We are currently looking for a contractor to start ASAP at a approximately one week project implementing a user module on a large scale portal site.

The job will include Ajax and some PHP and you will have use the YUI library.

The successful applicant will have to join us in Covent Garden, London and may have to go for lunchbreaks and drinks!

Please supply demo URLs of projects you’ve done and what you expect in terms of rates as comments here – they are moderated which means only I will get them.

At least to me, and this is how they look:

Judging by my stats and the referrers, that is the same for a lot of people – not necessarily using the same RSS reader, but one of the dozens out there.

The reason is simple: Time. I simply don’t have the time to surf around all the blogs I like to read, which is why I chose to stick to the RSS feeds and netvibes to collate them all ( in case you’re interested in what I read, here are my subscriptions in OPML format ). And after all this is what blogging is about: Writing and syndicating/linking to others.

That said, I keep finding posts about “Redesign of my blog”, “new blog design” or even “Sneak preview of my upcoming blog design”. Frankly, I couldn’t care less – unless you create a step by step tutorial as to why you have redesigned (which should be something like “increasing readability/usability” and not “to add this new gizmo”) and what tricks you used to overcome browser issues and you offer the templates for download.

What I’d rather like to read is things like “How I sold a good practice of blogs to a client”, “How I proved that web standards make a difference to a client” or “How I integrated CSS in an older CMS or framework – the issues and their solutions”, but sadly enough these are rare.

Talk of “we won the web standard war” is all over the place, and, to me, is premature until there are commercial solutions, frameworks and large sites that really embrace not only the syntax but the idea of standards – which includes that not every browser gives the same result but according to what it can support.

If you are bored with CSS or you think we’ve achieved it all – I guess you never had to face a project that’s been around for a while with clients that just don’t want talk but cheap quick solutions. Once we cracked these situations, it’s time for celebration.

I had some issues with one of the code examples for the upcoming book. MSIE has a very annoying bug that when you use an opacity animation – for example with YUI or jQuery: When the element you want to fade in our out has no background colour, MSIE messes up the font for some reason. Another problem is that when you use jQuery for the fading, the element needs to have hasLayout set.

Check out the testcase

You’ve read enough of my stuff, now it is time to see and hear me talk (if you are able to do both). This means not only will you be able to listen to some stuff I have to say, no, you can even ask questions and shout at me without risking comment moderation.

Stuart Colville of Muffinresearch has organised the first Web Standards Group London Meetup and I was asked to give a presentation on “something about modern JavaScript”. He also asked Andy Budd to talk about “something about CSS and web standards”.

Hence I pondered and came up with the idea to hold a concept/idea/tips and tricks session about “Maintainable JavaScript”. This means I’ll talk about how to create JavaScript that will not come back to you for maintenance but make it easy for colleagues, clients and other third parties to change the look and feel and even the content of your scripting solutions.

In any case, it’ll be an interesting evening and there’ll be book giveaways (with mine being released 3 days after the event) and drinks to make you forget what Andy and me talked about. So go to the site, sign up and I’ll see you on the 14th of July in London’s beautiful north (I can take a bus home, or cycle!).

Update: The performance was great and I met Henry outside later on for a quick chat. He really is as down to earth as you’d expect. The venue, however, was a joke: Boiling hot and there was no space for your feet (on the most expensive seats).

I am always amazed how hard some web sites make it for you to order a ticket for a show. This Sunday, Henry Rollins is performing at the Hackney Empire in my neck of the woods (I found out by pure chance, seeing a small flyer on a bus-stop). Now, I go to the Hackney Empire web site and get a splash page with an enter button before reaching a nice looking flash interface (what is the use of the splash page?).

I need to select the genre from the menu on the left which is OK enough – although having the current month as the first option would be a nice touch – what is the point of checking shows in the past?

I select Comedy and sure enough Henry pops up. If he hadn’t been the first to show up I’d have to use a flash scroll bar on the right to scroll down. Below the show’s photo are two links (with pointing hands to the right of them): “More info” and “How to book”. I click “How to book” as I do want to book, and get a panel sliding up from below offering me the obvious choices to book “In person or by phone”, “per post” first. Hello? I am online! The next choice is “online booking” which tells me to “Simply click on the show you wish to buy ticket for and follow the instructions on screen.”
In short, clicking the “how to book” link this was a pointless exercise – unless you don’t want to book offline.

I get rid of the panel via the “close this window” (what window?) link and get back to the show to try to “click on the show you wish to buy a ticket for”, but neither the photo of Henry nor the title of the show is linked. Instead, I have to click the “more info” link, which pops up a panel with exactly the same information as the listing and a massive “book here” button.

Clicking this button opens a new browser window listing all shows playing at the Empire at the moment with only a “buy tickets” link in the last column of the table row to buy them. There I have to find the show again and I can finally purchase tickets – in a pretty straight forward interface though.

Now I wonder if Hackney Empire is being paid by clicks on their web site or why there is no “purchase tickets online” link on the first listing?