Web Standards, Accessibility & More

Here are some great job openings in the web development and computer software industries in the San Francisco Bay area.

Please be sure to use my name as a referral!

Featured Positions

Job Title

JavaScript Engineer

Summary

Seeking top-notch JavaScript Engineers with strong CS fundamentals who feel at home developing high-quality web products that reach millions of users.

Company

Not Provided

Location

Mountain View, California, U.S.A.

Skills

• Work toward weekly milestones on high-visibility, high-quality web products.
• Meet with team to assess feasibility and priority of new features.
• Participate in testing regularly scheduled releases.
• Collaborate with server-side engineers to optimize scalability and network efficiency.
• Object-oriented JavaScript experience.
• Previous experience with the following web technologies: DHTML, CGI and CSS.
• Previous experience with at least one scripting language (eg. Bash, Perl, or Python).
• Experience working with large web frameworks such as Dojo, prototype.js and Rico.
• Phenomenal debugging principles.
• Computer Science Degree or equivalent.

Contact

Nicole Blincoe, Mainz Brady Group

resumes[AT]mainzbradygroup[NOSPAM][dot]com

1-650-524-8845

Reference JO#NB4422

Job Title

PHP Web Developer

Summary

If you are a mid to senior level Web Developer with extensive PHP experience, please read on!

Location

Mountain View, California, U.S.A.

Company

Not Provided

Skills

• Extensive PHP development experience
• Experience designing and building highly scalable software used by millions of users
• Extensive experience programming in PHP, JavaScript, HTML, AJAX, CSS
• Experience with HTTP, SQL, TCP/IP – Solid Object-Oriented Programming experience
• Experience with REST, JSON, and API/Web-Services is a plus

Compensation

Excellent compensation package (salary $120-$130,000).

Excellent benefits package.

Work with cutting edge technology.

Great opportunity!

Contact

Craig Radke, CyberCoders

Craig.Radke[AT]CyberCoders[NOSPAM][dot]com

The Listings

Please be sure to use my name as a referral!

The U of M Dentists web site went back up last month after an extended period of downtime. The site is an  “Online Network of University of Michigan Dental School Graduates and their Practices”. Here’s the strange story…

Last December, I noticed a few web sites of mine were completely down. The reason was tragic. A former co-worker of mine in Florida was hosting the sites, and he died suddenly. His computer business was sold, and the plug was pulled on the web servers (literally).

It took me a week to figure out what happened, then a several weeks more to track down the new company and get some domains transferred into my name. What a mess that was. When I finally had time (after reviving other higher-priority sites), I converted the old ASP code (yes, Classic ASP!) into nice, simple PHP. And the Access data to MySQL. It was a tedious but worthy effort.

I’m glad I decided to re-launch the site instead of ditching my pet project. And since its return, a few dentists have requested to be added to the network.

Here are some awesome web development resources I’ve come across lately:

• 110+ Massive WordPress Video Tutorial Collection
• HTML, CSS, PHP and jQuery Killer Tutorials
• 10 Cool Things We’ll Be Able To Do Once IE6 Is Dead
• Alltop – All the info you need for Web Design

Here are some recent blog articles that are a must read for any web developer (especially front-end coders).

• Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone – Microsoft folks are claiming that IE8 will be standards-compliant.
• A Preview of HTML 5 – Wazzup with the next version of HTML?
• Add and Remove Elements with JavaScript (reprise) – very powerful code for implementing your unobtrusive JavaScript.
• Secure and Accessible Contact Form v3 – from Mike Cherim’s Beast-Blog, a great standards-friendly and accessible contact form (using PHP).

Captchas.net is a great free service that provides web accessible CAPTCHA so that your online forms can be saved from SPAM. Captchas.net also provides sample code for ASP, JSP, Perl and Python. The site is available in English, German, and Italian.

Here are some simple steps on how to install it on a PHP-driven web page, such as a contact form, which will be used in the instructions below.

1. Go to the Captchas.net web site and register an account.
2. Go to the page with the Captchas PHP code.
3. At the top of the page, download the PHP file “CaptchasDotNet.php” from the text link given (this file will be included in both PHP pages we create).
4. From the “query.php” example, create a PHP file for a contact form (or whatever) in your web site files. (The HTML in the given example is poorly coded, so I suggest completely rewriting it, or go to this example contact page that I set up with for an example of a web standards layout, and it uses Captchas too.)
5. In the PHP code, modify the client and secret variables; you should have received them when registering in Step 1. The other variables are optional, but you will probably need to tweak a bit to fit your design.
6. From the “check.php” example, create a PHP file to perform the Captcha checking and form processing (don’t forget to ensure the action of your form goes to this page).
7. In the PHP code, modify the client and secret variables as done in step 5.
8. You may wish to modify the error messages in the if and elseif statements.
9. After the else statement, enter the code for emailing the Contact information (or whatever code you want to run if the Captcha check is OK.)

My long-time “flagship” web site O.D. Mag is gone. It was an online magazine that I created with friend Mike Pfeiffer (see Most People Are DJs) way back in 1996. It featured poetry and prose, music articles, movie reviews, etc. The web site spawned from the O.D. fanzine that we has published during the two years prior.

O.D. had gone through several design revisions and had become quite interactive (with the power of PHP!). But the site was requiring too much time to maintain, and without making a buck (gotta feed the kids). So sorry to see you go, Opinion Dominatrix.

I’ve canceled a hosting account with CIHost that hosted the O.D. Mag site and others. I wouldn’t recommend them, try StartLogic. It was quite the hassle to cancel the account since it was connected to other projects. I had to move another web site and domain from this account and had to move a fair amount of files to another server for my Web Axe podcast. Then I had to fax a confirmation form to CIHost.

So now it’s all done. Good-bye O.D. Mag, it’s been fun.

For the Web Axe podcast/blog on web accessibility, I’ve made some good contacts in the last couple days. I’m lining up interviews with a few excellent folks in the field. I’m really looking forward to it.

• Mike Cherim, web developer focused on web accessibility, WordPress, PHP.
• Joe Dolson, web developer specializing in web accessibility.
• Mark McKay, founder of SpokenText which is an online application that creates audio files from computer files such as Word and PDF.