What I hadn’t covered in the short format, was why you might choose jQuery (or other framework) to work with for simple interactions, a point Remy Sharp visits in a great post on his blog: I know jQuery. Now what?.

The team at Web Standards Sherpa is always looking to help designers and developers understand web tech, so if you have a question you’d like answered, or a web site feature you’d like reviewed, submit your site, or drop us a line.

Previously: Ask The Sherpas Q&A: Online Resources for Learning To Code

Do you know any good or recommended sites to help designers catch up on today’s coding?

Q: Do you know any good or recommended sites to help designers catch up on today’s coding? There are a lot of sites I come across but many are short on either definition or providing the tutorial’s functional purpose. — Nathan Carrig

Read my answer on Facebook covering a variety of self guided and collaborative learning resources.

If you have a question about a web design, web development, content, UX, or accessibility topic that you’d like to be answered by an expert in the field please go to the Web Standards Sherpa contact form and ask away.

And if you’d like a more in depth site review focusing on one of these topics, Feed Shirley!

2012 in Freelance Web Development

Much of 2012 was spent working with my good friends over at HyperHyper, a small shop out of Brooklyn, NY. There I helped get the fashion image archive VFiles off the ground.

As usual, the year was also filled with smaller projects, such as helping friend Michael Farley with the launch of Shop Freshly — which helps you find which farmers markets are open near you (now in NYC and San Francisco).

2012 in Technical Editing

While I didn’t author anything new this year, I did work as technical editor on three great projects that were released or continued into this past year:

HTML5 & CSS3 Visual QuickStart Guide by Bruce Hyslop

The perennial classic, HTML5 & CSS3 Visual QuickStart Guide, saw it’s 7th edition released, this time helmed by author and friend Bruce Hyslop updating the great work of Elizabeth Castro.

My other love, digital photography, continued to lead me to interesting new grounds where I helped Adobe’s Geoff Scott and Jeffrey Tranberry with their new release on automating Photoshop Power, Speed & Automation with Adobe Photoshop which was released mid-year by focal press. This book was based on the corse Jeffrey and I had both been teaching on automating and scripting Photoshop at SVA’s Masters in Digital Photography Program.

Power, Speed & Automation with Adobe Photoshop by Geoff Scott and Jeffrey Tranberry

At the same time, I also gathered up some sample JavaScript code from that course and quietly released the shoppe library for doing some basic Photoshop API manipulation over on github.

Web Standards Sherpa, a project bringing the brightest minds on the web to help review web sites and answer your questions about standards based design and best practices, also saw some more activity in twenty-twelve. In addition to the long form articles, a new Q&A venture Ask The Sherpas was launched in the fall. Look to 2013 for a more great stuff from this great team.

Submit a site for review by the Sherpas

2012 in Photography and Events

The end of 2012 saw some renewed interest in Flickr, but I’ve never stopped updating my projects there. In particular, there were a bunch more web tech events I covered, some officially and some as an attendee.

Carl Smith Keynote #FOWD w/ the Dalai Lama

Again this year, I was the official photographer for The Future of Web Design’s New York event and had a blast shooting and meeting a pile of great speakers and attendees.

What’s Next

While I’m not promising regular activity on the blog here, 2013 will see a bit more public activity from me on a few projects I’ve got in the works — look for a bit more stuff going up on github as well as some new photography projects.

Follow @placenamehere on Twitter to keep up to date on what’s going on with me in the new year or keep watching my photo stream on my Flickr account.

Check out the full set of FOWD NYC 2011 photos on Flickr.

Event Highlights

Host, Ryan Carson, addressing the audience

Aaron Gustafson on HTML5

Audience of Apple Users

Steve Fisher on the Future of Mobile UX. On the set of Avenue Q

The FOWD Lunch Rush

Voting in The Web Font Awards Ceremony

'Words Convey Knowkedge', Cameron Moll. (be they written, spoken, or signed)

Jason Pamental on what is certain and what is uncertain in our industry

Whitney Hess mentioning one of Apple's rare failure to embrace good Design Principles

Etsy's Randy J. Hunt on the Future of Branding

Aaron Weyenberg of TED on Responsive Design

Dave Shea working with an attendee during the 1-on-1 design clinics

Keynote speaker Joshua Davis refueling on Red Bull in the middle of his energetic presentation on not knowing things

Quick snap of working self portrait in the mirror, starring presenters Aaron, Cameron, and Jason

Other Web Industry Event Photos

If you’re in the New York City web design community keep an eye out for me at events — I’ve usually got a camera over my shoulder, in an official capacity or otherwise. Here’s a few sets from other events:

• Creative Mornings — Jessi Arrington’s Rainbow Parade. Nov. 11, 2011, DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY
• Brooklyn Beta 2011. Oct. 12-14, 2011, Brooklyn, NY
• Past Future of Web Design events: FOWD NYC 2010, FOWD NYC 2009, FOWD NYC 2008, FOWD NYC 2007

The above photos were taken yesterday in South Mountain Reservation & made 80% more autumnal with Instagram filters.

