i'm sending out a question for anyone who does web dev work, or who closely follows trends in web interface development (not the behind-the-scenes stuff). i find myself in the position of quietly creeping up on a time when i will need to go forth and find a new dev contract... and the realisation suddenly dawned on me that i actually haven't worked *as* a web dev in over a year now, because my last contract, while having web-devvy elements, consisted of masquerading as an "e-learning technologist". (Edit: I should probably say that I have more than a decade's solid coding experience, so I don't need to learn the basics, just to update my skillset a bit)
of course, i keep an eye on the web standards' group's marvellous "links for light reading", i browse magazines and regularly peruse a truckload of webby blogs, but right now i need to give myself a little refresher course - and i'm being overwhelmed by the information on what's happened in the last year, so i ask you:
- what new technologies/skills/approaches from about the past 18 months do you think are the most important?
- what are you most commonly asked for (e.g. ajax, css3, mobile web, whatever)?
- which dev blog could you not live without?
- if you read any paper dev magazines, what are they?
- what, if any, webby book or article changed the way you think or work in the past year?
any and all responses will be leapt upon with delight and a thirst for knowledge :-)
Response from @blueclock via Twitter:
* I'd look at CSS3.info I use border-radius and box-shadow a lot and let IE degrade to square corners etc
* also <!DOCTYPE html> for HTML5 style coding that keeps all browsers in standards mode while still backwards compatible
* learn JQuery for front end manipulation.
* Wordpress is also no very dominant in the market
* http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/
* Also nettuts.com and of course smashingmagazine.com this explains HTML5 (a bit) http://bit.ly/r2Vdh
Posted by: minim | 08/16/2009 at 11:26 AM