About Me

Jon in Chicago, July 2008

My name is Jon Hartmann, and I'm a ColdFusion web developer in Morgantown, West Virginia. I graduated West Virginia University in 2006, and landed a job as a ColdFusion developer. Since then I've been educating my self on every aspect of the web that I can, because I love every bit of it. Recently though, my interests have started to focus on the area of user interface design, usability, and how interface design interacts with things like things like the Search Engine Optimization and conversion rates: its like combined programming with art and psychology.

Languages

  • HTML/XHTML/CSS - These go without saying... and despite what any one says, I'm a big fan of XHTML over HTML. Anything that makes me code cleaner is a good thing. I use
    's, not 's for layout, and the box model is the devil.
  • ColdFusion 5 through 9 - My first job was exclusively ColdFusion for everything: internal systems, client work, server management, etc. Basically, if we could make it wash our cars, we would. I earned my Advanced Coldfusion Developer certification in 2008, and continue to do development in ColdFusion.
  • JavaScript - I'm practically the only JavaScript enthusiast in my shop. Some of the others like AJAX, but few of them understand what JavaScript can really do for a user interface. I love getting down and dirty with DHTML: closures are the bomb. Although I've used Prototype/Scriptaculous and ExtJS, I've settled on jQuery as my favorite library and am never going back.
  • Asp.NET - At my current job I'm getting into Asp.NET development. Or is it ASP.Net? ASP.NET? asp.net? I dunno, but its an interesting language. Treating each page like a persistent object is a neat concept, but it's a little weird.
  • C#.Net - We back our Asp.NET with C#, which I find to be a very nice language. Its got all the features I could want, and then some, but I wish handling events was a touch easier.
  • Silverlight - Microsoft's version of Flash/Flex, Silverlight blends .Net with an XML based markup that allows you to declarative handle a lot of code. I'm still waiting to see it do something that Flash doesn't but I've not seen anything that Flash does that it can't.
  • WPF - WPF is to Silverlight as Air is to Flex, except in reverse. Where as Flash goes to the desktop in Air, WPF goes to the browser in Silverlight. Odd, I know, but WPF is awesome. Declarative markup with .Net code-behinds that compile into .exe files; what could be better?
  • Ruby & Ruby on Rails - Rails languished in my to-do list for a couple of years, but I finally got to work with it for a real project in 2009. Rails is such an easy framework that things just seem to fall into place. I really think that any web language could stand to learn a trick or two from this language/framework.

    • Passion

    I'm in love with user interface design and usability. The usability of your site or application can directly affect your customer satisfaction and sales, and the design of the interface directly affects the usability. I find it really surprising that lots of companies don't do more with UI and usability, since you can study usability cheaply and affectively, and monitor the impact of changes through web analytics. Any company that doesn't have a usability and UI design component for their projects is keeping it from its full potential.

    If you are looking for someone to help you out with ColdFusion or Javascript development, user interface design, or even help figuring your conversion rates, just contact me. I'm working contract jobs right now, but I'd love to find a full-time position in UI design, analytics, usability, or SEO. If you think I could be a valuable member of your team, please contact me for a copy of my resume, or check out my profile on Linked-In.

    Jon in Chicago, July 2008

    I'm Jon Hartmann and I'm a C# .Net developer by day, a ColdFusion guru by night, and all around Javascript fanatic. Stay right here to read my technical posts as I grapple with mysterious error messages, user interface design questions, and all things baffling and irksome about programming for the web. Learn more about me.

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