A List Apart recently released their “Findings From the People Who Make Websites” 2008 survey. And apparently, we are pretty satisfied with our jobs (or at least those peeps who still have a job and who responded to this survey).

This year they put the results on the web (say what?!) instead of one big white paper in PDF format. You can also download the raw data.

Here’s a quick look at the number and the demographics of the respondents:
Total # of Respondents: 30,055
• About 90% of them are between 19 to 44
• 83.8% are male.
• 84.7% are white.
(I am feeling a little left out of this survey.)
• A little over 50% of them are either Developers (27.8%) or “Others” (26%).
(What do “Others” do?!)
• Almost 90% are from North & Central America and Europe.
(ah~ hence the 84.7% white. They did say they increased the diversity this time around. Um, at least they are trying.)
• 48.3% are from the U.S.
• 53.2% have a college degree.

To read more summarized info (such as years of experience, types of organization etc), click here.

Here are some of the specific findings that may be of interest (at least to me):

• Satisfaction and Inferred Satisfaction (detailed survey results)
They sliced this category’s results many ways (by age, gender, region, education level etc). All in all, it indicates that we are fairly happy with the general profession across the board. Overall, satisfaction level is at about 70%. I think that’s a pretty good number. Though I have no idea how this compares to other industries.

• Education—How Relevant? (detailed survey results)
Most notably, I am glad to hear statement “as last year, the general pattern holds: the more formal education you have, the more money you tend to make” - since I am planning to go back to school. Ha. Ha.

• Skills and Skill Gaps (detailed survey results)
Skill gaps results are good indications of the future of the workforce. Even though they did say the results are not meant for any empirical predictions, it is, at least, one general look of the current field. What do people know? What are they learning? And who are learning them?

————————————————————————–
Off the topic:
I must say some visual presentations of the data are a bit amiss.
For example, what do you see in this chart?
“Geez, women aren’t very happy. ” - that’s what I thought.

But under the chart, they wrote “Men and women appear to be equally satisfied with their current work situations.” How can this chart possibly be saying that when it clearly shows, overall, 83.7% of the “satisfied” are male?! Of course, this chart doesn’t illustrate correctly this particular finding (not that the data isn’t correct, just visualization).

This chart is merely presenting % of the number of respondents of a gender by satisfaction levels to the total number of respondents. I.e. # of “satisfied females” divided by the # of total respondents (more accurately responses. some did not answer this question).

It should have shown the % of satisfied females over total female respondents and vice versa for men’s results.

If you play with the raw data, you do get the finding that men and women are equally happy. My very rough calculation gives me 70% satisfied for both group.

Want to embed real fonts on your web page without creating graphic texts? Try Typeface.js. Being able to use any fonts for web texts and style it with CSS is on many web designer’s wishlist. No more creating images to have decent fonts on pages. How nice!

There are still a lot of improvements needed before Typeface.js can be widely adapted and fully functional. Most importantly full support for all font-face styles. But it’s already useful in some ways and it certainly is something to look forward to.

I played with it for a bit. It is so simple to use. A few javascript links, a standard css class name and that’s it. You can read all about the usage here.

Here is a test with Optimer TrueType that can be downloaded from Typeface.js site. This is not an image!!

I wanted to only show full contents for the first 5 posts and display titles for the rest - regardless of how many is set as the total number in the admin console. Came up with two VERY simple lines of code to use in the wordpress template. Thought I’d share.

After this line of code if (have_posts()) : in the Main Index template…

//Insert this piece of code to set display for the first 5 posts:
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php if ($wp_query->current_post <= 4) { ?>
ENTER YOUR TEMPLATE CODE TO DISPLAY FULL CONTENT
<?php }; ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

“4″ sets the number of posts to 5 since the counter starts with 0.
Change it to anything your heart desires.

//Insert this right after the last code for the rest:
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php if $wp_query->current_post > 4)) { ?>
ENTER YOUR TEMPLATE CODE TO DISPLAY TITLE
<?php }; ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

That’s it. Simple!!

Add-ons are what makes Firefox special and dear to many designers and developers’ hearts. But there are so many of them! Which ones should you install?

The Top 3 on my list:

• Firebug
I am in love with the Bug! It’s the best tool to preview page design changes without having to touch the actual files. Firebug allows you to edit CSS, HTML and client-side scripts within its browser. Any edits you make in its browser you see the change right away reflected.

Of course, Firebug is not free of buggy behaviors. Pages heavily rendered with Javascript sometimes don’t respond to edits. Opening and closing the Firebugs too many times have caused the tool to stop working for me at times.

And needless to say, whatever css edits you preview in Firebug may not 100% translate in other browsers. So this doesn’t take away the cross-browser testing to make sure your design bullet-proof.

• Web Developer Toolbar
This is a very powerful developer’s tool. It does everything from outlining different elements, displaying block/div sizes to validating css, html and links.
The toolbar offers no javscript validation. Its css validator, however, can easily replace many of the other css-validating add-ons. The toolbar makes debugging page rendering problems much easier.

• PageDiff
As the name suggests, this add-on shows you the differences between 2 pages. It makes comparing the same page on different design environments (i.e. preview vs live site) quick and simple.

It can also act as a make-do version checker. Just open up the different versions of files in Firefox and apply this tool.

More add-ons that are handy to have:

• JSView
Use this to easily see a list of Javascripts used for a page/site. View-only, no in-browser adjusting feature.

• IE View
Just right-click on a page and select “view this page in IE” - viola you see it in your default IE browser. So, yes you don’t need this add-on to open a page in IE. But it does save you a few more clicks! (think about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome).

• ColorZilla
ColorZilla’s Dom color analyzer is just plain fun to play with. The analyzer shows you all the colors used. If you don’t have a design software such as Photoshop that has a palette tool you can easily access, then ColorZilla’s built in palette browser can be useful. Its eyedropper tool (like Photoshop’s eyedropper) is neat. But Firebug has the same function and does it better.

Chrome is the new Firefox? Beat the add-ons first. Read on.
Download Blog: Chrome catching up wtih Firefox?