2. How did you get started out on the web and what inspired you to get into coding?
I was bored, looked up something to do and I had visual studio installed on my PC. I did some C++ and C# things for a while. after that i got interested with it so I thought about doing something worthwhile.

3. What languages do you code and which one do you think is more 1. powerful, 2. simple and 3. you enjoy more?
1. Powerfull scriping C++
2. Simple is C#
3. Java and C# as it is graphical aswell, more my thing.

4. What sites you use for inspiration and do you recommend any to our readers?
www.mickm.com for website coding and graphical designing.

5. Do you have any other hobbies? if so what are they and why do you enjoy them?
I play guitar , and play drums. I want to be in a band, but  I mainly play it because it makes me relax at. I mostly just play songs I've learnt, sometimes I think of some. For the rest I do photoshop designing aswell (websites, logos, ect)

6. Do you run a PC, or a Mac, why?
I say I run both, since I got an Mac just last week, its an old one from a friend of mine. But its working like a charm, and I use it for photoshop.

7. What software couldn’t you live without and could you name 3 reasons?
Photoshop (its the best program ever, it works SMOOTH , its part of my income )

8. What’s the program you use to code in? What is so good about it?
Notepad , Visual studio and thats about it

9. When you first started out, how did you promote yourself? If at all?
I started of making a website on a free host, and started promoting on that. Also I got some people (that has their own companies) as they needed some graphical stuff. (menu cards for restaurant , website for restaurants and for some small bands here around the house).

10. What was the first coding job you ever got?
Making a program for a company. It was a graphical web browsing enviroument that was for intern intranet use. This worked out pretty good, though I made some other versions afterwards.
11. Finally, Where can we find you on the web, Be that you're twitter, portfolio or other?

www.twitter.com/markrozier
www.markrozier.com <-- keep in notice, its going to be up in a month.

if(Interview.Text == Finished)
{
MessageBox.Show("Thanks for reading ");
MessageBox.Show("any questions just ask me");
}

Jay Aaron (@newthoughts)

So congratulations to him and thank you to everyone that entered, we've got some more great prizes coming up in the near future, for now, leave a comment, congratulate or give us feedback on what we did well, and what we did bad. This is your chance to get heard! Thanks once again everyone and we hope to hear from you soon!

1. Follow us on Twitter.
2. Tweet out this short message
3. Subscribe to our RSS.
4. Comment with your twitter username. (@lewisking - for example)

See, no biggie! Once this is done, we will pick a winner on Friday the 1st of May. Anyone can enter, no matter what age, or location. So what are you waiting for?! Get going Any questions, please ask in the comments below, or @reply us on twitter. We answer all. Until next time, keep visiting the site for news, reviews, interviews and giveaways, Much love!

1. Border radius.

We've all seen it over the web. Rounded corners are everywhere. Before CSS3, you either needed to do it with images, or some special (or crazy) JavaScript. No longer. CSS3 has the ability to have rounded corners without the need to get things complicated. Standard HTML block elements are square-shaped with 90-degree corners. The CSS3 styling rule allows rounded corners to be set.

-moz-border-radius: 20px;
-webkit-border-radius: 20px;
border-radius: 20px;

You can also target individual corners, for a nicer effect:

-moz-border-radius-topleft: 20px;
-moz-border-radius-topright: 20px;
-moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 10px;
-moz-border-radius-bottomright: 10px;
-webkit-border-top-right-radius: 20px;
-webkit-border-top-left-radius: 20px;
-webkit-border-bottom-left-radius: 10px;
-webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 10px;

Supported in Firefox, Safari and Chrome. For an example, check Twitter. For more information, check css3.info

2. Border Images

The next feature is a must. Before CSS3, borders had to be of a standard pattern, or just a simple line. Now, you can use your own images and create some stunning effects. This is how we do it:

border: 5px solid #cccccc;
-webkit-border-image: url(/images/border-image.png) 5 repeat;
-moz-border-image: url(/images/border-image.png) 5 repeat;
border-image: url(/images/border-image.png) 5 repeat;

This can also be applied on a per-side basis, allowing seperate images per side for that added sparkle.

border-bottom-right-image
border-bottom-image
border-bottom-left-image
border-left-image
border-top-left-image
border-top-image
border-top-right-image
border-right-image

Supported in Firefox 3.1, Safari and Chrome. For an example, see Blog.SpoonGraphics. For more information, check css3.info.

