When I graduated college 4 years ago, I knew that one day I’d want to be part of a startup, or even better, start one of my own. I even attempted a few projects on my own, one of which was a project almost identical to Instagram, which I lovingly called Bonsai. I ended up abandoning the project because 1) I figured no one would use it since Twitter pretty much did the same thing, and 2) My programming and design skills were severely lacking, and I had no idea how to build an app.

Less than a year later I found myself at Zappos, where I met dozens and dozens of amazing and smart people, and learned what true customer service was. I actually couldn’t believe they hired me, as I thought I had bombed the technical part of the interview. But I’m grateful they did, because I’ve learned SO much from my peers about web development and design.

• html5 & css3
• JavaScript & jQuery
• Ajax
• Github
• How to defer/lazy load
• JavaScript/markup speed optimization
• Sprite optimization
• The difference between UX and VisD
• Countless UX best practices

Would you believe I had hardly used JavaScript, had never used jQuery or Ajax, and had never even heard of Git before I started at Zappos? That’s not to say I know everything there is to know about each topic, and I’ve definitely still got much to learn, but Zappos has provided me with so much knowledge about what it takes to build a fast, secure, and beautiful large-scale website.

In addition, I’ve also had the opportunity to attend some conferences I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford, including The Future of Web Design, The Future of Web Apps, CES, and CapitolJS. During the team outings I was able to visit Magic Mountain, BBQ and drink on a boat down the Colorado River, drink on a riverboat near Hoover Dam, and hike the beautiful mountains of Zion. I’ve been to almost every hotel on the strip, whether it be for an all-hands meeting or a vendor/holiday party. I’ve had the opportunity to try out tons of new restaurants, bars, and venues from the countless happy hours.

Not only did Zappos open my eyes to a whole new world of web development, but it welcomed me into their family with open arms. Before I had even started or moved to Vegas, I was friends with my new coworkers on Twitter, had been invited to sushi dinners, and by the end of my first week I was going out on Friday nights with my new CLT friends. I became so busy I didn’t even have a chance to be homesick.

So you can imagine how hard of a decision it was to leave and pursue 8byte8 full-time. Starting January 9, I will be working for 8byte8 full-time as a designer and front-end developer. There is absolutely no way I’d be able to do this had I not worked at Zappos. On top of learning how to build and manage a large-scale website, we’ve learned how we want to build and run a company.

I’m incredibly grateful for being given the opportunity to work at such a wonderful place. The past 2.5 years have flown by. Despite this incredibly long blog entry, there still aren’t enough words to describe how I feel about Zappos and the people who work there. I’m truly going to miss everyone, but I look forward to this new and exciting chapter in my life, and look forward to all the ups, downs, and challenges that building a startup brings. Wish us luck!

[NOTE] Did you know it’s harder to get into Zappos than it is Harvard? Zappos hires less than 1% of all applicants. Wow.

Goodbye, Gowalla

But let’s go back.

I loved their product from the beginning. As an early adopter, I submitted bug reports, submitted tickets about duplicate spots, and left comments about the lovely custom icon they made Zappos (waaaay before companies had to pay for custom icons). Gowalla was well-designed and beautiful (especially compared to FourSquare).

I loved Gowalla so much that I worked hard to convince my friends to start using it. Most were already using FourSquare and asked why they needed to use two location-based apps. Two reasons, I said. One: it has better design. Two: the items made the app so much fun.

Thinking about it later, I realized the genius behind items. When I first began using Gowalla I only used it to check in to places I had never been before so that I would receive a new stamp. But that was all – I opened the app, checked in, and closed the app… 15 seconds max. Once I understood the idea behind items I became hooked. I started checking in at places I had already been to and went to every day (work, Starbucks, the gym, etc). I realized that Gowalla was giving me something in return for the free data I was giving them – the excitement behind whether or not I would receive a bonus item after checkin. I also realized that I was using the app longer as well – checking to see what items were at the places I checked in at, looking to see what items my friends had, etc.

