The Web Design & Development Megathread

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kedo: Nov 27, 2007

revmoo posted:

Around here you'll never see anything past around 100k without moving into some sort of management position.

Or freelance.

The AIGA salary survey used to have really great information on salaries searchable by region, but they put it behind a paywall this year.

# ? Mar 20, 2015 15:54

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# ? May 9, 2024 11:30

White Light: Dec 19, 2012

I noticed you using the key word 'developer' in lieu of 'designer'. I'm guessing it's only the Web Development positions that net the cozy 85k salary range given experience, and not your bread-and-butter standard Web designer?

That's a pretty big incentive to man up and learn the extra back-end languages for the position

# ? Mar 20, 2015 16:09

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

Did you look at the salary calculator on the link I posted?

# ? Mar 20, 2015 16:21

Munkeymon: Aug 14, 2003; Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.

an skeleton posted:

So maybe one of y'all can help me with this.

I was building a wordpress plugin that would consume a Google Spreadsheet and use that information to populate some HTML in a page. Unfortunately, the existing libraries for consuming Google spreadsheets for PHP are not really working. However, the Google Drive Client PHP API library is working, it just doesn't have spreadsheet support seemingly (and as mentioned before, the [url="https://"https://github.com/asimlqt/php-google-spreadsheet-client"]other existing library that is built on top of that[/url] for Google Spreadsheets doesn't work). So is there another way to store simple data in Google Drive and consume it? I was going to have 5-6 different columns with about 40 rows in the Spreadsheet, and its nothing super complex or long, so I was hoping there's another way other than writing a CSV file or whatever.

Someone in the C# thread was complaining that those libraries are so poorly maintained that it's actually easier to just roll your own to hit their REST API directly :shrug:

# ? Mar 20, 2015 16:23

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Speaking of poorly maintained libraries�

Earlier in the thread I said Deployd was pretty cool.

I was mistaken. It is not cool.

We apologize for the inconvenience

# ? Mar 20, 2015 16:40

revmoo: May 25, 2006; #basta

Parrotine posted:

I noticed you using the key word 'developer' in lieu of 'designer'. I'm guessing it's only the Web Development positions that net the cozy 85k salary range given experience, and not your bread-and-butter standard Web designer?

That's a pretty big incentive to man up and learn the extra back-end languages for the position

My experience has been that designers are much more rare (1 designer for every 20 developers or so), but tend to make the same ranges provided they're very good. Designers who are average typically seem to make a bit less and top out closer to 50k or so.

# ? Mar 20, 2015 16:41

White Light: Dec 19, 2012

The Dave posted:

Did you look at the salary calculator on the link I posted?

I pulled it up using my smartphone but the site keeps freaking out whenever I try to load up the info requested of me. I'll have to try again when I'm off work and in front of a desktop

# ? Mar 20, 2015 16:53

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

Ahh that sucks, if you tell me your zip code I can tell you what it says for a 1-5yr experience web designer.

# ? Mar 20, 2015 16:57

Lumpy: Apr 26, 2002; La! La! La! Laaaa!; College Slice

Parrotine posted:

I noticed you using the key word 'developer' in lieu of 'designer'. I'm guessing it's only the Web Development positions that net the cozy 85k salary range given experience, and not your bread-and-butter standard Web designer?

That's a pretty big incentive to man up and learn the extra back-end languages for the position

In my experience to be "just" a designer you have to be really, really good and the available jobs will be much harder to find for you. Being a dev, or at least comfortable coding will both help you find a job and get a better salary. The downside is in some places being expected to do a full designer workload and a full dev workload at the same time. Or if you are me at my last job, that plus a full sysadmin, back end dev, project manager, and manager one as well.

# ? Mar 20, 2015 16:58

an skeleton: Apr 23, 2012; scowls @ u

caberham posted:

How often does the data get updated? Can you get away with monthly/weekly updates to some CSV static file and pull the data there?

Maybe. Its a member roster plugin for WordPress that I'm writing. So the idea is you have NAME, IMGURL, DESCRIPTION, SOCIALMEDIA, etc. columns that will be read from and spit out into a custom HTML block of some sort. For my organization, at least, our roster does not change often, maybe twice a year, but its a student organization so the more maintainable the better-- I also wanted to try and extend it, make it customizable from Wordpress' UI and what not, so the less hacked together the better obviously.

Blinkz0rz posted:

What is it exactly that doesn't work with the sheets library?

