Design Coding and More!

Posted on Fri Mar 6, 2009. I'll start this post off with a little humor. A coworker sent me this link yesterday and I got a great kick out of it - design coding. What makes the video/music so great is that it's true - very true. There are no downsides to writing semantic markup that validates according to W3C standards.

I know that the task of learning/writing fluid, table-less designs can be a seemingly daunting task, but like all things the skill comes with practice. A true student of their profession doesn't wait for a reason to improve their craft. What I mean by that is you don't have to wait for a client to ask you to produce semantic markup. Nor should you wait to learn on a client's dime. They're paying you to be the professional that you are, not to learn the basics of your craft at their expense. A great way to get started is to write some open source software. The feedback is a fantastic learning tool.

My DivToText jQuery Plugin is getting a great deal of attention. I'm actually rather shocked. I get a pleasant little surprise every morning when I check Google Analytics. Not only that, but I have gotten some fantastic feedback from some of its users. Ola Rinta-Koski sent me some great code and feature improvements last night that I'll be working into the next release of the plugin. Thanks again Ola.

New Updates

Posted on Thu Feb 26, 2009. It has really been a few days since my last post. You know how life goes. At any rate, though, some progress has been made and some updates have been posted.

To start with, there is a new release of the DivToText jQuery plugin with some updates that were requested from a very informative user. I hope he’s willing to allow me to post his e-mail to the project comments.

I released the first beta version of my StepBar jQuery plugin. That’s a handy little progress bar that allows total control of its progression in as simple a fashion as possible.

I will be releasing the first beta version of my invoice creator shortly after this post goes live. The invoice creator is a small part of a larger application that I have in the works. Each piece of the puzzle will be available for use here on my website as they get developed. The only cost is feedback. If you use the application, let me know how you feel about it!

I suppose that’s all I have today. I am still working on my first article. I didn’t plan on it taking so long, but I want to ensure top quality in the work before I post it. There’s nothing worse than readily available garbage.

Good News

Posted on Sat Feb 21, 2009. I woke up to excellent news this morning. I was contact buy someone with a question on my jQuery DivToText plugin. That’s good news because it means someone is using it already. The simple fact that my work is helping someone else motivates me to keep pushing on my current projects – which includes an invoice creator and a jQuery progress bar called StepBar.

To keep the good news train rolling, I would like to say that MitchCannon.com is out performing my recently launched AggroTees.com. That’s good news because people are coming to the site. Now I just need to provide more for those visitors to do when they get here. Stay tuned.

Welcome

Posted on Thu Feb 19, 2009. Welcome to MitchCannon.com! This is the first of what I hope will be many, many blog posts for me. Although I must warn you now, this is my first attempt at a personal blog. If you proceed, you do so knowingly. So, let me tell you a little bit about the site, what its goals are and why I decided to add to the massive community of those just like it.

This site will serve as my personal, professional and creative outlet. Over the years I have operated under many different names across many different domains, some of them being Midnight Internet Technologies, Live Concepts and Vision Web Tools. Now it’s just Mitch Cannon. One consolidated place for me to share my knowledge, information and skill with the world while getting the world’s feedback in an attempt to become a stronger developer.

I hope to provide three main services through this site. The first being knowledge. I want to provide a ready resource of PHP, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript knowledge to other developers. The second service is providing usable tools that can make life easier for whatever target group. I plan on providing a collection of web-based tools, starting with an invoicing application. The third service is of course my professional services on an individual basis.

So now we come to why. Why add yet another developer site to the Internet? Why not? Knowledge and information are the two things that make the Internet such a powerful and valuable resource. If the information that I provide here can add any benefit at all to that greater collection, then all the work and effort will be worth it. Along with that, this really benefits me as well. It forces me to write and will undoubtedly bring in some grammatical corrections and suggestions. It provides me with experience in the development of the coming tools, and it allows me to publish articles and work.

I hope you will make MitchCannon.com a frequent stop in your daily browsing.