Update: We are no longer looking to fill this position, however, we’re always happy to receive interesting CVs to keep on record.

We are currently looking for an exceptional person to join our small team as a Junior Software Developer.

For all applicants we’d expect the following:

• - Good communication skills
• - Good verbal and written English
• - Experience developing web applications
• - At least 6 months experience with Ruby on Rails
• - General programming and scripting experience
• - Good OOP knowledge
• - Some CSS and XHTML/HTML knowledge
• - Comfortable with Linux/Unix
• - An eye for detail
• - Appreciation of design & usability
• - Experience or keen to use agile methodologies

The following would be advantageous:

• - Test-Driven Development (TDD) experience
• - Experience in other programming languages
• - Advanced knowledge of JavaScript and AJAX
• - Knowledge of usability issues

We’d look for the candidate to be…

• - friendly, honest, trustworthy in nature
• - organised and proactive
• - comfortable working in a small company
• - able to work in Farringdon, London

In return, we will…

• - be friendly, respectful and fair
• - give commercial, professional experience
• - share a ton of knowledge and experience
• - encourage and nurture self-development

Please send your covering letters, CVs and work examples to tom [at] talkingpixels.co.uk.

A Friday afternoon thought:

Everyone seems to have gone rather GTD (Getting Things Done) crazy. The fact that everyone is writing GTD software and blogging about it, surely indicates one of two things:

1. It really works and everyone’s got lots of time on their hands
or…
2. People are spending loads of time finding ways to avoiding actually employing the GTD methodology, whilst convincing themselves GTD is in the forefront of their mind … i.e. they are procrastinating

Can anyone clarify this for me?

We’re proud to announce the launch of a new e-commerce site for Elias & Grace, a boutique in Primrose Hill, London, selling designer maternity and children’s clothes.

www.eliasandgrace.com

The site is the fruits of what I consider to be a great working relationship between Elias & Grace, Aloof and ourselves. It has been designed and developed over the last few months, and despite the apparent simplicity of the end result, the process threw up some interesting design and technical challenges.

We look forward to hearing feedback from users about the site, seeing how Elias & Grace find the process of becoming an online retailer and working out how the site can continue to evolve.

A graphic designer and I had a discussion yesterday about adding a small piece of functionality to a site we are building together. I mocked up the elements and asked for some feedback. I was thinking along the lines of - ‘is this approach worth developing further?’. The designer’s response was along the lines of - ‘can you line A up with B, and C up with D?’. I said - ’sure, but do you think this is a good solution?’

This highlighted something interesting - i was thinking in terms of time and he was thinking about space. What i mean by that is that my

interests lay in the sequence of events that occurs between the user and the interface over a period of time; whereas his lay in the more static visual relationships between items on the page.

It was a reminder to me of how crucial it is to consider both of these factors to achieve successful interface design.

You may have noticed the beginnings of plans for CSS frameworks/conventions. It’s something i’ve been thinking about for a while now, so it will be interesting to see how this develops.

Something has crossed my mind more and more recently - the more we use frameworks such as Rails, Prototype, Scriptactulous, etc. the more I start to wonder about the longer-term effects of everyone using them. Let’s take Rails as an example - it’s really easy to do things such as auto-completed text boxes, standard error messages, AJAX with blind-down effects, etc. There’s an understandable excitement about these things - it’s refreshing after years of low-interactivity HTML. However, I predict some downsides. Firstly, inappropriate application of technology - rather than considering what is the best solution to a problem, designers and developers will gravitate towards the the easy options.

Secondly, it would be very easy to get complacent, with all these time-saving features and forget to innovate. Gizmos will only be impressive for so long, until everyone else is using them. Building your success on these kinds of features will leave you swamped with competition in the near future. I believe, forging ahead with your own ideas, while sensibly applying the help of frameworks is much healthier.

To conclude, what I’m pointing at here is not actually a problem with the frameworks themselves; it’s a problem of complacency in the mainstream workplace. There will always be a small number of people forging ahead with their own ideas, solving problems in radical new ways, setting the lead for everyone else to thoughtlessly follow…

Over and out.