Personal Blog of Thomas Michael Semmler: Web Development, Design, and Website Making.
This post is probably too long, but I need someplace that I can refer to. As is often the case, I am writing this to sort my thoughts, primarily. But I am hoping to give voice to what I am observing in other people in our field but is rarely spoken about. I am not attempting to postulate a solution to a complex problem; instead, I am trying to provide words in the hopes that they resonate with…
Yes. I have also written one of those annual-conclusion posts (thank you for reading <3). As is the case with everything I write here, it serves primarily a documenting function, with the optional bonus of maybe even adding some value to whoever reads it. Recapping 2022 and projecting the near future feels extra appropriate — even necessary — this time, because 2022 has been a very big year for me…
Heads up - these specific words were important for me to write down and to share with people who might feel similar, more than a year ago. You might feel criticized or even attacked by some of the positions taken in this text. For that I can't apologize, yet at the same time I am asking you to realize that they aren't intending to attack. It's an observation based on subjective experiences,…
I saw this post from Vitaly Friedman on smashingmagazine.com and it resonated well with lots of realisations I've had recently about my own career. So I wanted to compile my own list of things I really would have wanted to know earlier. It is important to me to mention, that I don't write this with regret or resentment for me or my career nor to I wish to undo my decisions. At the same time, as a…
There was this tweet. You know which one. Well, this post is an attempt to bring structure to what went through my mind when I saw it. First I'd like to dissect a bit more what irks me about the original premise of the tweet, and I'm ending with a suggestion for an alternative mindset - but in the same frame of the original tweet. Obviously this is not meant to insult. But I do believe that we…
"Do you wanna focus on design or development?", people I worked with used to say all the time "It'd be good for us to know so we know where your career is going". For a while I thought I had to decide but I eventually decided to pursue right what is in between, the middle between Design & Development. I still think that my sweet spot of talent and experience is right there, but after a few months…
This time of the year usually means introspection, readjustment and realignment for me on a personal level. This time, it's really special, as I reflect upon the last 6 months, since leaving my previous job. I decided to leave. I left a lot behind, because the individuals that made up my team and the greater company in general, where and still are exceptional to me in so many ways. Leaving…
This post is specifically for you - the person who has just started to learn how to turn your designs into code. Or you have heard from someone that you need to learn HTML and CSS in order to make websites and now you know just enough but you also want to make an actual website. Not that we wanna gate-keep terms here. The web community would never do that... But what I mean, is that maybe you want…
Heads up: I know this is much longer than it needs to be. Sorry. It's just how I am with text. But you can easily navigate to the parts that interest you by using the outline - just click on the headline! One of the reasons I ever felt the desire (and needed ) to learn PHP was because I wanted to not repeat myself. I wanted to be able to use complex markup structures without having to copy & paste…
I'm a big fan of sass and until native nesting is available to us I will keep using it. Now sass offers much more than just nesting. I also use it to manage media queries and settings. So naturally for this site I also wanted to use it. CSS Nesting Module fresh from the w3c's CSS Working Group In this small little article I want to share how I set up my SASS compiling. Now this follows an…
On this website you can see these simple shape compositions everywhere. I do like using very simple graphical elements to create some form of... let's just say illustration . I rarely make things like these without encoding some form of meaning into its units. In Figma, I created these little "diagrams" where these shape compositions are filled with some patterns. They would serve the purpose of…
I've read blogs, consumed podcasts and read articles on the web industry since 2010. Now I decided that I wanna take part in all of it. Betterridge's Law # Section titled Betterridge's Law I don't think it is really too late. It took me rather long to get here, because I ultimately always thought that I had nothing of value to share . And as the community iterated and evolved, what was being…