Basically explained by the next quote below. Doing everything right as far as I can tell but its just not working, and as much as I would love to hunt down the problem/fix it I've got other goals I'd like to accomplish and if I can do that without using Spreadsheets (I'm pretty novice so I'd like to hear about alternatives anyway) then so be it.

Munkeymon posted:

Someone in the C# thread was complaining that those libraries are so poorly maintained that it's actually easier to just roll your own to hit their REST API directly

# ? Mar 20, 2015 17:30

kedo: Nov 27, 2007

Lumpy posted:

In my experience to be "just" a designer you have to be really, really good and the available jobs will be much harder to find for you. Being a dev, or at least comfortable coding will both help you find a job and get a better salary. The downside is in some places being expected to do a full designer workload and a full dev workload at the same time. Or if you are me at my last job, that plus a full sysadmin, back end dev, project manager, and manager one as well.

Based on anecdotal freelancer evidence, I'd agree with this. I've been doing design and front-end development professionally for about nine years now and like to think I'm a pretty talented in both realms (probably moreso design than dev), but pure design jobs are way harder to come by. I get a few now and then from medium to large sized organizations who have already hired someone to handle UX and development and I'm the guy who just makes the pretties, but my bread and butter projects require I both design and develop a thing.

A huge difference between the two is that below average design gets paid way less than below average code. Anyone can look at a piece of lovely design and say, "that looks like poo poo." Only developers can look at a piece of code that does what it's supposed to but is horribly coded and say, "that's coded like poo poo."

# ? Mar 20, 2015 18:00

Jimlit: Jun 30, 2005

Lumpy posted:

In my experience to be "just" a designer you have to be really, really good and the available jobs will be much harder to find for you. Being a dev, or at least comfortable coding will both help you find a job and get a better salary. The downside is in some places being expected to do a full designer workload and a full dev workload at the same time. Or if you are me at my last job, that plus a full sysadmin, back end dev, project manager, and manager one as well.

This is the worst, I almost burnt myself out on anything web/design/development related trying to perform at a job like this. The thought of designing, developing and doing QA (possibly copy writing!) on another wordpress site for a whiny small business client to this day makes me almost physically ill.

Jimlit fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Mar 20, 2015

# ? Mar 20, 2015 18:15

hayden.: Sep 11, 2007; here's a goat on a pig or something

I live in Portland, OR (so cost of living is maybe a little higher than average) and my first "web development" job I got hired at 58k. I put web developer in quotes because it was pretty basic stuff and I had zero professional dev experience going into that job. The most senior person who was there who had the same job as me had been there maybe 2 years and she made 75k and knew even less than I did about web development (but knew the company systems a lot better). So as usual, your mileage may vary.

I credit at least 5k and as much as 10k of that salary to this article: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

# ? Mar 20, 2015 18:23

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Jimlit posted:

This is the worst, I almost burnt myself out on anything web/design/development related trying to perform at a job like this. The thought of designing, developing and doing QA (possibly copy writing!) on another wordpress site for a whiny small business client to this day makes me almost physically ill.

For real experience from yesterday:

Finished up the main agenda of a meeting with a client, tying off a few straggling features for the back-end inventory management system for a packaging distribution company (i.e. a box factory). Dude goes, "So, let me just show you something... I'm not saying we need to do this, but I was just thinking, y'know, I'd like to start thinking of ways to show how we're fun and have a lot of personality, you know, just little interesting easter egg type things we can put in our website to just sort of, like, spice it up a little?" *pulls up youtube and types in "do the harlem shake"*

:suicide:

Data Graham fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Mar 20, 2015

# ? Mar 20, 2015 20:54

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

Tell him no biggie:
https://github.com/moovweb/harlem_shaker

# ? Mar 20, 2015 21:06

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Hmm. Don't tempt me.

I gave him some realtalk�sure it's cool and fun to have flashy easter eggs on your site, like you can put that Katamari Damacy plugin on it, or (like he also suggested) you can have some kind of crazy "unveiling of the new website" thing where the staff pops up in animations and smashes the old site to bits with hammers or something, and you may get some viral buzz or whatever; but let's be frank here: your customers know you're a scrappy startup working out of a tiny space in a Manhattan high-rise, you're not Google. If you give the impression that you're the kind of company whose priorities are "hire some web guy to make the most ridiculously over-the-top easter egg possible for your one-time-use unveiling", your customers aren't going to know whether they can take you seriously. Nobody expects a little artsy box factory to put the Harlem Shake on their website. It's entirely possible to try way, WAY too hard.

