1. Framework knowledge
It seems that frameworks are one of the next big things. With the meteoric rise to fame of Rails, Django, and other MVC frameworks, developers have learned that they can build websites much faster with the help of these tools. Frameworks help you cut out much of the repetitive tasks that normal custom programming would require. Having knowledge of the top frameworks (Rails, Django, CakePHP, Symfony, and a few others), can give you a whole other dimension to your skill set.
2. Widget development
Widgets have changed how web development has been done in the past couple of years. With the advent of widgets, data has become more portable, interactive and most importantly, viral. It’s in almost every web startup’s business plan to include a widget or two at some point, mainly because it helps increase their audience and puts more eyeballs on their content.
Widget development requires knowing Javascript and/or flash, not to mention knowledge of the regular language that the parent site is built in.
3. Custom CMS themes
Designers and developers can always find work creating or customizing a CMS theme. As the popularity of CMS like Wordpress and Drupal have risen over the past years, so has the demand for creating themes for the software.
Many people use CMS to power their personal or business websites, so this work is always going to be around. A decent website needs a unique and usable design that reflects well on the brand behind it.
4. CMS Customizations and plugin development
CMS are great because it gives site owners with little technical know-how the ability to change aspects of their site on the fly with the help of modules. While most CMS platforms have a long list of modules to offer, many businesses and personal sites need more, and custom modules or plugins are the perfect solution.
Developers can have thriving businesses in CMS development and customization alone. Here are a few (and by no means all) of the top CMS platforms that could use plugin development and other customizations:
5. PSD to XHTML services.
Another one of the more popular skills needed is converting Photoshop files (PSD) to XHTML files for template use. Because designers don’t always know how to convert Photoshop layouts into template files, a CSS and XHTML ninja can always find work. Because of the array of browsers now in common use and the niggling differences in how they render sites, you want to be a web developer who can build-out sites that display the same in any browser. This kind of design to code service is the most sought after of them all.
6. Javascript Plugin creation
Much like the rise of CMS and MVC frameworks, Javascript frameworks are just as popular. These Javascript frameworks are built with the ability to add custom functionality in the form of modules. If you’re a developer who knows how to build custom Javascript modules for frameworks like jQuery or Dojo, you’ll have plenty of work available. Here are some of the most popular Javascript frameworks you might need to get a handle on.
7. Facebook/MySpace applications
Facebook and MySpace have both opened up their platform to allow developers API access, and the demand for social network apps has been huge since then. A whole new industry for web development sprang up overnight, and hundreds of applications are now added on a daily basis. The social media application platform has been found to be very viral and potentially very lucrative.
Some of these applications are built to make money or drive brand awareness, but ultimately the applications can be very successful and viral if they’re done properly. A solid developer can make a decent living creating Facebook and MySpace applications.
Social networks like Facebook require that you learn their own language of syntax, like the FBML (Facebook Markup Language), so there is a small learning curve to this skill.
8. iPhone applications
Yet another platform-specific skill set, building iPhone applications can be very profitable, and much like the social media applications, a great skill for any developer to know. Making an iPhone app that is accepted into Apple’s platform has an excellent chance at making great money or receiving tons of downloads.
This is a great thing for web developers because companies are starting to see the value in developing iPhone and other mobile technologies, and consequently will be wanting more and more applications developed in the future.
9. Ecommerce integration
Business web sites are always going to need ecommerce integration. Essentially, if you can take a language or framework (PHP or Rails) and fuse it with a payment gateway (like Paypal or Authorize.net), you’ll do well for yourself. I’m predicting that we’re going to see more paid services than free, ad-supported services being developed in the near future, as less money is being doled out to startups.
As the economy turns sour and the ad industry starts to get a little tighter, websites that use a subscription-based revenue model will start to become more common. Having the knowledge to piece together integration with online banking services like Paypal and Google Checkout will be great skills to have.
10. Flash and Actionscript Knowledge
Flash animation can do a lot for a website. Flash can be used to create videos, interesting navigation, fun animated sequences, widgets, and many other useful things on the Internet. The flash technology can add a very professional dimension to any website, and large websites and corporations always pay to have their sites look professional, and often commission Flash animated interfaces to showcase their products. With search engines working on ways to have Flash communicated better with them, this is a skill that’s sure to boom as the search technology advances.
