Jon Hughes' miniPortfolio
A brief look at my past work
Hi, I'm Jon Hughes -- a web developer with over 13 years of experience in the web industry with responsibilities ranging from Photoshop mockups to front-end coding (XHTML, CSS) to back-end coding (PHP, ASP). I've decided to put some of my previous work on this page so you can gauge my skills at a glance.
This miniPortfolio is by no means all-inclusive, just a select few projects that shows the diversity of my experience and expertise.
Further Information:
- See my résumé: Jon Hughes - Web Developer (2011) Resume
- To see some of my previous work go down here
- For more info about me, go down here
- You can contact me down here
Airfare for the iPhone
Design | API Integration
In February of 2009 I released my first application to the iTunes App Store. By May of 2009 I had released 10 more apps. The most successful of which has been 'Airfare' - an airfare-searching app which aggregates data from sites similar to priceline, expedia and travelocity, offering the lowest price possible for any search. Airfare has maintained a top-20 position in the paid travel apps list for several months, and has been as high as #2. Here's a list of some of my most popular apps:
- Airfare - Finds the lowest fares from one airport to another. (iTunes Link)
- cheapEscape - Finds the lowest fares from a single airport. (iTunes Link)
- iCruise - A cruise search which finds the cheapest cruises. (iTunes Link)
- iStumble - Jump from StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit or Delicious. (iTunes Link)
3 Second impression
Design | XHTML | CSS | PHP | JavaScript (jQuery)
3 Second impression was an idea that I had to match up web professionals to jobs that fit them automatically -- like a match.com for employment. I dropped the project, however, after finding jobfox.com, which more or less does the same thing. I designed the whole site in photoshop, then made the XHTML / CSS / JavaScript for a few, which you can view here:
Phazm Webdesign
Design | XHTML | CSS | PHP | WordPress
Phazm Webdesign was a site I created to get more freelance web development jobs. After getting married and having kids, however, freelancing just wasn't stable enough to provide the security I needed to provide for my family. It is now all but forgotten, though I still get a good deal of traffic to my blog. If you care to have a look, here are a few of the most popular ones:
getAjaxed
Design | XHTML | CSS | PHP | JavaScript (jQuery, Ajax)
getAjaxed was a personal project I made while learning Ajax. I decided that rather than just keeping a personal sandbox, it wouldn't hurt to make a fully functional website to demonstrate some of the capabilities of Ajax. Other than the 'examples,' everything was done by me, from design to PHP back-end.
LyriK
XHTML | CSS | JavaScript (jQuery) | CMS Integration
LyriK was a promising community website that was all about boosting the self-esteem of kids and teens. The project was cancelled, however, when my client lost funding. All coding was done by me, but the designs were supplied by another designer. Here are a few of the pages I was able to finish before the plug was pulled:
My love of the web started very early in the capacity of a 'web designer'. After I got my first whack at HTML however, I was sold. Since that time, I've been steadily progressing more and more into the depths of web development, ranging from front-end (HTML, CSS, XSLT) to back-end (PHP, ASP) to combining the two (Ajax) - I've found a happy medium at this point and am comfortable working on all levels of web development, though my core competency is on the front-end.
At my current employer, I am the point person for creating new pages from Photoshop mockups, due to my knowledge of browser compatibility and XHTML/CSS in general. I created their shopping cart, account information and upsell pages, as well as many miscellaneous smaller pages. The majority of my work there is creating XSL transforms using XML sent from the back-end, and using CSS to style, matching the mockups provided. I also help create and maintain the front-end guidelines for best practices.
Most of my time over the 2 years prior to my current employment had been spent working for Fire Mountain Gems and Beads. I had been creating internal applications (generators, as they are called internally) that sped up productivity within the department by an order of magnitude. The generators I created were all designed, sliced (Semantic, valid XHTML and CSS) and programmed by myself. As they were on a Windows-based server, I coded them in ASP Classic, but I am perfectly able to do these in PHP, which was the language I used before I began working for Fire Mountain.
I also moved the company's direction to adopt a love for web standards, which may not seem like a huge feat, but this is a company with over 500 employees and is heavily run by existing policies that don't often change. Before I started working for Fire Mountain, all pages were going out completely table-based (although, to their credit, they were using CSS to change the color of links) – Now, all new pages are going out 100% CSS-Based (unless it is tabular data) and are proofed by a lead developer (previously myself) to ensure that they meet current web standards.
As the de-facto lead developer of the web design team, which consisted of 9 designers, I provided training sessions when people were having a hard time understanding concepts (such as the box model, inline vs. block-level elements, centering with CSS, etc.); I also went around the department helping other designers fix issues ranging from IE6 discrepancies, figuring out why content is being pushed to the bottom of the page or how to add a border to a div with only floating elements in it.
Throughout my career in web development, I have stayed active within the community in several ways. I have attended web developer conferences in other countries, helped out on CSS mailing lists, and am currently a contributor and invited expert to the W3C on the CSS and HTML Working Groups.