# ? Mar 20, 2015 21:33

revmoo: May 25, 2006; #basta

The trick is to do it in a way that it's not obvious. If it's easy to find then it's not an easter egg.

At an old company I put an easter egg in a piece of billing software where if you typed 'alpaca' in a comment field it would make the company logo fly around the screen along with a picture of an Alpaca.

# ? Mar 20, 2015 21:43

Griffith86: Jun 19, 2008

kedo posted:

Based on anecdotal freelancer evidence, I'd agree with this. I've been doing design and front-end development professionally for about nine years now and like to think I'm a pretty talented in both realms (probably moreso design than dev), but pure design jobs are way harder to come by. I get a few now and then from medium to large sized organizations who have already hired someone to handle UX and development and I'm the guy who just makes the pretties, but my bread and butter projects require I both design and develop a thing.

Pretty much this, the pure designer role is a thing of the past thanks to rapid prototyping and the tools of today.

It's a lot easier (and generally quicker) nowadays to build beautiful complete interfaces without ever opening photoshop/illustrator/etc.

Griffith86 fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Mar 20, 2015

# ? Mar 20, 2015 23:05

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Data Graham posted:

For real experience from yesterday:

Finished up the main agenda of a meeting with a client, tying off a few straggling features for the back-end inventory management system for a packaging distribution company (i.e. a box factory). Dude goes, "So, let me just show you something... I'm not saying we need to do this, but I was just thinking, y'know, I'd like to start thinking of ways to show how we're fun and have a lot of personality, you know, just little interesting easter egg type things we can put in our website to just sort of, like, spice it up a little?" *pulls up youtube and types in "do the harlem shake"*

http://theonion.github.io/fartscroll.js/

# ? Mar 20, 2015 23:35

Golden Bee: Dec 24, 2009; I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

So we worked ourselves into a corner for a site header.

We need it 1920x1080 minimum, something that says "Business/reputation", but that can also lose the top horizontal third and bottom horizontal third reactively.

Unfortunately, this violates the photographic rule of thirds (where intersections are where things are interesting).

Ideas? Most of my StockPhoto searches came up nil.
Something like this fits what I mean, but "handshake" is right out according to client. (We want Good Reputation, not Making a Deal).
http://www.herrinvestigations.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/business-post-2.jpg

# ? Mar 20, 2015 23:53

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

Griffith86 posted:

It's a lot easier (and generally quicker) nowadays to build beautiful complete interfaces without ever opening photoshop/illustrator/etc.

I feel like this is only true of small market agencies but if you're a big / respected name or a company working with an actual product that needs design there are still roles for your traditional PS designer.

# ? Mar 21, 2015 00:02

o.m. 94: Nov 23, 2009

Griffith86 posted:

Pretty much this, the pure designer role is a thing of the past thanks to rapid prototyping and the tools of today.

It's a lot easier (and generally quicker) nowadays to build beautiful complete interfaces without ever opening photoshop/illustrator/etc.

Sure if you're redesigning Mom's Church Choir website

# ? Mar 21, 2015 00:15

Griffith86: Jun 19, 2008

The Dave posted:

I feel like this is only true of small market agencies but if you're a big / respected name or a company working with an actual product that needs design there are still roles for your traditional PS designer.

Those jobs still exist sure, but they are becoming less and less common. Most places are looking for people that can wear many hats so they can spread out the workload more.

o.m. 94 posted:

Sure if you're redesigning Mom's Church Choir website

If that's what you think, okay I guess. You can disagree, I'm just speaking from my experience (8 years freelancing / 7 years in-house) doing graphic and front-end work for small and big clients.

Griffith86 fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Mar 21, 2015

# ? Mar 21, 2015 00:52

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

Griffith86 posted:

Those jobs still exist sure, but they are becoming less and less common. Most places are looking for people that can wear many hats so they can spread out the workload more.

I actually think they're becoming more and more common with the rise of important in product design with mobile/tablet. That's what I've seen in my market.

# ? Mar 21, 2015 01:51

Pollyanna: Mar 5, 2005; Milk's on them.

Lumpy posted:

My guess is the networking and contacts you make are equally or more valuable than the coding bits. I don't really know much about that one, but the boot camp stuff I see all seems very heavy on the "we put you in front of people who are hiring" thing.