Conclusions
Learning frameworks is one of the best way to increase your skill set and potential work as a freelancer. Whether it’s a Javascript framework, CMS, or MVC framework, taking the time to learn a new skill can be a huge advantage to finding work. Also, website owners pay big bucks for development that allows them to make money, because they see it not as a regrettable expense, but as an investment in future profit. Services like ecommerce integration, creating iPhone apps and flash knowledge will also be much-needed skills, and people will always pay for those skills.
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Glen Stansberry is a web developer and blogger who’s struggled more times than he’d wish to admit with CSS. You can read more tips on web development at his blog Web Jackalope.
Tags: developer help, developer tools, good developers things, tools for moderen web developement
There are a few special techniques or effects that can spice up just about any web page. These are the top 20 Ajax effects that every web developer should know. They’re essential parts of any web developer’s toolbox. If you haven’t seen them yet, you no doubt will in your future web development endeavors.
1. TextboxList meets Autocompletion
Auto-completing fields in a form can be a huge time saver and a major benefit to the user. For example, searching for email addresses is a chore that can easily made much more simple (and I dare say fun) with a splash of Ajax. TextboxList meets Autocompletion is one such example of an auto-complete script that takes a Facebook-esque approach to autocompletion. The implementation is crisp and useful, not to mention easy on the eyes.
2.Ajax IM
Ajax IM is an incredible Ajax instant messenger that works just like Yahoo! messenger or any other IM client, except it’s embedded on the website as opposed to a desktop client. Ajax IM is incredibly robust, and could add quite a bit to your user’s experience. If you’ve got a social networking site or any site where it’s encouraged for users to interact with each other, an IM client could be a great way to increase interaction.
3. LiveValidation
Web forms can be one of the most frustrating aspects of the Internet. Most are too long and try to collect too much information, and sometimes make it very hard for a valuable user to fill the form out. Possibly one of the most frustrating aspects of filling out a form is hitting “Submit” and getting errors that have to be corrected.
One way to ease the pain of web forms is to add Ajax validation that tells the user instantly when he’s made a mistake. LiveValidation is an excellent Ajax script that can make adding Ajax form validation super easy for the developer. A must-have for any project that uses forms.
4. Inline Editing
The ability to edit something inline is a small aesthetic feature that can really add to the user’s experience. There’s something much niftier with being able to click a text field and instantly have the ability to edit it.
Manoloweb has a great little Ajax implementation of an inline editor. It’s a tiny script, but it can be modified to be as simple or complex as you wish.
5. Ajax Upload
Uploading files with Ajax is so much nicer than the boring, old alternative. It’s nice to see the progress of the upload, and it can be much handier for the developer to be able to use Ajax uploads that only modify small sections of the web page.
Because there are many different flavors of Ajax uploading, a simple example that can be added to. AnyExample has a quick and excellent tutorial on how to make a basic Ajax upload that you can use as is or expand upon. If you’re looking for an immediate solution, check out jQuery’s jqUploader or the multiple file upload scripts.
6. Fancy Upload
Now that we’ve covered the basics for file uploading with Ajax, check out the excellent Fancy Upload. It’s built off of the excellent Javascript framework MooTools and can be styled and modified almost endlessly. It’s unobtrusive, can be placed inline and is server independent, so integrating this script to an existing app is relatively easy.
7. ClickHeat Clicks Heatmap
Heatmaps are an underused aspect in web development. While this may not be a wildly-popular feature that your users are begging for, heatmaps are excellent for the developer to see just what the site users are clicking on. While there are plenty of hosted services out there like crazyegg, you can also use your own hosted, Ajax-powered heatmap that’s completely free with ClickHeat.
ClickHeat is very simple, but also very powerful. It shows who’s clicking on what part of your page in a given date range. This can add plenty of insight as you tweak your layouts for the best performances. Knowing where your visitors click is absolutely essential information. You can visually see what ads are performing best, what links people like to click on, and much more data.
8. Ajax Mail Form
There’s nothing more valuable to a startup or brand new website than a simple form for your visitors to sign up for launch dates and site updates. If you can add Ajax to dynamically process the information, it’s a huge bonus. NinjaDesigns has a nifty little PHP script that allows you to add a signup form on your website that uses Ajax to send the information, so a new page isn’t loaded. Extremely valuable for any web developer.
9. Ajax Directory Manager
Navigating a traditional hierarchy or folder tree can be quite a pickle for a web user. Each click on a folder requires a page reload, and you can kiss drag-n-drop functionality goodbye. If you want to add a user-friendly directory manager, use Ajax.