You wouldn’t know it from this blog, but I’ve been busy

I hadn’t realized it’s been more than a month since I’ve posted anything here, but there’s a few good reasonsgood reason for that. Besides some interesting work projects, and not having reliable internet connectivity for a bit, I’ve also been embracing “conference season” and been out and about whether at conferences or just one off events or meet ups, possibly meeting you! In no particular order there was Brooklyn Beta, an evening at Etsy, Creative Mornings, a few others I didn’t take photos of, and then just soaking up NYC via NY Comic Con or its Parks & Rec.

The good news (for me, and for any blog readers I might have left) is that the stretch is almost over & hearing about such great ideas from a wide variety of people has put some ideas in my head, many of which will be appearing here in some form or another in the not too distant future.

I’ve been commuting to NYC on and off for quite a few years now. Which has put me in the position to see a lot of things, the most memorable of those trips was taken on the morning of September 11, 2001. I had been riding the train to Hoboken, NJ where I would normally then transfer to the PATH train and travel to the 9th street station, near my office. Instead, that morning as we approached Hoboken Terminal, we saw the plume of smoke already haunting the skyline. By the time we were stopped and off the train all public transportation had been shut down and I was left stranded with a ring side seat for what was to unfold that day.

Across The River

Across The River is my attempt to give a proper, modern, facelift to the gallery of photographs that I took that day which I first published a few days after the attacks, 10 years ago. I’ve not altered the photographs, but have reprocessed them at a more larger resolution, and with the addition of photographs of the NYC skyline before the attacks as well as images of memorials in the days and years since I hope to have been able to add just a little context to the collection.

Visit Across The River

The previous 9/11 Gallery, as published in September 2001

FDNY 2001-2011: Published with a President

With many groups and individuals using this 10th anniversary of the attacks to pay special tribute it isn’t a surprise that there are others putting together similar collections of images that tell the story of the World Trade Center. I’m honored to have been asked to contribute a photograph to the newly published “FDNY 2001-2011: A Decade of Remembrance and Resilience”. The book is an amazing collection of images of the events and heros of the days following the attacks, put together by the FDNY Foundation, and has a forward written by President George W. Bush. You can purchase the book here.

Web Standards Sherpa’s experts provide helpful, pragmatic and up-to-date advice on best practices for web professionals everywhere.

Back in March, Web Standards Sherpa, the brainchild of some of the crew at the Web Standards Project and support from Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, the W3C, and others, was born. The new site aims to provide guidance on the real world usage of web standards and surrounding best practices through reviews and feedback on existing web sites. Now, with the 10th article published yesterday, I think we’re well on our way down this path of building a great, relevant, and current resource to help web professionals on their journey. Already I am finding that I’m referencing many of the pieces in conversations with clients or colleagues.

The Path We’ve Started On

Current Sherpa Issue: Overlays and Lightboxes: Keys to Success by Derek Featherstone

Here’s an introduction to the current staff of Sherpas guiding you and the types of wisdom they’ve been dropping along the way.

• Improving the Tweet Box – developer Aaron Gustafson critiques the code choices behind the tweet box on twitter.com
• Stop Hiding Behind Products – usability expert Jared Spool looks the impact of language on site organization and navigation
• Curing the jetBlues – where Derek Featherstone looks at the keyboard accessibility of jetBlue’s site in light of the pending lawsuit against them
• Dissecting a Chattarati Sidebar – content strategist Erin Kissane discusses the value of sidebar modules on a local news site
• Designing Scannable Headlines – designer Dan Rubin looks at content density, headline legibility, and typography at the NY Times

Join The Trek

Check out the great team behind Web Standards Sherpa and learn a bit more about the project by watching Aaron Gustafson’s talk from MIX11. And if you have a project that you’ve recently launched or that you’re looking to redesign soon and you’re wrestling with a topic such as accessibility, performance, semantics or content strategy drop the Sherpas a line via the submit a site form. Or just come by the site and join the discussion.

Took off for a walk before a late lunch today and snapped these industrial landscapes with Instagram where you can find me as user placenamehere.

Read my earlier blog post on The CSS Pocket Guide for more info about the book at how to buy it! And if you already have, please let me know what you think in the comments here or via reviews on your favorite book retailer’s web site.