When I started freelancing over two years ago, my original goal was to make enough money to be able to pay bills with a little left over, and to be able to choose the kinds of projects I really wanted to work on. I met these goals a lot quicker than I thought I would, in addition to getting married to a back-end programmer who likes to work on projects with me.

So I’ve been at this crossroad for awhile now, and while I’ve been putting it off in pursuit of other things, I feel it’s finally time to make a decision on many important things this week:

1. Do I get serious about iPhone app development and really start to study it? I really enjoy it.
2. Should I move my web development business to mobile development – both web and app? Or should I offer both what I do now AND iPhone app development? Or should I bank on one of my personal projects taking off and no longer accept client projects? Or both?
3. If I decide to stay in front-end web development, what’s next? Should I start investing my time in offer extra services to clients, like responsive web development? Or learn more platforms? Or continue in-depth learning of HTML/CSS and WordPress?
4. Should I start to transition my online persona to Amber Makeyev (my now official name), and how to do so without losing all the SEO and name-recognition I’ve gained?
5. Should I start to transition my business from a one-person website to something more in general, now that my husband has teamed up with me on a lot of projects?
6. Do I really want to continue living outside of Nashville TN, in our nice home, next to my family, or move somewhere else, in a dream location? I fell in love with Ft. Lauderdale, FL, St. Thomas VI, and I’m now in my dream country, the UK. U.K. is REALLY expensive to live in…so I’d have to really up my project rates again just to be comparative to my lifestyle here. And we’re wanting to start a family and I’d hate to be away from my family when we do.

Arg so as you can see, a lot of turmoil over here. Would love your thoughts though, and how you dealt with these kinds of issues yourself.

I’ve never been a big fan of video on the web either, since I’m never at my computer unless I’m working so I never have time to watch. However, upon learning that Think Vitamin created a new membership service, called Think Vitamin Membership, I was immediately interested.

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A lot of people are afraid to jump into web development because of this choice paralysis. Depending on what they want to do, they hear endless opinions about how and where one should start.

I’ve been a front-end developer myself for over ten years, since I was in the sixth grade. So I’ve definitely been there at each language’s beginning. I was there when there were no standards or CSS, and I’m here now to tell you what’s really important to know if you want to be a developer.

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Web technology is always evolving and it seems that every day there’s something new that’s come out. It’s enough to make a sane developer crazy – and unfortunately that means we can never take a rest from our world, or we risk being left behind. (Man that sounds like an awesome movie trailor…)

I’d love to share with you some of things I’ve been learning lately, as well as some new(or new to me) coding tricks.

HTML/HTML5

Frankly, I got so tired of hearing about HTML5, that I finally decided to try it. I now validate all of my sites in HTML5 and use all of the new shorten info in the head tag that comes along with it. However, I don’t use any of the hew HTML5 tags, as they require hacks to get them to work in Internet Explorer. We all know how I feel about hacks, and it’s isn’t good.

In order to help me learn and understand the updates to HTML, I’ve bought several books (and written reviews for you) on the subject:

• HTML5 For Web Developers
• Building Findable Websites
• The Smashing Book
• Hardboiled Web Design (bought but not read yet)

Of course I have a TON of books on my wishlist for all of these categories!

CSS/CSS3

I’ve been using CSS3 for several months now and have been able to convince my clients to embrace the idea of progressive enhancement. CSS3 has sped up my coding noticeably, as I no longer have to take the time to slice and code up images for shadows, rounded corners and the like. Also, the new advanced selectors have made my code cleaner and more efficient. I think this is why I’m starting to enjoy mobile development more – because I don’t have to worry about IE at all and can pretty much use CSS3 to it’s fullest.

And the books I’ve read on the subject:

• Advanced CSS
• Smashing CSS
• CSS3 for Web Designers (bought but not read yet)

Improvements To Coding

All this book reading would be for nothing if I didn’t actually learn and implement any of it. In fact, I learned a ton and have made major revisions to the way I write CSS and a few to HTML as well.

CSS

I continue to prefer single line CSS, but I’ve now just started to put my declarations in alphabetical order. While I’m still getting used to this, it’s made it a lot easier to find what I’m looking for, especially on longer lines. I’ve also learned some nifty new selectors I never though to use before. The most helpful has been the use of:

 a > d {}

Which selects only the top level child of the element. This select has been so incredibly useful, I can’t believe I never used it before.

I’ve also started using shorter selectors and not chaining them as much. This makes the file smaller and quicker to implement on loading.

HTML

Besides switch over to the HTML5 doctype and using the new <head> elements, there’s not much I’ve changed in my HTML. I have stopped using containers as much as possible, and instead have started centering the divs, and putting backgrounds on the <html> and <body> tags. This lends to much cleaner code.

To see examples of all of these, you’re welcome to download my Hijinks WordPress theme, which is the exact same theme I use for all the WordPress sites I code.

Other Languages/Platforms

I’ve also been experiencing with other languages and CMS’s and here are some books on those topics as well:

WordPress

I actually didn’t start WordPress development until the very end of 2009, I can’t believe how far I’ve come in learning!

• Digging Into WordPress

Objective C
I spent most of the spring, summer and beginning of the fall reading this book. I’m still no where near to making my own apps, but the foundation is there.

• Beginning iPhone3 Development

jQuery
This book has allowed me to start writing my own jQuery from scratch. No longer do I have to haggle with plugins or ask the fiance to do it for me.

• jQuery Novice to Ninja

What about you?

What are some of the things you’ve learned this year in order to make yourself better for the next?

I was quite impressed by this book, and it has to be the first and only coding how-to book that I enjoyed and actually looked forward to working on every night. Unfortunately it took me four months to finish, but that was only because I could only work on it for 30 minutes a few nights a week.

