Technology

It is tempting. Very tempting. You work for the Man and dream about being on your own, working flexible hours, choosing projects you like, calling yourself a full-time webdesign freelancer. Before you make your decision to “jump”, living your current employer, find out what professionals have to say about realities of being a freelancer. Maybe it is not the right moment for you? Maybe you are not good enough yet? Or maybe you don’t see great advantages of your current workplace? Good research is the key point so you can base your decision on facts not feelings and expectations.

Here are a few links that should be useful:
Cameron Moll - http://cameronmoll.com/
- Full-time freelancing: 10 things learned in 180 days (Cameron Moll)
- Full-time freelancing: 10 more things in 360 days (Cameron Moll)
- Farewell to freelancing: Final lessons learned (Cameron Moll)

Digital-Web – http://www.digital-web.com/
- Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site (Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain)
- To Dance the Dance of Freelance (Matthew D. Jordan)

You Suck at Web Design – http://www.yousuckatwebdesign.com
- The Freelancer Employee Handbook (Matthew D. Jordan)
- Seven Ways to Get Your Client to Pay (Matthew D. Jordan) – don’t read it at work because you won’t be able to stop laughing!

Mainframe.gr
- 24 Freelancing tips (or the alphabet of a freelancer)

Do you know any other useful link? Feel free to leave them in the comments.

For my projects I use Google Analytics because it answers all the questions I have about the traffic on my websites. Although I realised it is worth to have a deeper look into the available stats solutions when I found Crazyegg on the Internet. It allows you to “Get a clearer picture of where your visitors are clicking and enhance your site’s results”.

I haven’t tested it yet but it is worth attention.

One of the reasons I have started sharingmatters.com was to collect links of ‘must-read’ articles found on the internet.

Does Your Copy Hold Up To A Quick Glance? is one of such editorials. It is a professionally written article, based on eyetracking researches, aimed on explaining how to keep the visitors on your website and let them read your content insted of just scanning it. If you have anything to do with webdesigning, you’ve got to read it!

This post is also a great occasion to recommend you the website where the above article is published: www.digital-web.com

Wikipedia is a free encyklopedia where people all over the world manage the content of it. You can find the answers to many questions very quickly and without paying a penny. But you need to be careful because this is not as reliable source of knowledge as Britannica.

It came out that one of the promintent editoris and administrators of Wikipedia, Essjay, was found to have posted false information on his Wikipedia userpage. “He had claimed to hold doctoral degrees in theology and canon law as a tenured professor at a private university he was in fact a community college dropout from the U.S. state of Kentucky and had relied on sources such as Catholicism for Dummies when editing articles”. He had edited over 20,000 phrases on the Wikipedia.

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When surfing the Internet many times we click on images to see an enlarged versions of them. Usually it is done using simple pop-up window that appears on our screen. But there is a nicer way to achive this. Lightbox is the answer. Simply click on the image, the screen goes dark and you can see an animation revealing bigger picture you wanted to see. It looks pretty and allows you to save a lot of effort and place because it has a slide show option implemented as well. Useful solutions for webmasters (you can donate the author to show your appreciation) and for users. If you build a website and want to use a Lightbox on it, think how much time you save as ready-to-go solution is waiting for you.

A List Apart Magazine (“For People Who Make Websites”) explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.

It is one of the most popular places in the Internet for people designing websites. You can find there lots of articles with advices, solutions and ideas written by experienced webmasters, helpful epsecially for those who want to stick to the web standards.