i'm a front end engineer, otherwise known as a web monkey. that means i work with insanely awesome stuff like semantic html, cross browser css, and progressively enhanced javascript.
in a nutshell i basically take cool product ideas and turn them into real working webpages. i currently work at yahoo!, on an internal consulting team. i get to work on a lot of different high profile projects, which makes work uber fun!
here are some of the products i've worked on in the past.
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AOL 9.0 Optimized
the last of AOL's hulking desktop clients, aol 9.0 was the epitome of the walled garden experience. built on a 10 year old codebase, the client UI was written with a proprietary UI scripting language called FDO (Form Display Operation).
i worked on various bits of the toolbar, as well as adapting a free version of the aol desktop client for elementary schools, called aol@school.
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AIM Triton
this was AOL's first foray into client side javascript. they launched a flagship product on a brand new platform/toolkit called boxely, which was a desktop xml+js toolkit similar to mozilla's XUL. boxely was pretty brilliant and had ton of great widgets and ideas baked into it - unfortunately, the desktop performance was pretty miserable, since it was built on top of Microsoft's Triton engine.
cutting edge features at the time included tabbed chat windows, voice chat, and the ability to customize and skin the AIM client to your liking.
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AOL Suite
boxely was destined for more than just one product, so it was utilized again in the rebirth of the aol desktop client. you could say that aol suite was basically AOL 10.0.
the AOL suite broke the walled garden of old AOL clients, and allowed users to run only the applications they wanted. the four applications included AIM triton, AOL Explorer, AOL Mail, and the AOL Navbar. i worked on the navbar (the little bar on the right) as the build master, managing library dependencies and build scripts. i was also repsonsible for pushing daily builds to both our staging and production servers.
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AOL OpenRide
OpenRide was a continuation of the AOL Suite - this time reformulated into a singular application experience.
the gimmick behind this client was the "dynasizer", the little knob at the center of the client. it allowed the user to dynamically resize the four quadrants of the app to suit their needs. the four quadrants, you ask? it was chat (aim), web browser (aol explorer aka internet explorer), aol mail, and the aol media center.
i was never quite sure why a user would choose to have four separate applications in one window, but i guess that's why this product was discontinued in less than 6 months.
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Top Secret!
after aol, i did some government consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton. unfortunately, all of that work was done in a top secret facility (no joke!), so i can neither speak or comment on what the work was about. i can only say that i built a dynamic javascript driven application to help monitor/maintain/manage a legacy messaging system.
it's more exciting than it sounds. promise.
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Yahoo! Finance
wanting to move on to new things, i hopped on over to yahoo!, where my work moved to a much more web centric experience. my first stint was to help implement a new economic calendar on the y! finance page.
the economic calendar is just table of financial data that could be filtered using some basic js controls. nothing terribly mind blowing, but everybody starts small, yeah?
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Yahoo! Homepage
at last, the big fish! i came on board during the re-launch process of the new yahoo! homepage in 2009. love it or hate it, it's here to stay! specifically, i built the search module at the top of the page. this includes all the new whiz bang search assist functionality as well, all built upon yui3.
it may not look like much, but the original design had a ton of rounded corners and drop shadows, which meant attaining cross browser compliancy in older versions of Internet Explorer was nothing short of miraculous. however, i've since moved off the project, and i'm sad to say the rounded corners are all but gone. fortunately, with nicholas zakas ruling the roost, you can rest assured all will go well.
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Yahoo! Social Aggregation
i'm currently serving as the co-lead/co-architect front end engineer for a new social initiative here at y! we're building some really cool new social aggregation features, which has just been rolled out in y! mail, y! front page, and the brand new y! pulse! we now have two way integration of your facebook feed, including features like commenting and liking. full twitter and zynga integration are also a core part of the experience.
techcrunch has a pretty good in-depth look. check it out!
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Yahoo! Maps API
moving to the web application realm, i spent a good year working as the front end lead on the new y! maps AJAX API. we joined up with Nokia, utilizing their data services to build a brand new mapping API that powers the newly launched y! maps.
the new API retires the old y! maps API, which was built on a super old version of YUI2. we rewrote the API from the ground up, building it on top of yui3. this brings the API into the 21st century with a more modular and performant design. unfortunately it's not open for use by the public.