Synoposis

Beginning iPhone 3 Development is a 555 page, black and white paperback book. It’s written in very clear language and takes you step-by-step through most kinds of iPhone apps, and even touches on OpenGL, which is what is used to make iPhone games.

The book assumes a working knowledge of Objective-C, but was simple enough to follow along with no knowledge of the language at all. Now that I’ve finished, I’m contemplating picking up a beginner’s Objective C book to compliment this one, as I’m still not knowledgeable enough to create the apps I want.

This book definitely gets 5 out of 5 stars. It was easy to follow along, the apps were exciting and fun to build and the authors were silly enough to be fun and enjoyable.

Chapters

The chapters are laid out well and take you through all different kinds of apps and functionalities.

1. Welcome to the Jungle - Installing the SDK and introductions
2. Appeasing the Tiki Gods – A walkthrough of Xcode and Interface Builder
3. Handling Basic Interaction – Short explanation of MVC and a quick app
4. More User Interface Fun – Learning controls, images, text fields, alerts
5. Autorotation and Autosizing – Rotating views and expanding layout
6. Multiview Applications
   
7. Tab Bars and Pickers
8. Introduction to Table Views
9. Navigation Controllers and Table Views
10. Application Settings and User Defaults
11. Basic Data Persistence – Storing and retrieving data, SQLite3
12. Drawing with Quartz and OpenGL
13. Taps, Touches and Gestures
14. Where Am I? Finding Your Way to Core Location
15. Whee! Accelerometer - Shaking, moving the iPhone
16. iPhone Camera and Photo Library
17. Application Localization - multiple languages and countries
18. Where to Next? - list of resources

Worth The Purchase?

Definitely. Although I’m by no means ready for the App Store, I’ve gained a lot of knowledge with this book and feel ready for the next in their series.

By the way, the download of Xcode, Interface Builder and the Simulator is free, along with the free developer account. However if you want to put the apps on your actual phone or sell in the app store, you have to pay a $99 fee. However, all the apps in the book work pretty well in the simulator, so no need to pay the fee just to do these apps.

Buy It Now

You can find Beginning iPhone 3 Development in Amazon for only $26.39

Have You Read This Book?

What are your thoughts on it?

Unlike HTML and CSS, it’s a bit tougher to jump into back-end languages and “just get started”. It’s not as easy as hitting “view source” on a site you like and using firebug to figure out how to manipulate things and what does what. Just like learning a new speaking language, it takes a lot of work and practice. The hardest part though, is simply figure out how and where to start.

If You’re New To Development

If you think CSS is a secret government agency and you’ve never ever seen an HTML tag, it’s probably better to start at the basics. Even if you’re planning on being a PHP or Objective-C developer, in order to being understanding code and how it affects what you see, it’s better to start at the beginning – with HTML and CSS.

HTML and CSS are easy enough to learn the basics on your own without anything other than a simple text editor (Like Textpad that comes with your computer) and access to the web. Luckily enough for you, you don’t even need any file transfer software because you can build simple HTML sites and view them off the web in your browser!

I don’t recommend getting an HTML/CSS book, as it’s pretty easy to learn on your own. Copy the HTML from your favorite site, paste it into your text area and look at the code. The cool thing about HTML, is that everything is pretty obviously as to what it is. a <p> is a paragraph, a <div> is a division or block of space, etc etc. Starting changing the code, save it and look at what happens in the browser. How do you move stuff? What breaks?

And remember, Google is ALWAYS your best friend. Googling code issues was the way I was able to quickly learn advanced WordPress development.

Advanced Steps

After you’ve learned the basics, it’s time to choose where you want to go. Do you want to stay in front-end development and continue learning advanced HTML/CSS? You can always add in PHP and/or jQuery and be able to do almost anything a client would need.

What if you want to get into mobile apps? I can tell you from experience learning a software language like Objective-C is one of the hardest things to do. The syntax isn’t as easy as HTML and they aren’t really self-explanatory either.

Here are some ways I’ve found that make the learning process easier:

• Get a book - There are two kinds of coding books: books that teach the basics of the code, and books without much code, but that teach theory. I love getting HTML/CSS books that focus on semantics, usability and ways to clean up and optimize your code. However, if you choose to branch into a more advanced language, I’d recommend with starting with a regular coding book and getting a theory book after you’ve started with the basics.
• Learn theory & syntax – You don’t just need to know where to put a piece of code, you need to know WHY you put that piece of code there. For example, why use a float instead of a position?  Margins instead of padding? Every code language has a rhyme and reason to it, and you’ll never fully understand the language until you understand it’s structure and theory.
• Do something – Example books are great, but just following the examples doesn’t get you anywhere far. After you’ve followed and example and learned how to do something, stop and make your own app or example. See if you can redo it without looking back at the book for help. The most I’ve ever learned have always come from personal projects.
• Ask for help – There’s nothing wrong with asking the community for help as long as they can see you’re actually trying to learn it and not just asking for free work. Sites like Twitter, Stack Overflow and *shameless plug* Codesnipp.it are filled with happy and helpful devs ready to answer any sort of bizarre coding questions you can think of.
• Tutorials – I recently started following MobileTuts+ because they had some awesome tutorials and theory articles for iPhone development. And this is really saying something because I HATE tutorials.

The Best Tip Ever For Learning Anything In Life…

…is just to start doing it. You can go through 100 development books, several classes and tutorials and never learn anything. The best way (and I’m guilty of not doing this yet for Obj-C) to learn it is to go out and start building stuff with it. Perfectionism comes with time and practice!

Advice?

What’s your advice for learning advanced development languages? Are you having any problems learning?