Early years

Since 1999 I have worked on a variety of projects and have gained experience working as a Web Editor, Front End Web Designer, Flash Designer/Developer, Front End Web Developer (HTML, XHTML, CSS, AJAX) and as a Back End Developer (PHP, MySQL, and Javascript).

Looking back, my first experience of working with the Mac, for many the design tool of choice when working with muitimedia and print based material, was using Pagemaker to layout various promotional collateral for Nortel's Marketing Department back in 2004. It was not until many years later while feeling slightly disillusioned with temping and moving from one job to another, that in 1998 I decided to go out and buy myself an iMac with a view to learning everything there was to know about the internet and also teach myself how to create or design, develop and implement a website, (hopefully with the idea that one day, I too could come up with a great idea for a website that would make me a million or the world a better place one day!).

I first gained experience working mainly on a freelance basis creating websites and also working with print based media. This including designing and printing flyers for promoters and small businesses using tools such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Quark.

Gaining experience in these areas gave me the confidence to expand my skills as a Web Designer and Developer and by 2001 I had familarised myself with more professional tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks which at the time were the professional website creation tools of choice. At the time I became proficient using image slicing techniques to produce outstanding looking websites based on a design often created using more creative graphic design software. Macromedia Flash was also a very exciting technology that enabled designers and devleopers to push the envelope. At the time most people in the UK were still accessing the internet on their dialup connection at home so the ability to create streaming media that was optimised for quick download was exciting

Coming of age

Time soon passed and by the end of 2005, Macromedia had been acquired by Adobe and the AJAX term had been coined. AJAX was used to describe a broad group of web technologies that can be used to implement a web application that communicates with a server in the background, without interfering with the current state of the page. On April 5, 2006 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the first draft specification for the object in an attempt to create an official web standard. Certainly there was a movement away from Flash driven websites to more standard compliant that also met with accessible standards. This was reinforced with the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act's of 1995 and 2005. Today Flash is used more to add rich media content to a site and and add value. However, if starting a new project, I would probably advise against using Flash solely for designing your website, mainly due to concerns with SEO and Accessibility. For example, Apples iPhone, one of the leaders in Smartphone technolgy does not to date offer flash support. So a flash only website would quite simply not be accessible by these users.

"The courts will also no doubt take guidance from the outcome of an Australian case in 2000, when a blind man successfully sued the Sydney Olympics' organising committee over their inaccessible website. (The Australian Disability Discrimination Act quite closely resembles that of the UK's.) UK courts may also take into account the New York case against Ramada.com and Priceline.com, who were also successfully sued over the accessibility of their websites.

It's widely believed that if, or perhaps more appropriately when, a case makes it to court that the W3C accessibility guidelines will be used to assess a website's accessibility and ultimately decide the outcome of the case. The W3C is the Internet governing body and its web accessibility guidelines can be found on its website." Trenton Moss, www.webcredible.co.uk

Moving forward

I hope these comments give you a brief introduction to my experience and background. If you have a website, or are thinking about getting one produced, I guess you have the following options:

• Do it your self
• Employ someone to do it for you
• Put it out to tender to a web design/marketing agency

Are you a Sole traders, Professional, Partnership or other Small Business or SME? Are you are are looking for a freelance web designer, who has experience working from concept stage to fruition with many websites or varying complexity and purpose as well as contracting to some of the leading design agencies, in the UK today? If so then please feel free to contact me today.