Relay is a robust directory manager built on ajax that features an interface with features like:
- drag-n-drop file and folders
- dynamically loading file structure
- uploads with file progress bar
- user accounts
.. and more. Relay is totally fully featured, and can be used as a standalone application or a compliment to an existing site.
10. Ajax Email Client
Who doesn’t love Gmail? The email service by Google completely changed the way we use and think about email, and it also forced others like Yahoo! and Hotmail to play catchup and try to compete with Gmail’s features. Google accomplished all of this with a little help from our friend Ajax.
If you wanted to mimic Gmail and create your own Ajax email client, it’s a fun experiment and could be used for many applications. DevArticles has an “oldie but goodie”, a somewhat older but excellent article on how to set up your own Gmail clone.
11. Improve Form Usability with Auto Messages
Many of the scripts listed in this article deal with improving user forms, as it’s a big trouble spot for many web developers. The last thing a site owner wants is for people to abandon the website as they’re signing up for the service! If you can make the process of filling out the web form easier, you’ll have a much higher form completion rate.
Using auto messages for forms is an excellent way to give guideposts to the user. Woork has a stellar tutorial on how to add automatic messages to form fields, so that when they’re hovered on a little popup shows below the input. It’s a small feature to add, but huge for improving the user’s experience.
12. qGallery
While it isn’t a full-featured gallery, qGallery is an excellent example of using Ajax to request photos and media. It’s based around the prototype Javascript framework, and it’s a perfect little script for showcasing images. It even has cache functions built in to save bandwidth.
13. Ajax Star Rating
It seems that people almost always want to give their opinion on something. Having a simple way for users to create ratings is a great way to add interactivity to your website, and also gives the users a “voice”.
There is a simple Ajax script that will do this called the unobtrusive ajax start rater. This nifty little script allows users to rate just about anything you specify. It’s not tied to any platform, so you could literally use the script for anything that used PHP and MySQL.
14. CakePHP Ajax Form
If you’re a user of the web framework like Django or CakePHP, you’ll appreciate the tutorial by CakeBaker on how to submit a form with Ajax. It’s actually quite simple to do, and only requires a few lines of code. One especially useful function of this code is that it’s unobtrusive, meaning that if Javascript is disabled in the browser, the form will still submit, just not with Ajax.
15. Amberjack Site Tours
In terms of web developers, Amberjack is one of the most impressive Javascript libraries to date. Amberjack allows you to quickly and easily create site tours for your users that make using your website less of a mystery. The best part of Amberjack is that the whole library is less than 4kb in size! It’s incredibly easy to customize, and can really make a huge impact on your site visitors with only a little bit of work.
16. Prototype UI
Prototype UI takes all of the hard work out of creating visual Ajax elements like carousels and modal windows. The script is based off of Prototype and Scriptaculous, and it’s essentially a library of user interface classes. The library is constantly growing, and all of the features are highly skinnable and easy to customize.
It’s always hard to find different libraries for things modal boxes and carousels, so it’s nice when they’re all bundled together.
17. JCrop
Photo editing online is typically a rather involved process. Either you use a service like Picnik or you just fire up ‘ol Photoshop to edit your images. Wouldn’t it be nice if the website allowed you to crop the images that you were uploading?
This is now possible with a jQuery plugin called JCrop. JCrop allows your users to crop any image that’s been uploaded to your servers, using a powerful Ajax cropping engine. Brilliant.
18. jQuery Auto-tabbing Plugin
Like we’ve stated earlier, the job of the web developer is to make filling out forms as easy as possible for the site user. That means adding even the smallest feature if it enhances the user’s experience. One such example is using auto-tabs on things like phone number input fields and social security numbers. Lousyllama has an excellent jQuery plugin that allows you to auto-tab form fields that you specify.
19. Sort Table Rows with Ajax
Sorting table elements is an incredibly useful feature to have with pages that showcase lots of data. The Daily Inspired has a nifty tutorial that shows how to achieve this effect with Stuart Langridge’s sortable.js.
Tables are great at organizing data, but being able to further drill-down the information gives your users many more options to viewing the data they way that they want to.
20. DrasticMap
Google Maps is yet another revolutionary product from Google that relies heavily on Ajax to power the site. DrasticMap is a stellar Javascript/Ajax script that allows you to map coordinates stored in a MySQL database on top of a Google map. It’s highly flexible and configurable, and the possibilities are endless in the ways that it can be used.