100% yes. The biggest thing you can get from the camps are connections and the chance to network. Really, the most good it did for me was not learning, but becoming visible. I certainly enjoyed it, but I'm not going to pretend that you can't accomplish the same things with spending way less money.

# ? Mar 21, 2015 22:23

putin is a cunt: Apr 5, 2007; BOY DO I SURE ENJOY TRASH. THERE'S NOTHING MORE I LOVE THAN TO SIT DOWN IN FRONT OF THE BIG SCREEN AND EAT A BIIIIG STEAMY BOWL OF SHIT. WARNER BROS CAN COME OVER TO MY HOUSE AND ASSFUCK MY MOM WHILE I WATCH AND I WOULD CERTIFY IT FRESH, NO QUESTION

Griffith86 posted:

Pretty much this, the pure designer role is a thing of the past thanks to rapid prototyping and the tools of today.

It's a lot easier (and generally quicker) nowadays to build beautiful complete interfaces without ever opening photoshop/illustrator/etc.

If you think it's quicker and easier to do the entire design process code-first then that really speaks to a lack of experience with Photoshop / Illustrator. Knowing both design and coding is important so you can mock up your design in code when you're done, but rarely would you go for code-first design unless (as others said) it's a very small project that doesn't require a particularly compelling or complicated UI.

putin is a cunt fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Mar 23, 2015

# ? Mar 22, 2015 23:30

putin is a cunt: Apr 5, 2007; BOY DO I SURE ENJOY TRASH. THERE'S NOTHING MORE I LOVE THAN TO SIT DOWN IN FRONT OF THE BIG SCREEN AND EAT A BIIIIG STEAMY BOWL OF SHIT. WARNER BROS CAN COME OVER TO MY HOUSE AND ASSFUCK MY MOM WHILE I WATCH AND I WOULD CERTIFY IT FRESH, NO QUESTION

Parrotine posted:

So i've decided to pursue a career in Web Design recently, and have been hitting the books to learn as much as I can for the past few months now.

Been utilizing a few downloadable apps on my smartphone to cover the basics (HTML/CSS/Javascript), but didn't really start to grasp the fundamental concepts of it all till I started utilizing the TeamTreeHouse website.

It's odd; i've been busting my hump doing my best to grasp the concepts of the languages, but I don't really have much to show for it. I'm essentially just watching the videos, following the tutorials along with the workspace extension, and slowly getting through all of the units, but I don't have any websites built or examples I could showcase to a potential employer. I'm really trying to get that coveted entry level job into the field, but it seems that anything I apply for requires me to know a few other languages on top of them, like jQuery, AngularJS and Node.js

It's a bit overwhelming to be honest. These languages meld together with time, but i'm also running out of time; my window for cramming as much of this stuff in before student loan payments has passed, so a lot of my time is spent working a dead-end job while I spend any free time learning these concepts. Pretty soon i'll be owing rent to my folks starting May this year, which just adds to the madness. I've talked with a friend of mine who's been a software engineer for 15 years who knows the web design process inside-out, and told me that 90% of the time you just get thrown into the wolves den and learn as you go along.

Can someone describe to me how they were able to get their cut into the field, and how much web design knowledge did they have before cracking that glass wall? It's just been frustrating these past few months, and knowing that i'll have to pile more languages on top of the ones I barely know already doesn't help my confidence.

Man, this is a huge topic and I'm betting (and hoping) you'll get a wide range of responses to this.

First things first, from your posts I'm a little unclear on your specific interest - are you interested in becoming a graphic designer, or are you interested in becoming a front-end developer? If you're interested in becoming a front-end developer, then that's a good path to take. You can make an okay salary doing just front-end if you're very good at it. If you want to become a graphic designer then you're going to have a very hard time getting employment if you don't learn to code as well.

You asked about level of knowledge required to crack the field. Let's put it this way: If you only have a rudimentary understanding of HTML / JavaScript / CSS then you are but a single drop in an immense ocean of applicants. You might win the lottery and get a job, but if you want to have a much better chance of getting a job you're going to need to put a lot of time and energy into learning this stuff. That usually means learning in your spare time while working some lovely job.

