Always Learning
As a web developer, I am always learning about new technology and new ways to do things.
I was especially motivated during 2012 after discovering the free Nibbler test tool by Silktide. Nibbler analyses submitted websites and provides a free report and a score out of 10 on how well the website is put together including accessibility, technology, social networking and so on. Websites are awarded badges based on the Nibbler findings such as "W3C Compliant", "HTML5", "Well Linked" and so on.
Nibbler is used by developers all over the world and thousands of websites have been tested.
Developers can claim websites and earn badges (examples at right) and a score of their own. Add a leaderboard into the mix and it can become quite competitive and addictive!
So Nibbler did influence me learning more about quite a few things in 2012 including:
- W3C validation
- HTML5
- Content Delivery Networks
- Print stylesheets
- How to create a Joomla plug-in
- Social Networking
- Responsive Web Design
- Compression and Caching
These are all useful things to know and have motivated me to continue improving both my own websites and client websites.
Top 50 Website
During the end of year break, I took the opportunity to work on my own http://webilicious.com.au website, updating to a responsive HTML5 Joomla Template together with a few other minor adjustments.
The website made it into the Nibbler "Top 50" for a while which I am very pleased with.
Top 10 Developer
These extra points and some other badges boosted my own score and catapulted me into the Top 10!
Thanks to Nibbler and Silktide for making learning more fun than usual!
January 2013 Update: I made it to 2nd highest scoring Nibbler user!
Sitebeam
Note that the free Nibbler test tool only tests five pages of each website. Silktide also have a commercial tool, Sitebeam that tests all the pages on your website.