3. Drop Shadows!

No more photoshop! No more photoshop! You now don't need photoshop to include drop shadows to your sites! Here's how it's done:

-webkit-box-shadow: 10px 10px 25px #ccc;
-moz-box-shadow: 10px 10px 25px #ccc;
box-shadow: 10px 10px 25px #ccc;

The first two attributes determine the offset of the shadow in relation to the element, in this case, 10 pixels on the x and y axis. The third attribute sets the level of blurriness of the shadow. And finally, the shadow color is set.

To do it on a text element:

text-shadow: 2px 2px 5px #ccc;

Supported in Firefox 3.1, Safari, Chrome (box-shadow only) and Opera (text-shadow only). For an example, please visit 24ways For more information, visit css3.info (box) or css3.info (text)

4. Transparency

Before CSS3, PNG's played a vital part in Web Design. Now a CSS3 value lets you do the same, with a lot less time and effort needed. Here's how we do it in CSS now:

rgba(200, 54, 54, 0.5);
/* example: */
background: rgba(200, 54, 54, 0.5);
/* or */
color: rgba(200, 54, 54, 0.5);

The first three numbers refer to the red, green and blue color channels, and the final value refers to the alpha channel that produces the transparency effect. Alternatively, with the opacity rule, the color can be specified as usual, with the opacity value set as a separate rule:

color: #000;
opacity: 0.5;

Supported in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera (opacity) and IE7 (opacity, with fixes). For an example, visit 24 Ways (RGBA). For more information, visit: css3.info

5. @Font-Face

There has always been a set of safe fonts that can be used on the Web, as you know: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Georgia, Comic Sans (ahem…), etc. Now the @font-face CSS3 rule lets you use whatever font you want. Easily. Here's how:

@font-face {
font-family:'Helvetica';
src: url('/images/Helvetica.otf') format('opentype');
}

The rest of the settings are then called as usual:

h1 { font-family: ‘Anivers’, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;

Supported in Firefox 3.1, Safari, Opera 10 and IE7 (with lots of fixes: if you are brave enough, you can make font-face work in IE (thanks for heads up, Jon Tan)) For an example, please visit TapTapTap. For more information please visit css3.info

Although CSS3 is still under development, the rules listed here are supported by some browsers right now. Safari in particular has extensive support for these new features. Unfortunately, despite being a top-quality browser, Safari has a relatively low number of users, so it is probably not worthwhile adding extra features solely for this group of users. But with Apple’s Mac computers making their way into everyday life, Safari’s usage is likely to continually increase. Assuming that most users of Firefox will update their browsers, there will soon be a large group of users with support for these new styling rules too.
Google Chrome was released this year. Based on the WebKit engine, this browser has much of the same support as Safari. While Safari makes up a good proportion of Mac users, Chrome has burst onto the scene, making up a decent proportion of Windows users. According to statistics, almost 50% of all Internet users should be able to view these features.

Downsides.

Internet Explorer: 46% of Internet users won’t see these features, so don’t use them as a crucial part of the design of your website. Make sure that secondary options are in place.

Invalid style sheets: These CSS3 features have not been released as a final specification. They are currently implemented with tags that target different browsers. This invalidates your style sheet and if you pride yourself on being "valid" don't use them.

Extra CSS markup: Following the last point, having to add a different tag for each browser to specify the same rule, as well as include the standard rule for the final CSS specification, adds a lot of extra code to your CSS markup. Which means a bigger file, which means a slower site load.

Potentially horrific usage: Just as is done with traditional Photoshop filters, the use of these new styling features could result in some eye-wrenching designs. Drop shadows in particular.