I'm on about 85k these days and it wasn't particularly easy to do. I started getting into building websites when I was about 12 (I'm 29 now) and I started by literally writing Word documents and exporting to HTML, then looking at what came out. I eventually started just writing the HTML myself using Windows Notepad because I noticed how much cleaner that was. Then W3C standards became more of a thing and so I started to learn how to properly use CSS and HTML separately and this is about when I started learning basic JavaScript as well. I also began learning PHP around this time, I was about 16 then. I went to university after school to get a degree in computing but ended up dropping out after a year because there was a severe lack of course material that in any way helped me with web stuff. Instead I resolved to get a job "in the industry" and work my way up. I got a job at a software development company on the help desk and worked there for 6 years. Those 6 years were crucial for the following reasons:

During that time I started doing some basic freelancing stuff out of hours. I had a friend who did freelance work as a web designer and so they were able to hook me up as a web developer for the same employer.
I also worked a lot on personal projects in my own time - I made a footy tipping website for the staff at work to use, I made a few other small, single purpose web apps
I asked to redevelop the company website and made sure I did a good job of it (at least I thought I did, I look back on it now and I'm ashamed, to be frank)
I developed a reputation at work for being capable when it came to coding and web development stuff

After 6 years I figured I had sat around on my rear end for long enough and it was time to get into full-time web development, so I applied for a job at a local web development company. I got an interview and was eventually offered the job (and a hefty pay increase over my current job). I went back to my employer and told them I would be leaving, and they wanted to keep me so they made a web developer role for me, offering a higher salary even than the other company had offered. If you're interested in the numbers, I was on 50k before all this, the other company offered me 55k plus incentives that worked out to around 58-60k, and my current employer offered 65k if I stayed. So I stayed, and that's where I'm still employed now. This was about 18 months ago. Just recently I was approached by a competitor who offered me 100k to leave, but there were some issues - I'd have to move to another state and I had just started a new relationship (too early to ask them to come with me, too promising to break it off), and I had also just moved out of a house I shared with my ex partner of 5 years, I had very little in the way of savings so relocating was a huge issue for me. I thought long and hard and decided it was too good an opportunity to miss, so I told my current employer I would be leaving. They then offered me 85k to stay and committed to professional development stuff that would be very useful to me. The 15k difference was a big problem for me but after a lot of deep thinking I figured the benefits of staying in my current state was worth sacrificing the 15k - the cost of rent alone would have been 15k p.a. higher anyway. So here I am - still in the same job but making a lot more.

Anyway, that's how I got into the job. I know this is a very long winded post but I hope it provides some insight into what's involved (or at least, what was involved in my particular journey). I currently work full-stack (meaning I don't get the time to really become an expert at any one particular thing, which is frustrating) but the same kind of process would apply for any part of the stack I'd say, including front-end. You can get paid very well for it but that won't come until you're very good at it, which applies to most things of course. Remember it's a professional role, where 90% of your pay isn't so much for the actual work you do, but the knowledge you have in your head. You're doing the right thing by starting your learning now, but you'll need to learn a LOT before you'll be realistically able to get a job in the field. If you haven't yet built an actual functioning site of any kind then I'd say you definitely won't be ready by May, so be prepared to find other work (I would suggest an entry level job, not necessarily directly web-related, in a company where you can eventually move into your desired role once you have the knowledge).

# ? Mar 23, 2015 00:23

teen phone cutie: Jun 18, 2012; last year i rewrote something awful from scratch because i hate myself

I'm having a problem with a media queries getting ignored because my two divs are in a flexbox. I understand that flexboxes defeat the purpose of using flexbox, but the logo of my site will only resize itself in Chrome and not Firefox and IE when the window shrinks, and I've been trying to add a media query, but both browsers are ignoring them.

Is there a way to override the flexbox and have it adopt a media query.

code:

<div class = "header">
    <div class = "big_item"><img src = "logo.jpg" id = "logo"></div>
    <div class = "big_item" id = "spacer"></div>
    <div class = "big_item" id = "motto"><p>Company motto goes here</p></div>
</div>

code:

.header {
	width:85%;
	margin:0 auto;
	list-style-type: none;
	display: -webkit-flex;
  	display: flex;
  	-webkit-align-items: left;
   	align-items: left;
  	-webkit-justify-content: left;
  	justify-content: left;
  	/* You can set flex-wrap and flex-direction individually */
  	/* Or do it all in one line with flex flow */
  	-webkit-flex-flow: row wrap;
  	flex-flow: row wrap;
  	/* tweak the where items line up on the row */
 	/* valid values are: flex-start, flex-end, space-between, space-around, stretch */
}

@media screen and (max-width: 1000px) {
  #logo{
	min-width:50%;
  }
}

# ? Mar 23, 2015 00:27

substitute: Aug 30, 2003; you for my mum

The Wizard of Poz posted:

If you think it's quicker and easier to do the entire design process code-first then that really speaks to a lack of experience with Photoshop / Illustrator. Knowing both design and coding is important so you can mock up your design in code when you're done, but rarely would you go for code-first design unless (as others said) it's a very small project that doesn't require a particularly compelling or complicated UI.

