For those of you who may be interested, this is just a quick run down of what lies behind the scenes of this web site and what software I’ve used to make it. Just for the hell of it:
Web Languages Used:
- HTML5 (not strict and not fully exploited, but we’ll get there in time)
- CSS3
- Border Radius (Great tool for getting not only the right curve, but the right code: border-radius.com)
- Box Shadow (Here’s some fantastic code to cover all browsers for this one)
- @FontFace (Fonts via Font Squirrel – highly recommended )
- Javascript (jQuery/UI)
- PHP4/5
- MySQL
960 Grid System
This website has been developed using the 960 Grid System framework. This framework allows developers to easily design and develop sites to a grid (a key gestalt design feature – it makes it a lot more pleasant on the eyes) designed with a maximum content width of 960 pixels (hence the name) as this is more or less the minimum resolution available in today’s monitors. Of course, this doesn’t help much when it comes to mobiles (where width is often about 300ish pixels), but this size does mean that it scales down evenly enough on its own, without the need for its own stylesheet.
WordPress
For a couple of versions now, WordPress has been a very durable backend for whole websites, rather than just a simple blog. The fact that it’s so well designed for user experience, both on the developer and reader sides, means that it’s an almost perfect choice to run a website through. Of course, if you’re not going to have a blog on your site at all, there are certainly better options out there for a CMS – especially one with slightly more robust e-commerce options than WordPress’ (which one assumes is going to be the crux of most non-personal websites). I’ve used it here primarily for the blogging capabilities – you won’t really be seeing any strong use of its other abilities – but it’s certainly very versatile and definitely recommended as a good start for many a web project’s back end.
Software
Personally, as much as I can advocate working in stuff like Notepad for complete control over your code, I have to admit that I’d far rather work in Dreamweaver and be a bit lazy over it. I still maintain that 95% of your time in Dreamweaver should only ever be spent in the ‘Code’ window, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the WYSIWYG stuff comes in handy from time to time (especially when it comes to absolutely positioning layers).
Going down the Adobe route, I also use Photoshop and Flash (all CS4) for my design work, though I’m still somewhat of a novice at Flash work.
Best FTP software? Filezilla, of course.
My default browsers are Firefox on my main machine and Chrome on my Netbook. Both have their own benefits and issues – but they’re pretty hard to set apart these days. When it comes to Web Design, having both installed is at least handy ‘cos it means you don’t need to waste your time and space giving Apple an install statistic for Safari to check your designs on a Webkit browser.
This website has also been developed on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook Remix.
