HTMList.com, A Web Development Blog by Synapse Studios

HTML 5 is coming our way. So goes the theory, anyway. (Recent chatter puts widespread adoption by user agents at close to a decade out from now… or more.) It is still a moment that many of us are eagerly anticipating. I remember drooling over my keyboard while reading through the HTML 5 Specifications the first time. We have been stuck with HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 for a long time and it is time to see some changes.

(In fact, HTML 4.01 has presented us with the longest gap in HTML revisions—it’s been 10 years since it was released; HTML 3.2 only lasted about a year, from 1997 to 1998.) There are some great things we have to look forward to that will make life a lot easier for us developers and designers. We’ll take a look at a few of them after the jump.

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Tagged with: attributes, browsers, css, dom, html, html 5, javascript, tags, w3c, websites, xhtml

Posted in: Design, Development, Tech News

As the guys around the office are well aware, I tend to obsess over minor details in our code. Whether it be fixing code formatting to be tabbed properly or renaming variables to better fit naming conventions of a project, the developers hate when I meddle in the codebase. Is it my fault that sometimes I miss a few when I go through and rename variables, functions, methods, etc? Clearly, no. The joys of being the boss.

But what I really want to discuss is something I don’t consider so minor, complying with web standards. Most times when I am doing web development I prefer to go with the HTML 4.01 strict doctype. We try to observe strict standards wherever we can, and they have helped us to avoid patterns of behavior that are more prone to errors. We make sure that notices and E_STRICT are enabled on the PHP side. While developing, our templating system is set to validate our markup against its doctype in a very angry way that we both love and hate. The added benefits of sticking so closely to the standards is that you can pick up errors through malformed output that browsers obfuscate, and you can achieve a greatest amount of compatibility between browsers. As any good website designer knows, creating web pages that render the same in every browser can be a royal pain (thanks Microsoft).

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Tagged with: ajax, html, standards, strict, w3c, wordpress, xhtml, xml

Posted in: Design, Rants

My name is Jeremy Lindblom, and I am the new summer intern here at Synapse Studios. Synapse Studios contacted me after reading my resume on the ASU Sun Devil CareerLink website. After an extensive interview and a very extensive waiting period, they brought me aboard. I’m excited to jump in to some enterprise-level development and really start to learn the exciting, and constantly-changing, field of web development.

This fall, I will be starting my senior year at Arizona State University. I’m studying Computer Science with a concentration in software engineering. My passions are definitely in the web development arena. I aspire to become a skilled developer, and to produce quality work that I get payed well for. I have also been accepted to the Integrated Masters Program, and will simultaneously start grad school throughout my senior year.

In the past I have developed mainly with XHTML, CSS, and PHP, and have done many projects over the past few years. Recently, I have been working with CampusSpots.com to develop their website and prepare it for expanding across the country. Other personal projects include Finding Restaurants and Regular Heroes (my band).

Though web development is fun, I often find my attentions divided to my other interests. I love performing. I love to participate in musical theater, ballroom dance, choirs, and other performing. Right now I play keyboard and sing backup for Regular Heroes. I also enjoy writing piano and choir music, lyrics, poetry, and fictional stories. Other interests include making funny faces, picking up loose change, religion, and dark chocolate.

I live in Mesa, AZ, with my lovely wife Penny, and we don’t have any kids yet.

Tagged with: arizona state university, css, music, php, web development, writing, xhtml

Posted in: People