But how complicated or compelling should a website be (or get) at 320px wide these days?

# ? Mar 23, 2015 00:35

Spatulater bro!: Aug 19, 2003; Punch! Punch! Punch!

Grump posted:

I'm having a problem with a media queries getting ignored because my two divs are in a flexbox. I understand that flexboxes defeat the purpose of using flexbox, but the logo of my site will only resize itself in Chrome and not Firefox and IE when the window shrinks, and I've been trying to add a media query, but both browsers are ignoring them.

Is there a way to override the flexbox and have it adopt a media query.
code:
<div class = "header">
    <div class = "big_item"><img src = "logo.jpg" id = "logo"></div>
    <div class = "big_item" id = "spacer"></div>
    <div class = "big_item" id = "motto"><p>Company motto goes here</p></div>
</div>
code:
.header {
	width:85%;
	margin:0 auto;
	list-style-type: none;
	display: -webkit-flex;
  	display: flex;
  	-webkit-align-items: left;
   	align-items: left;
  	-webkit-justify-content: left;
  	justify-content: left;
  	/* You can set flex-wrap and flex-direction individually */
  	/* Or do it all in one line with flex flow */
  	-webkit-flex-flow: row wrap;
  	flex-flow: row wrap;
  	/* tweak the where items line up on the row */
 	/* valid values are: flex-start, flex-end, space-between, space-around, stretch */
}

@media screen and (max-width: 1000px) {
  #logo{
	min-width:50%;
  }
}

It's difficult to tell what you're trying to accomplish, but currently the widths of your flex items are being set by the content inside of them. So your logo is going to take up 100% of the width of its allotted space. Giving it a value of min-width: 50% isn't going to change anything because it's already at 100% width.

# ? Mar 23, 2015 00:44

putin is a cunt: Apr 5, 2007; BOY DO I SURE ENJOY TRASH. THERE'S NOTHING MORE I LOVE THAN TO SIT DOWN IN FRONT OF THE BIG SCREEN AND EAT A BIIIIG STEAMY BOWL OF SHIT. WARNER BROS CAN COME OVER TO MY HOUSE AND ASSFUCK MY MOM WHILE I WATCH AND I WOULD CERTIFY IT FRESH, NO QUESTION

substitute posted:

But how complicated or compelling should a website be (or get) at 320px wide these days?

If that's literally the only size you're supporting I'd be very surprised.

# ? Mar 23, 2015 01:49

White Light: Dec 19, 2012

The Wizard of Poz posted:

Man, this is a huge topic and I'm betting (and hoping) you'll get a wide range of responses to this.

First things first, from your posts I'm a little unclear on your specific interest - are you interested in becoming a graphic designer, or are you interested in becoming a front-end developer? If you're interested in becoming a front-end developer, then that's a good path to take. You can make an okay salary doing just front-end if you're very good at it. If you want to become a graphic designer then you're going to have a very hard time getting employment if you don't learn to code as well.

You asked about level of knowledge required to crack the field. Let's put it this way: If you only have a rudimentary understanding of HTML / JavaScript / CSS then you are but a single drop in an immense ocean of applicants. You might win the lottery and get a job, but if you want to have a much better chance of getting a job you're going to need to put a lot of time and energy into learning this stuff. That usually means learning in your spare time while working some lovely job.

I'm on about 85k these days and it wasn't particularly easy to do. I started getting into building websites when I was about 12 (I'm 29 now) and I started by literally writing Word documents and exporting to HTML, then looking at what came out. I eventually started just writing the HTML myself using Windows Notepad because I noticed how much cleaner that was. Then W3C standards became more of a thing and so I started to learn how to properly use CSS and HTML separately and this is about when I started learning basic JavaScript as well. I also began learning PHP around this time, I was about 16 then. I went to university after school to get a degree in computing but ended up dropping out after a year because there was a severe lack of course material that in any way helped me with web stuff. Instead I resolved to get a job "in the industry" and work my way up. I got a job at a software development company on the help desk and worked there for 6 years. Those 6 years were crucial for the following reasons:

During that time I started doing some basic freelancing stuff out of hours. I had a friend who did freelance work as a web designer and so they were able to hook me up as a web developer for the same employer.