1. First of all, Could you lead us through a brief history of your life? Where you live, what you do?

I was born in Central NY and moved to Rochester, NY to attend college at Rochester Institute of Technology. There I studied Graphic Design and graduated with a BFA in 2001. I am the Creative Director at Fuel Brand Group where I am responsible for all of the design and the general creative direction of the Fuel Brand Group and its network of sites.

2.How did you get started out on the web and what inspired you to get into coding?

I’m not really a coder, I’m more of a designer. I’ve jumped into bits and pieces of it but I don’t consider myself a coder by any stretch of the imagination. I save that for the experts!

3.What languages do you code and which one do you think is more 1. powerful, 2. simple and 3. you enjoy more?

I enjoy English the best I’m also a big fan of JQuery.

4.What sites you use for inspiration and do you recommend any to our readers?

I recommend Fuel Your Creativity, Design By Grid, Six Revisions, Web Designer Wall, and PatternTap.

5.Do you have any other hobbies? If so what are they and why do you enjoy them?

I enjoy hardworking because it gives me the chance to clear my head, so more ideas come to me!

6.Do you run a PC, or a Mac, why?

Mac…because apple kicks ass.

7.What software couldn’t you live without and could you name 3 reasons?

Photoshop because 1) ease of use, 2) &3) Because I wouldn’t be able to do my job without it.

8.What’s the program you use to code in? What is so good about it?

The little coding I do is usually done in TextMate and CSS Edit. They just work for me.

9.When you first started out, how did you promote yourself?

When I first started out I dove into the blogging community and got my name out there by commenting. Twitter has also helped promote me and my sites.

10. Finally, Where can we find you on the web, Be that you’re twitter, portfolio or other?

Twitter: http://twitter.com/adellecharles
Fuel Brand Group: http://fuelbrandgroup.com
Fuel Labs: http://adellecharles.com/temp
Fuel Your Creativity: http://fuelyourcreativity.com

So i thought...well, why can't i add this bookmarklet to my site?, in case people want to read the articles that I've written without visual distraction. So I did, and you can see it on any of the single post pages on my site.

It's really simple, just go to the Arc90 Readability Bookmarklet Generator and pick your settings, then right click on the bookmarklet, and select "copy link" or "copy link address", then all you have to do is set up a div with the text of your choice in it:

<div id="readability"><p><a href=" ">Make This Post More Readable</a></p></div>

And set up some style rules in your CSS file for that DIV:

 #readability {
background-image: url(images/readability.png);
background-position: 12px left;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
padding: 5px 5px 5px 24px;
}

And then simply paste in the link from the bookmarklet into the 'href' field of your link:

javascript:(function(){readStyle='style-novel';readSize='size-large';readMargin='margin-medium';_readability_script=document.createElement('SCRIPT');_readability_script.type='text/javascript';_readability_script.src='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/js/readability.js?x='+(Math.random());document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(_readability_script);_readability_css=document.createElement('LINK');_readability_css.rel='stylesheet';_readability_css.href='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability.css';_readability_css.type='text/css';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(_readability_css);_readability_print_css=document.createElement('LINK');_readability_print_css.rel='stylesheet';_readability_print_css.href='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability-print.css';_readability_print_css.media='print';_readability_print_css.type='text/css';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(_readability_print_css);})();

And you're done! don't forget to download the book icon (if you want it) from here, the icon is from the awesome famfamfam silk icon set. Don't forget to adjust the path to it in the CSS I gave you.

And the results speak for themselves, here is an article from the guardian before using readability:


And After:

So there! now your posts are more readable there's no excuse not to be writing top-notch content! Don't forget that you can style this to look like whatever you want! Enjoy...

A Note On Browser Compatibility

I can't see anything on the official website with regard to this, but i'd assume that it's fairly exclusive to modern browsers, and in the case of the IE's you should probably see it working with IE7+, but i can't verify that. But it should be fine in your Safari's, your Firefox's and your google Chrome's, as well as any other browser that is up to date.