[NOTE] I remember seeing a tweet from the official Gowalla account about how “WELL MAYBE IF YOU GUYS EXPLAINED TO YOUR FRIENDS HOW ITEMS WORKED WE WOULDN’T HAVE HAD TO REMOVE THEM.” I tried to find it again but it looks to have been removed. Ummm, really? Our responsibility to explain and figure out how your shit works?

Being such a huge fan of Gowalla, I didn’t think there was much they could do to piss me off. I don’t care if only .05% of their users are using the items feature, and I certainly agree with the chatter on Twitter about how that probably happened because Gowalla stopped paying any attention at all to that feature and started making it less and less prominent in app releases. Yeah, of course users aren’t going to use a feature you don’t explain and that is difficult to use in the iPhone app.

Anyway, needless to say, I stopped using Gowalla the day they announced items would be no more. It’s been removed from the home screen of my iPhone and I’ll likely end up permanently deleting the app (I just haven’t had the heart to do it just yet) as it’s no longer any use or fun to me. I’d be curious to know if Gowalla noticed any usage decrease after announcing that they’ve dropped support for items.

[NOTE] Did anyone catch the bitter in my voice?

After nearly 6 months of design and development, I’m proud to announce the official beta launch of my first web app, Lystee. I teamed up with Jason Hurt on the project, with whom I’ve done several Hack-a-Thons at Zappos. Jason took care of the back-end and release work while I handled the front-end and design aspects. It was incredibly fun to work on a project from conception to finish (although let’s be honest, what project is every really “finished”?), and it was super fun doing my own design and UX work (which I love, but don’t generally have a chance to do at Zappos). One of my goals for 2011 is to receive a Dribbble invite, so hopefully this design brings me one step closer (anyone?). :D

So, what is it?

Introducing Lystee!

I like to describe Lystee as an app that “makes lists fun again.” I have always been a big fan of the book Listography and thought it would be fun to create an app based on that idea. However, I wanted to make the app more social and enjoyable by allowing users to share their lists on their favorite social networking sites and by allowing users to collaborate on lists. We all know there are a ton of list-making apps on the web and mobile platforms, but I wanted this app to stand out in that it is meant for “fun” – not to-do lists, task lists, or grocery lists (although you can certainly still use Lystee for those things… but my favorite to-do app is TeuxDeux), but for lists such as where you’d like to travel, bucket lists, favorite foods, and so on.

The name

Lystee lists

Would you believe how hard it is these days to find a free, non-parked .com domain? We went through a ton of names that involved the correct spelling of “list” but couldn’t find anything that was available. Grrrr domain parkers! At one point we were calling the project “SocialLyst” (which we thought was funny) but in the end, we thought the name might offend some people. I’m a huge fan of 2-syllable names and wanted to keep the name short and sweet, so we eventually went with Lystee, whose .com domain was free. It was until after we had already bought and deployed in beta that I realized Lystee sounded like “list tea” and that Listtea.com is available. Oh wells.

The Tech Stack

If anyone is interested in knowing what tech stack we’re using, here it is:

Back-end

• Python
• Django
• MongoDB
• LightHTTPD
• memcached

Front-end

• html5/css3 (some)
• jQuery
• handlebarsJS

LLCs

Jason and I decided we didn’t want to be sued for anything regarding what people used our application for, so we registered an LLC. I had no idea how much paperwork would be involved, or how expensive it would be. However, it’s definitely worth the peace of mind we’ll have, for this app and for the future projects we collaborate on.

Startup Weekend

Startup Weekend is coming to Las Vegas!

Las Vegas is hosting its very first Startup Weekend on June 24-26. I’ve been wanting to attend a Startup Weekend event for awhile now, but was never able to attend any of the Boulder events when I was living in Colorado. This particular Startup Weekend is happening the weekend before the Future of Web Apps conference (also in Las Vegas) so I’m sure there will be lots of great mentors and investors present. This event is going to be held at the El Cortez Hotel in old downtown Las Vegas (El Cortez Hotel is one of the many businesses helping to revitalize the downtown area), and should be a really fun event.