I also worked a lot on personal projects in my own time - I made a footy tipping website for the staff at work to use, I made a few other small, single purpose web apps

I asked to redevelop the company website and made sure I did a good job of it (at least I thought I did, I look back on it now and I'm ashamed, to be frank)

I developed a reputation at work for being capable when it came to coding and web development stuff

After 6 years I figured I had sat around on my rear end for long enough and it was time to get into full-time web development, so I applied for a job at a local web development company. I got an interview and was eventually offered the job (and a hefty pay increase over my current job). I went back to my employer and told them I would be leaving, and they wanted to keep me so they made a web developer role for me, offering a higher salary even than the other company had offered. If you're interested in the numbers, I was on 50k before all this, the other company offered me 55k plus incentives that worked out to around 58-60k, and my current employer offered 65k if I stayed. So I stayed, and that's where I'm still employed now. This was about 18 months ago. Just recently I was approached by a competitor who offered me 100k to leave, but there were some issues - I'd have to move to another state and I had just started a new relationship (too early to ask them to come with me, too promising to break it off), and I had also just moved out of a house I shared with my ex partner of 5 years, I had very little in the way of savings so relocating was a huge issue for me. I thought long and hard and decided it was too good an opportunity to miss, so I told my current employer I would be leaving. They then offered me 85k to stay and committed to professional development stuff that would be very useful to me. The 15k difference was a big problem for me but after a lot of deep thinking I figured the benefits of staying in my current state was worth sacrificing the 15k - the cost of rent alone would have been 15k p.a. higher anyway. So here I am - still in the same job but making a lot more.

Anyway, that's how I got into the job. I know this is a very long winded post but I hope it provides some insight into what's involved (or at least, what was involved in my particular journey). I currently work full-stack (meaning I don't get the time to really become an expert at any one particular thing, which is frustrating) but the same kind of process would apply for any part of the stack I'd say, including front-end. You can get paid very well for it but that won't come until you're very good at it, which applies to most things of course. Remember it's a professional role, where 90% of your pay isn't so much for the actual work you do, but the knowledge you have in your head. You're doing the right thing by starting your learning now, but you'll need to learn a LOT before you'll be realistically able to get a job in the field. If you haven't yet built an actual functioning site of any kind then I'd say you definitely won't be ready by May, so be prepared to find other work (I would suggest an entry level job, not necessarily directly web-related, in a company where you can eventually move into your desired role once you have the knowledge).

This is an excellent post, thank you for making it.

I took that one fella's advice and started building my first website from scratch! I've posted where i'm at below if anyone cares to see my progress:

The good news is that i'm working a full-time job at a parking garage, which gives me free reign to do whatever I'd like to do so long as I can manage the gate. Some days it'll be busier than others, but it's cool to be able to have the possibility of spending up to 8 hours studying/learning web design. This is where I spent the bulk of my time learning the ins-and-outs of Web Development through the downloadable Treehouse app via my smartphone.

I'm trying to get my tablet working for my Samsung 7 Slate so that I can actually build/review a website the same way I would be able to on my desktop, but for some reason the drat thing stopped being able to charge up so it's essentially dead weight until I can locate the specific charger that's compatible for it. I've already taken it to a repair place with no luck, so this is the last resort before I decide to send it in to the company itself.

I agree on your assessment of the Graphic Designer field; I lived in Toronto for the better part of 3 years, and the competition was fiercely competitive. Now that i'm back in Houston the stakes aren't nearly as high, but the trade-off is that companies aren't nearly as receptive to new talent; once they've made a selection, they tend to stick by it through thick and thin. As a result i'm steering my entire efforts towards Front End Web Design since it seems to be the more lucrative of the fields and in higher demand.

Based on your summary it seems like I need to learn PHP, which is something that I haven't a clue about. A lot of these other languages seem to be adding to the madness more than helping, so maybe you could explain what the purpose of PHP in a definition that the layman could understand?

Thanks for the encouraging words everyone, it feels like i'm learning the handwriting of God himself :shepface:

EDIT: Just for clarity, when you talk about graphic design, are you talking about actual graphic design, or just front-end web design work? This is pretty important for my understanding, i'm pretty literal-minded at times

White Light fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Mar 23, 2015

# ? Mar 23, 2015 19:16

IAmKale: Jun 7, 2007; やらないか; Fun Shoe

Is ng-book still the go-to reference book for people who want some Angular-oriented literature to read? I was all eager to buy it until I saw the reviews on Amazon - a fair amount basically say this is the Angular API copy-pasted into book format with lovely editing and organization of the content surrounding the examples.

