Michael Scheper

Web Development

The first web page I ever wrote proudly featured links to 'other pages on the Mosaic'. I was confusing terminology; Mosaic was the only web browser I'd ever heard of, and perhaps the only web browser most people had ever heard of (assuming they'd heard of the web at all). This was in 1993, a golden time when Internet Explorer hadn't even been thought of, and Netscape Navigator wasn't yet released.

I've been developing web sites ever since, and by the turn of the century I was developing web sites for a living. I started doing this by writing Java applets, servlets, and plain ol' HTML as part of my work at the Berkeley Consultants Group. I enjoyed working with professional graphic designers; we collaborated on usability issues, and they helped me make my web applications look good.

Principles

Since I've worked directly with users through much of my software career, usability has always been my passion, along with code maintainability, browser compatibility, accessibility and internationalization. Some of these concepts were regarded as idealistic in the early days of the so-called information superhighway, so I seeked clients and employers who shared these ideals, allowing me to further develop those skills.

Recent Work

From 2007 to 2009, I was a web engineer at PlayFirst, a leader in the casual games industry. I did development and maintenance in Java, Python and JQuery/Javascript, and took part in a complete site redesign, and migrating from JSP to Apache Velocity.

The adjacent image is from a new PlayFirst profile page, which shows links to expand the summaries via jQuery animation and AJAX requests. The user profile image in this screenshot was created by a servlet with Java 2D code, which I wrote to manipulate avatar data uploaded from the Windows version of PlayFirst's Diner Dash: Hometown Hero—Gourmet Edition. (At the time of writing, this was also true for the profile page linked at the beginning of this paragraph.)

The screenshots below are of PlayFirst's affiliate site and forums pages, which are also chiefly my work. Click any of these thumbnails to view full-sized screen shots.

michaelscheper.com

After PlayFirst, I returned to contract work. To facilitate this and help win more freelance contracts, I revamped this web site in Python and Django. Although it's a less mature technology than Java or PHP, which I also have experience in, it strives to reduce repetitive 'boilerplate code', and is thus an exciting tool for rapidly developing quality code.

Screenshot of the PlayFirst Affiliate Site Screenshot of the PlayFirst Forums

Web development continues to be a mix of technology, each with its own pros and cons. Whatever the means, I strive to produce HTML that will be a great user experience for all users.