I am a freelance web developer based in Bristol, UK. I've been building websites since 1999.
I have worked for many digital publishing companies and design agencies. For info, see below. I have also taught web design and development to Media and Journalism students at University of West of England.
I am currently looking for contract work. Current CV as a pdf.
This is the basic nub of the thing here. I build websites - or more accurately the front-end or UI part of websites.
You do this for a living? How can you stand it?
2nd Year Media and Journalism studentYuk, how can you bear to look at that (code)? It hurts my eyes
Mrs Angela Dawson
Web development isn't for everyone. Luckily, unlike this 2nd year student I taught recently or Mrs Dawson, I do get enjoyment out of building web pages.
There is great satisfaction from housing content in a well structured, semantic HTML page. And likewise in creating a stylesheet which provides the look and feel of the design, while using classes and attributes sparingly, but flexibly enough to give the site owner the tools to dress their content. And then to create that extra level of page flexibility and progression which comes from creating neat, specific javascript plugins to just do only what is needed.
Like in any building, there can be beauty in the underlying structure which holds it together. I enjoy creating that structure for web pages. Especially now that we've gotten away from nested tables and horrible legacy browsers.
When I build a website I doing it using a variety of skills and techniques, listed below.
I've also spent a fair amount of time working with people who are sitting in other countries - using the magic of webcams. I've worked as part of an Agile team, with developers based in India, Ukraine, even Iran. My most ridiculous international work situation was running a conference call between London, South Africa, India, New York and Dublin.
I've done a fair few projects on improving the accessibility of websites. So have spent a decent amount of time with my head inside WCAG 2.0 guidelines, Section 508 rules and EN 301 549 requests. I'm well aware of what are the best efforts we can put in at front-end UI level to make a site work for as many people as possible.
I recently wrote the VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) for IOPscience, a site with +2 million visitors a month.
I have recently been teaching 1st, 2nd and 3rd year BA Media and Journalism students at University of the West of England, an introduction to web design and development. These are students who will need to build their own web pressance over their course.
Over my time I've worked with a fair few companies, most of them lovely. Consistantly I've built them what they wanted from a website, and we've left on good terms. Below is a selection of previous clients, including some details about the projects.