Web Developer

SirLurksAlot writes "My last employer had to make a series of budget cuts, and I was laid off. I have been on the job hunt since then; however in the meantime I have begun freelancing as a Web developer. This is my first time in this role and so I would like the ask the Slashdot community: are there any best practices for freelance developers? What kind of process should I use when dealing with clients? Should I bill by the hour or provide a fixed quote on a per-project basis? What kind of assurances should I get from the client before I begin work?

By Smashing Magazine Editorial and György Fekete

As a web developer, I have the pleasure of working with a lot of different designers. There has been a lot of industry discussion of late about designers and developers, focusing on how different we sometimes are and how the interface between our respective phases of a project (that is to say moving from a design phase into production) can sometimes become a battleground.

We’ve all felt that haze that forms around your eyes when you’re trying to study lines and lines of code from a written tutorial. After an hour or so, you’re eyes simply become too weakened to continue reading. That’s why I’m such a huge fan of video tutorials. You can sit back and learn at your own pace. I’ve compiled a list of over thirty screencasts that are guaranteed to help you.

Working with CSS can seem like a constant battle. Browsers are always changing they way they read the code (*cough* Internet Explorer *cough*), and it seems that there are lots of tiny little CSS “gotchas”. While it’s an incredibly powerful language, it can easily be used incorrectly, which will doom your development to a lifetime of imperfections.

Yesterday, I took some time to “celebrate” our 6 month anniversary by revisiting our older tutorials. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how much incredible material that we have on this site - material that some of you may not even know about! If you’re like me, you use the weekend to catch up on your learning - since work takes up so much time. Today, I’ll list the top twenty tutorials on NETTUTS (in no particular order) that will jump-start your education.

There are a few special techniques or effects that can spice up just about any web page. These are the top 20 Ajax effects that every web developer should know. They’re essential parts of any web developer’s toolbox. If you haven’t seen them yet, you no doubt will in your future web development endeavors.

Yahoo's Exceptional Performance Team just released an interesting tool that optimizes images for publishing on the web. Smush.it is completely cloud-based and you can choose to upload your images directly to the service, provide Smush.it with a URL, or use a Firefox plugin that analyzes a whole page at once.

Most designers and web developers only scratch the surface of the potent language that is CSS. In terms of programming languages, CSS has a fairly simple learning curve. That doesn’t mean that CSS isn’t a powerful language. Sometimes it’s the small things that make a huge difference in a website design.

In this post we’re going to outline 10 awesome CSS techniques for web developers who know their stuff.

There are plenty of CSS techniques and hacks out there for beginning designers. Everyone knows about the routine tricks like:

When it comes to CSS, there are lots of resources and supposed “expert tips” on the web. These are from unproven, self-proclaimed “gurus” who have no street cred in the design world. While they may have valid points, how is one to know whether a CSS tip is a valid resource or just an untested hack?