1. First of all, Could you lead us through a brief history of your life? Where you live, what you do?...

Sure! My name is Ben Debnam, I have been a freelance web designer for a few years now, my company is Goo Creative (http://www.goocreative.co.uk). I live in Kent, England and absolutely love what I am fortunate enough to do every day! For as long as I can remember, I have always been interested in creative topics, whether its anything design related, animation, music or building weird random stuff. However, my journey started whilst at Disney World and I was peering through the glass on the Animation Tour at what was MGM Studios, now Hollywood Studios. I'll explain how in the next question..

2. How did you get started out on the web and what inspired you to get into coding?

I had always loved animation since a very young age (like, 20 years ago!), and when I found out about this thing called Macromedia Flash 3 I wanted to create my own short movies. I found that when I had finished, I wanted to publish my movies to the web, which got me started with Frontpage Express and a trial of Dreamweaver 3. I discovered putting my thoughts on the web in a way of visually communicating ideas was something really interesting to me. As time went on and I had my first couple of flash jobs I was becoming more interested in the html side of things and less in the Flash. I have to say, I did enjoy the design side more than the coding side and still do to this day but I found people wanted to pay me for building them websites. This at the time was strange as it was a geeky hobby of mine, could I actually make a living out of something I enjoyed?

3. What languages do you code and which one do you think is more 1. powerful, 2. simple and 3. you enjoy more?

Well I'm primarily a designer and a front end developer, which I think is something all web designers should be nowadays. I code in XHTML, CSS, some PHP and some jQuery. I also use Expression Engine as my CMS of choice. I think CSS and jQuery are incredibly powerful. jQuery I feel is still finding its feet. There are a lot of people doing some really great stuff with it but I have a feeling there is more to come! I love the simplicity of XHTML, CSS and Expression Engine. Everything neatly fits together, if you do something stupid then you'll get stupid results (most of my IE CSS problems are where I've tried to cut corners or have been sloppy). EE has stolen my heart when it comes to doing something more than your few page static site. I'm so grateful for it's flexibility and I thoroughly enjoy working with it. My clients seem to love it too, http://www.shearsgreenjuniorschool.co.uk and soon to get an update http://www.hygienesolutions.co.uk.

4. What sites you use for inspiration and do you recommend any to our readers?

I have just over 300 site feeds in my RSS Reader, most of which I use for inspiration. I currently like the tuts+ network nettuts aetuts psdtuts etc. They have some great articles. Smashing Magazine is another great one, and have some of my work featured in there a couple of times (thanks guys!). I always find Apple's site a great source for web gui, and keeping things simple! Other inspirational sites are just where ever I land that I like and then take a peek through their source code. Other sites worth checking out (design) would be ffffound and of course amazingcoders (Cha-Ching!)

5. Do you have any other hobbies? If so what are they and why do you enjoy them?

I've been a pianist since a very young age, my piano has been my life long friend. I'm also a very keen photographer! My other hobby is collecting Pixar Toys & other designer Vinyl Figures and have a couple of shelves full of Vinyls (it gets expensive!)

6. Do you run a PC, or a Mac, why?

Mac. For me, its a no brainer. The Mac has always suited me perfectly, I love the experience, the Apple Stores are fantastic places to be when I visit, plus I love their design. However like my friend Dan Philibin, I use VMWare with Windows XP for Cross Browser testing.

7. What software couldn’t you live without and could you name 3 reasons?

OSX, iTunes and Photoshop. OS X because it is the nicest OS out there. I love the way it just works, looks beautiful and has really crazy awesome features. iTunes because I wouldnt be able to concentrate if it wasn't for my 600GB iTunes library. Photoshop because it is where I spend most of my daily hours!

8. What’s the program you use to code in? What is so good about it?

Coda - everything in one place, superbly built app - and the guys at Coda are seriously talented folks! I used to love the code view with built in FTP that Dreamweaver had. Coda just removed the bits I didnt need, and made it really really great to use.

9. When you first started out, how did you promote yourself? If at all?

Friends of family and friends of friends. I promoted myself with a credit on each site I built. I used to talk to businesses and places I used to regularly visit and offer them a website. It was a great way to get started as you could pick and choose the work you wanted.

10. What was the first coding job you ever got?

Coding up a site for a local sheet metal firm. This was about 9 years ago and not online anymore.