There will also be a stream of Jelly sessions leading up to Startup Weekend. I went to the first one this past Tuesday and it was great – very productive and I met lots of nice, like-minded people. If you live in Las Vegas and have any side projects that you want to work on, you should definitely come out and join us!

[NOTE] Also, take a look at who one of the judges will be for the event!

Future of Web Apps

Future of Web Apps is coming to Las Vegas!

Las Vegas is also hosting the Future of Web Apps conference this year! The speaker lineup is really impressive, and I’m very much looking forward to a lot of the sessions that are scheduled. Both of these events are a huge win for the emerging Tech culture in downtown Las Vegas!

After nearly two years, I’ve finally updated my site with a new design. This post is a little overdue as the design has been up for a few weeks now, but between the Future of Web Design Conference, moving into a new apartment, and making tweaks to this site, I haven’t found a lot of time to write.

Jen finally got off her lazy ass and redesigned her site

My last design was put together in a hurry, and not a lot of thought went into it. While this design still doesn’t please me 100%, it doesn’t make me cringe each time I visit my own site (ha!). Mostly, though, I wanted a design that would motivate me to continually update the site: through writing, personal projects, and showcasing the fun things I’ve been working on at work. Much like I can’t focus in a messy space, I’m not easily motivated to add content with a design I hate.

So, what’s new? Honestly, not a lot. However, the redesign did give me an excuse to truly mess with HTML5 and CSS3 for the first time.

HTML5 Elements

My site uses the html5 doctype and implements the new header, footer, article, and nav elements. The contact form uses the email input type and the placeholder attribute.

To make sure this site still works in older browsers, I used the html5 boilerplate and the Modernizr JavaScript library for feature detection.

[NOTE] Don’t forget to checkout A Book Apart’s first publication, HTML5 For Web Designers by Jeremy Keith.

CSS3 Elements

One of my favorite aspects of css3 is the ability to have multiple background images on an element, which I used in two places on this site – once in the header and once in the footer. I’m curious, though – is there a way via JavaScript or jQuery to select all the background images on an element? I wanted to attempt a fun animation using the multiple backgrounds, but wasn’t sure how to go about getting them into an array. Will need to look more into this.

Some other css3 elements I used were border-radius (<3), column-count, and box-shadow. I love, love, love css3. <3

[NOTE] The newest A Book Apart publication, CSS3 For Web Designers by Dan Cederholm is now available!

Fun & Things

IE6 makes us all cry

The redesign also uses TypeKit (Museo Sans… yes, I know, it’s everywhere… whatever), jQuery, and does not support IE6. Besides, IE6 is dead, anyway.

This was also the first time I created a WordPress theme. Normally I just hack in the pieces of WordPress that I need, but this time I decided to make things simpler on myself and create a template. It wasn’t as complicated as I thought, and now I’m wondering why I avoided it for so long.

Inspired by some of the talks at the Future of Web Design Conference, I’d like to try and add in a few fun elements to the site (like easter eggs) but that will likely have to wait until the new year. I have a few more small projects I’d like to finish before then, one of which I hope to release here shortly.

And that’s it, folks. While I’m still not completely happy with the design (I think I’ll end up redoing the header soon), I’m content with it. Please let me know if you find any bugs or weird style issues. I’m sure I missed something, somewhere.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Future of Web Design conference in NYC. The conference was 2 days and offered a third day of workshops for those who were interested.

Future of Web Design – New York City

While I feel I am decent at design, I definitely consider myself a developer above all else. That being said, I wouldn’t recommend this conference for people hoping to get very technical with code, as most of the sessions leaned more towards design and UX than they did towards development. Luckily I happen to have a strong interest in design, UX, and typography, so I still enjoyed the sessions and learned a ton.

