2024
2024 in review: I stood up and talked about ddev
One new build this year. The rest was maintenance: dependency updates, a PHP version bump across
three platforms, and one long-running project finally moving off a bundler I had be...
Showing css. Show every year
2021
2021 in review: less JavaScript, and CSS variables that survive the build
A quiet year, tool-wise, and a good one. Two changes: I replaced a lot of component-framework code
with Alpine.js, and I started using CSS custom properties as an actual
feature ra...
2020
2020 in review: why I stopped taking WordPress work
The year everything moved into containers and a lot of things moved out of my working week. The
ddev setup I trialled last December went onto every project by summer. Tailwind show...
2019
2019 in review: goodbye Windows, hello ddev
Two things I had been putting off for years both happened in 2019, and both were about the machine
I work on rather than the code I write. I moved off Windows to Ubuntu for good, a...
2016
2016 in review: webpack, and finally trusting flexbox
Two changes this year, and both were me catching up rather than being early. In July webpack
replaced gulp in my main project. And somewhere around spring I stopped writing float-b...
2014
2014 in review: the year a build step appeared
Until this year my CSS workflow was: open the file, type CSS, save, refresh. On 10 October I
committed a Gulpfile.js for the first time, under a commit message that just says
"So...
2013
2013 in review: putting a framework next to the CMS
This was the year I stopped trying to make a content management system do things that are not
content management. In January I started a project on a PHP framework instead, and the...
2012
2012 in review: picking one CMS, and circles made of CSS
First year this blog existed, and the year I acted on the previous year's complaint. In 2011 I was
maintaining four content management systems badly. By the end of 2012 all new wor...
2010
2010 in review: slicing PSDs, billing by the site, and the last of my own CMS
2010 was the year of the fixed-price website: a designer sends a PSD, you turn it into a working
site with a CMS behind it, you invoice a round number, and you keep the hosting and...
2006
2006 in review: the editor was the workflow
I built every site this year inside Dreamweaver 8, and that is the most honest description of my
2006 I can give.
The editor was the workflow. It held the site definition, the FT...
2003
2003 in review: a stylesheet, and a platform instead of a page
I had been writing PHP for a while by 2003. What changed this year is what I pointed it at: my
first stylesheet, a database behind a site rather than beside it, and a platform that...
2002
2002 in review: tables, spacer GIFs and a folder full of .htm
A year of building sites out of about 180 GIFs, 120 .htm files and no stylesheet at all.
Two things stand out. This is the year I properly learned HTML, because there was nothi...