Of the Web

I’m proud to announce the launch of this site, by far my most personal website ever. Making this spot on the web mine has taken great effort and care, and I’ve deeply enjoyed all of it^[1]. Like any successful project, I defined a vision/goals for this site before I started any work:

1. Learn and employ many new tools to accurately demonstrate my understanding of building for the web, in a manner I believe to be best. This site’s primary purpose is to serve as my portfolio, and I wanted to use this site as a way to show off a bit, when doing so isn’t always appropriate or possible for the projects I work on at CivicPlus.

2. Make this site as accessible and fast as I can. The web is best when it is open to all, and making things accessible and fast (which are often overlapping concerns) helps provide that. I’ll probably be writing much more about this.

3. Build for learnability. I learned everything I know about building for the web from the generosity and kindness of others who shared their knowledge, tools, struggles, and passions. I owe my entire career to the web community, and I want to give back. While viewing source in the age of module bundlers and style processors is of less utility than it used to be, I hope that sharing this site’s source code can help someone curious enough to dig in.

It’s empowering to have a place of your own, viewable to all, where every aspect is exactly as you want it. Or, at least, as close as you can get it within your knowledge and skill set. For example, I get frustrated when I have to look at a white screen at night, so I made a “night mode” that automatically flips on after sunset. I’m eager to find more ways to express and practice building my ideal web with design, code, and prose, and I’m delighted to finally have a place to do so.

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1. Well, almost all of it. Those SVG animations were fairly tedious to make. ↩