# ? Mar 23, 2015 22:32

Hed: Mar 31, 2004; Fun Shoe

I personally got far more out of the Orielly one. Each has a very small half-life with Angular 2 on the horizon imo, but I'm lazy.

# ? Mar 23, 2015 23:25

IAmKale: Jun 7, 2007; やらないか; Fun Shoe

Hed posted:

I personally got far more out of the Orielly one. Each has a very small half-life with Angular 2 on the horizon imo, but I'm lazy.

I'm starting a project soon which means we'll probably lock down Angular to 1.3.15 since it's the current stable release. And 2.0's eventual release won't necessarily mean that demand for the older versions will immediately dry up. I get your point, though, and that was one of the reasons I wanted to get ng-book: they promise free content updates with their ebook packages, so I'm hoping that that might include updates in the future to cover stuff specific to 2.0...

# ? Mar 23, 2015 23:57

Spatulater bro!: Aug 19, 2003; Punch! Punch! Punch!

Is it even worth learning Angular right now or would a person be wise to wait for 2.0?

# ? Mar 23, 2015 23:58

Kobayashi: Aug 13, 2004; by Nyc_Tattoo

I want to inline an SVG so that I can style it directly from my stylesheet. The idea is, I work on an asset in Sketch at some huge resolution, export as an SVG, open up the file and copy out the paths, and dump those into an SVG element in my site's template. That way, I don't have to link to another asset, and I can control the size and presentation effects with CSS.

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble figuring out how to set up my container such that the SVG draws scaled to 100% of the parent, without clipping. In the example below, I'm trying to put a circle of arbitrary size in an SVG container that is nominally smaller than the circle itself (think downscaling an @3x Retina asset). I thought ViewBox was the way to go, but my circle is still getting clipped. Same thing with the styled example... Smaller, but clipped. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong?

http://jsbin.com/vavajepuni/1/

# ? Mar 24, 2015 00:35

iwannabebobdylan: Jun 10, 2004

I'm wondering what the best tool, or the proper framework, would be for this scenario:

User inputs 4 ingredients that he has in his fridge and the website returns all recipes in a database that feature 3 or 4 of those ingredients.

I keep running into website ideas (and scenarios in life) where databases like this would be helpful. I've started with Wordpress and the tagging system (because it's easy), but that only accounts for 1 match, and it isn't the best at inputting the info. Is there a simple 3 word answer to this that can get me headed in the right direction? Or does this database tool exist?

# ? Mar 24, 2015 03:57

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

iwannabebobdylan posted:

I'm wondering what the best tool, or the proper framework, would be for this scenario:

User inputs 4 ingredients that he has in his fridge and the website returns all recipes in a database that feature 3 or 4 of those ingredients.

I keep running into website ideas (and scenarios in life) where databases like this would be helpful. I've started with Wordpress and the tagging system (because it's easy), but that only accounts for 1 match, and it isn't the best at inputting the info. Is there a simple 3 word answer to this that can get me headed in the right direction? Or does this database tool exist?

I doubt there's a single thing that does that out of the box. You'll have to learn a lot of stuff to build this with JS, HTML, and some backend like Django.

Also, there's lots of sites that provide the specific example you give.

# ? Mar 24, 2015 04:41

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# ? May 9, 2024 11:30

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Kobayashi posted:

I want to inline an SVG so that I can style it directly from my stylesheet. The idea is, I work on an asset in Sketch at some huge resolution, export as an SVG, open up the file and copy out the paths, and dump those into an SVG element in my site's template. That way, I don't have to link to another asset, and I can control the size and presentation effects with CSS.

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble figuring out how to set up my container such that the SVG draws scaled to 100% of the parent, without clipping. In the example below, I'm trying to put a circle of arbitrary size in an SVG container that is nominally smaller than the circle itself (think downscaling an @3x Retina asset). I thought ViewBox was the way to go, but my circle is still getting clipped. Same thing with the styled example... Smaller, but clipped. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong?

http://jsbin.com/vavajepuni/1/

You're brainfarting and setting the values for ViewBox width and height at 100 each for a circle that is defined by a radius of 100. Double them and you're fine.

# ? Mar 24, 2015 05:21

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