11. Finally, Where can we find you on the web, Be that you're twitter, portfolio or other?

You can find me at my portfolio, Goo Creative or at my twitter.

Web Design can at times be a chore to endure. Remembering code, making graphical flare and compiling into a beautiful design can take time; days, hours... years? Which is exactly why I've decided share some of my most used everyday designer resources with readers of my blog, you may have have heard of them before, you may even use them everyday, all I'm doing is sharing the love.

No. 10

DevSnippets is a small branch of the website Noupe; the web design blog. Its a resource for people to add tutorials, trends, and... well 'snippets' of code that other designers would find useful. It's a favourite website that I visit on a daily basis during a project to catch-up with new CSS3 tricks, design ideas and javascript effects that I can spice up some layouts with.

No. 9

Now I know there are many other websites dedicated to colour pallets, Adobe has their own rendition originally named Kuler. COLOURlovers however has more to offer: patterns, pallets, and a whole rating system along with the Photoshop and GIMP compatible arrangements. I've always used COLOURlovers (spelt the correct way) for my website designs, in fact this very blog uses this pallet. Check their blog out every week or so for some great articles about colour used in different places.

No. 8

Feed My App is an amazing directory full to the seems of fantastic 'web 2.0' websites. You can search for different types of website from website scripts to iPhone related doohickys. It has everything you could ever want. What has this got to do with design you may ask, I've used Feed My App for a year now, and it has taught me countless design techniques and styles. It's also a good place to find directories of javascript effects too.

No. 7

A website with average type can really bring it's readability down, and repel users. A website with good typography however will host a whole range of benefits: text clarity, liven up design and more importantly screen presence. People go to your website for its content, not it's design... it helps though. This is where Typechart comes screeching into action. If you suck at just getting a nice range of fonts and spacing together you'll find Typechart a sweet-haven for your designs; supplying one click CSS, and what fonts will work with what.

No. 6

Smush.it is a short and sweet FireFox plug-in that's sole purpose is to slice off those lbs. in web design terms. Image optimization can be a tricky job, why do you need to have to mess around with lots of different settings when you can build your whole website then run it through Smush.it. Simple replace your images and use the time saved to make your favourite sandwich. Remember in the words of The Black Eyed Peas, time is money and money is time.

No. 5

Have you ever had a tough time making cool 'web 2.0' stripes? Have you ever had to line up, pixel-by-pixel your ultimate stripes for your design and spent hours hunched over your computer screen? If you answered yes to one or all of those questions Stripe Generator "2.0" is the perfect resource for you. It's Ajax exterior will generate all of those tiresome stripes in seconds into a nice tile'able png. How's that for service!

No. 4

If you want something a little more unique than the overused yet beautiful FAMFAMFAM silk icons then try Icon Finder. Just prod in the icon you desire and lo-and-behold a nice shiny website ready Creative Commons licensed icon shall appear. Wonderful. [edit] New design alert, well done to Martin Leblanc for the spiffin' new look.

No. 3

Freelance Switch is a place to read about freelancing, get a job freelancing, and more importantly chat to other freelancers. You can learn a great plethora of information about the fledgling world of web design. Home to a great mix of experienced writers, Freelance Switch is an idea home for someone looking to get into the design game... or for more information about how to stay in it.

No. 2

If you ever need a logo for a website and need any inspiration at all, then I highly suggest you go crash by Logo Faves, the "logo design inspiration gallery". Nuf said.

No. 1

I mentioned it earlier at no. 10, it's the one, the only, my most visited website resource... it's... Noupe. It's a fantastic resource for everything web design. Sourcing the best of the net, Noupe is a must read for a daily share of web design.

WOW, what a list! Remember, if you feel something hasn't been mentioned up here, go right ahead and post a link down below in the comments section. This post originated from my blog.

1. First of all, Could you lead us through a brief history of you’re life? Where you live, what you do?

I'm a 21 year old Undergraduate Software Engineer studying at the University of Newcastle, Australia. I live just a half hour
away from campus in a quiet suburb called Medowie, where I have spent my entire life. I graduated secondary school with a 96.7 University Admissions Index (100 being the highest), and for the past three years have maintained an 87% mark average in my University courses. I have two brothers - one starting university this year and one nearing the end of primary school - a cat and a dog.