[NOTE] If you are hoping to get more technical or could care less about design, go to JSConf or jQuery Conf instead – I immensely enjoyed jQuery Conf when I went this past April.

Speakers & Sessions

Funnily enough, my favorite speakers weren’t the ones who dove into more technical topics (they were still good), but were the ones who talked about user experience and trying to do more than just simply satisfy users. I’ve always been a fan of adding a bit of fun into things and never understood why companies have always felt the need to be so uptight and serious (must be why I love working at Zappos). This seemed to be the theme of FOWD 2010, and at least 3 sessions were geared towards going above and beyond – “Designing for Emotion” by Aarron Walter, “Design to Delight” by Doug Bowman, and “Beyond Usability: The Art of Experience Design” by Aral Balkin. All interesting sessions, all great speakers.

Future of Web Design – Speakers

I also very much enjoyed Ethan Marcotte’s session on “Responsive Web Design.” Ethan talks a bit about it in his chapter of Dan Cederholm’s book, Handcrafted CSS, and also wrote a very good article about it on A List Apart back in May. I’ve recently become a big fan and proponent of fluid design (even though my current site isn’t at the moment… I know, I know, I’m working on it…), so I loved listening to and watching Ethan’s code examples.

Matt Smith’s “The Changing Face of Typography” session was also very interesting for a typography novice like myself. Sure, I know how to use and implement TypeKit, but I was really interested to hear about font pairing and how and why different fonts can work well together – stuff I know nothing about.

The End

Overall I enjoyed the conference and walked away very inspired to try some new things with design, but didn’t necessarily learn a lot (that I wasn’t already familiar with) development-wise. Ah well, there’s always Future of Web Apps to look forward to!

When I started at Zappos.com last year and began using a MacBook and OS X for the first time, I was introduced to TextMate. Being a noob at the whole Apple thing, I had no idea which applications to use for development. On Windows I had always used TextPad. However, given that at Zappos my alternate text editor choice was Vim, I immediately opted for TextMate. Since then, we have become more than just acquaintances – we’ve become friends.

Keyboard shortcuts ftw

Now, I should probably forewarn you and say upfront that I am a keyboard shortcut whore. I love them. The less I have to use my mouse or trackpad, the better. So you can imagine how difficult things were for me the first few weeks when I switched from PC to Mac. I know I could have hacked my keyboard to recognize ctrl instead of cmd, but I was determined to be a true Apple convert. On top of that, a lot of the keyboard shortcuts I had learned in TextPad were different in TextMate. So, one of the first things I did was look up some keyboard shortcut cheat sheets.

For you super nerds, there’s also a TextMate keyboard shortcuts background image available for your desktop.

Make it pretty

I also had to make TextMate pretty. I wasn’t a fan of the default color schemes, so I looked around until I found one I loved, although there are a lot of user-submitted themes available.

Now, make it better

Probably my favorite TextMate find is a keyboard shortcut hack that brings your cursor to the first non-space character on a line.

Gotta love improved efficiency.

I don’t normally listen to many (if any) podcasts. I can hardly find time to watch television and movies, and with such a short commute to work I’m barely able to hear an entire song before I’m at my desk. When developing I prefer music, as it helps me tune out distractions.

The Big Web Show

However, a few weeks ago my friend Dave highly recommended I check out The Big Web Show podcast, hosted by Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman. Each episode features a special guest who is somehow related to an area of the web, (development, typography, art direction, publishing, etc).

To be honest, what first drew me in was the fact that Jeffrey Zeldman co-hosts it. I mean, he’s one of the fathers of front-end web development, so of course I’m going to check it out. And I have to say, I really like this podcast. I like that it’s not entirely geared towards front-end (although the show has its fair share of famous front-end guests), as my interest in the web extends to many areas – typography, graphics, user experience and interface design, optimization, etc. I may not be good at all of these areas, but I find all of them interesting.

Watch now

I haven’t had a chance to watch all of the back episodes yet, but I’d like to eventually. Be sure to check at least one episode out!