So the Times Online redesign went live last week.

It was an exciting project to work on, I was based in Canary Wharf working with 2 other developers, 4 Information Architects, 3 Designers, a Content Management team, and countless management types.

I was involved at a early stage in the project life cycle in August 2006. My role was to take the illustrator designs and code them into templates showing the individual modules for each element in the design. Of course, validating and browser testing went along side this. And each module was given a timescale score depending on its complexity.

I was with the team for a month during which time I completed the front end build for all the main sections of the site: news, sport, fashion, motoring.. The job became quicker once the initial elements were built as they could be reused in other sections of the sites pages.

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As you will see from my upcoming.org account, there’s a fine list of events this year I’m either attending or watching.

WebDD > Already attended. In my home town of Reading.

The Future of Web Apps

The second year for this event from Carson Summits. What looks like to be a fun filled business, news/media and technology 2 day conference. Some fantastic speakers, some of who I saw last year at @Media2006.

The Highland Fling

A first for the Scottish Web community – This inaugural Highland Fling conference will cover the topic of progressive enhancement. Two of Brighton’s own regular speakers, Jeremy Keith and Andy Budd address the the subjects of Ajax and CSS3 respectively.

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In a sort of convoluted way I have just registered for the WebDD (Web Designer Developer Event) being held tomorrow at the Microsoft headquaters in Reading.

Fellow web developer/programmer Glenn Jones is presenting a session on microformats, and Patrick Lauke is their on behalf of web standards.

More info on the event at upcoming

http://upcoming.org/event/138978/

Lots of new people, especially new clients and consumers get confused by what a programmer is, and what a person like me – a “front end web developer“, oh and im a freelancer too..

To save me writing down more titles, acronyms, etc.. I found a great article at Chris Heilmans site www.onlinetools.org/articles/fed2.html

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This is a very straight forward way of getting extra revenue from your web site.

I can see this would be of use to various people who write books, and want more than just an image link on their homepage, this is a whole new site dedicated to selling books on Amazon.

All you have to do is register at the Amazon Associates General site. Choose “a-store”, select the colours, text and books, then you are given a link to put on your site. All the hosting for the A-store is done by Amazon.

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There are two major ways to improve your flash code for SEO purposes:

1. Add descriptive metadata to the Flash presentation.

   Although metadata might not be as important as a couple of years ago, skipping it for Flash sites is not recommended.

2. Provide alternative pages that describe the contents of the Flash presentation.

   If your site uses more than just a flash advert, or rollover effect, you should consider using alternative html pages. This is not only because they are text that can be indexed by search engines, but also because there are users who might not be willing to see the Flash movie.

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Who says Christmas can’t involve geekery?

24ways.org returns from last year’s triumphant set of articles, spanning the 24 days of xmas. Its a great resource where leading web developers and programmers post an article each day.

..(another) rounded corner article, flickr jscript feed, and and accessibility article have been posted so far. Loving the variety and exposure to new techniques I wouldnt normally dabble in.

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