2. How did you get started out on the web and what inspired you to get into coding?

It was simple really. In the days before social networking sites became popular, my mates and I decided to create a forum where all of our friends could sign up and chat. The forum was to be appended to a website with jokes, anecdotes and news from our lives in Newcastle. Although we had grand ideas, none of us actually knew how to create a website past using site builders available at places like Geocities (I feel dirty just remembering it). So I volunteered to learn whatever was necessary to ensure our site was a success. So I began my foray into the elegant and sometimes frustrating world of web markup and styling. Over the years our site fell apart due to lessening interest from its creators and the rise of MySpace and Facebook, but I was already hooked on the intricacies of coding.

3. What languages do you code and which one do you think is more 1. powerful, 2. simple and 3. you enjoy more?

There's a fairly standard set of languages that all web engineers should be familiar with. XHTML, CSS and Javascript are the fundamentals, although any good web engineer should be very familiar with at least one server-side language. PHP is common and simple to use, but I prefer working with Java. It's more complex, but vastly more powerful, and adheres closely to the object-oriented coding paradigm that I'm comfortable with. Given a choice, I love to write applications in C++ purely because it's a more interesting and enjoyable language than Java, but C++ plays a very minor role on the Internet.

4. What sites you use for inspiration and do you recommend any to our readers?

I've never used websites for coding inspiration. Often I'll stumble across a problem that requires a very in-depth search to find a solution, but I find web engineering has a solid process and thus the only area in which you can let your creativity run free is the elegance of your code. I do dabble in the design side of websites though, and there are plenty of resources for inspiration there. I suggest taking a look at the following URL, which has a set of inspiring websites broken into categories: http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design-inspiration/

5. Do you have any other hobbies? if so what are they and why do you enjoy them?

When I'm not coding, my four main activities are reading novels, playing computer games, watching movies and playing cricket (Sport of Kings). I especially enjoy my novels. At a young age I read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, and since then I've had a voracious appetite for fantasy series, although I do enjoy a good crime mystery. In regards to the computer games, I tend to keep returning to the classics and don't get as excited about new releases as I once did. The exception being the development of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for those games.

6. Do you run a PC, or a Mac, why?

I use a PC, mainly because I'm comfortable with the user interface of Windows. I find it ridiculous that operating systems have such an avid fanbase. In the end it's just two different user interfaces, and you use the one you like best. Neither OS has any further advantage over the other.

7. What software couldn’t you live without and could you name 3 reasons?

Adobe Photoshop. Hands down. Even though I am primarily a coder, most jobs I'm contracted to do involve taking a .psd and developing a coded template for the design. The slicing and structuring is my responsibility, and without Photoshop I would be up the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddle.

8. What’s the program you use to code in? What is so good about it?

For simple jobs I tend to use Notepad++ because of its clean interface and good syntax highlighting. However, when I'm in need of a proper IDE I lean towards Eclipse. I have used Netbeans in the past, but I'm more comfortable with Eclipse.

9. When you first started out, how did you promote yourself? If at all?

Word of mouth. I have no interest in starting a business until I've graduated from my degree, so the amount of work I get through word of mouth is sufficient. There's also plenty of forums out there where people go to request coding jobs, and if you have the ability you can throw your hat in the ring and make the client an estimate. Many of those clients will become recurring customers if you do a good job.

10. What was the first coding job you ever got?

It wa simply to take a .psd design and create a web template for the client. In fact a good deal of my jobs are simply that. There are many more people looking for markup and styling than there are looking for custom content management systems. You may consider markup and styling to be easy, but it's also easy money.

11. Finally, Where can we find you on the web, Be that you're twitter, portfolio or other?

In short, you can't. My portfolio has been offline for a few months now, and I don't currently have plans to find new hosting. I am, however, a moderator at the MickM.com forums, so if you have any enquiries, or just wish to chat, you can find me there.