Introduction

I thought it would be useful for me to start a professionally-based blog rather than polluting my Rugybmadgirl blog with stuff about XHTML, CSS and web technologies, which is for entirely different audiences. So here goes...

I'm a web designer and developer with 10 years experience of coding sites - I started with Notepad back in '96 and have progressed quite a lot since then! My current weapons of choice are:

• Dreamweaver8 - Macrodobe's latest offering (I've been using DW since version 4) which has much better support for CSS layout, XHTML and .Net than its predecessors
• PhotoshopCS - essential for graphics preparation and photographic retouching
• Firefox 1.5 with various plugins, notably:
  

1. Web Developer Toolbar - turn off css or javascript at the flick of your mouse, outline block level elements, debug scripts, and heaps more.
2. Tidy HTML validator - great as it runs on your localhost and immediately validates any page directly in the browser. Especially useful if you are developing offline or for intranet apps when you can't get the W3C validator to play ball - its the same validation engine
3. IE Tab - allows you to open tab in Firefox which uses the IE rendering engine - dead handy if you have a pathalogical fear of using Internet Explorer :-)
   
4. Foxytunes - for keeping you supplied with music, this plugin gives you all the basic controls over your media player of choice in the status bar of the browser, and takes up much less task-bar real estate than the minimized Media Player
   

• XHTML - usually 1.0 transitional, but sometimes 1.0 strict. Essential if you want to improve your standards-compliance and accessibility for your content
• ASP.NET - I have developed a few sites driven by .net, and have found it to be resonably easy to get to grips with. Examples are:
  

1. www.cazphoto.co.uk - an online portfolio site for my general photography
2. www.rugbypix.com - specialising in my rugby photography
3. www.johnflood.co.uk - electronic publishing for John Flood, professor of Law & Sociology
   

• Access2000 - so far, the sites I have developed have not needed the extra scalability required by mySQL or SQL Server, but I do intend to build sites with mySQL in the future.

I'm also looking to develop my PHP skills in the near future.