the market. He was down in a conference where he knew almost no one, and was trying to break into a very closed off job market. I realized as I listened to his tale, that job searching often puts us well out of our comfort zones.

Consider, you are in essence, attempting to show a company/contract that your value, or rather, the value you can add to the company/project is greater then the cost. My uncle phrased it as,

“What are you going to do to make my life easier?”

I have found it difficult to sell myself in that light until I stopped and thought about it. This idea certainly wasn’t covered in college.

One of the first things I was asked, who is Jeremy Butler? At first, I defined myself from my job, I said Jeremy is a web developer and User Experience specialist. I was promptly told that I had just defined myself as a loser. Mildly crushed, I asked for an explanation.

A company doesn’t hire a web developer, they don’t hire a User Experience specialist, they don’t hire a marketing manager, they hire the person. They ask themselves, do I like this person? Can I work with them? Will they work hard? Will they stay here for a long time? Are they a team player?

Indeed, a company might not even hire the most skilled applicant. I was surprised as my uncle related several stories about hiring, from both sides of the table. He asked,

“Who would you hire if you were starting a business today?”

My first thoughts leapt to @jtgi , @penut and @spatt all friends and former classmates. Sure enough, as he expected, I would rather hire my friends, people I knew and knew how they worked and that we could work together.
So, here I am wondering and learning how to make that kind of personal connection, to make people get who Jeremy Butler is. To show them the person, not the User Experience specialist.

Currently Drinking:
JJBean roasted, Crema sold, Sidamo

This is perhaps a larger discussion, who defines manners on the internet? Sadly Miss Manners is out of date and perhaps out of touch, still as more and more users are becoming more experienced in using the internet, even non-technical users are beginning to adopt the phrases, mannerism and able to keep in touch in ways they hadn’t been able to before.

Sadly, this sometimes comes in the form of poking.

Currently Drinking:
Back Porch roasted, Back Porch Harrison Hotsprings sold, Sidamo