Hello, my name is James Padolsey, I’m a freelance web developer with a heavy focus on front-end engineering and related technologies. I’m currently based in Hampton, UK (just outside of London).
What do I do?
I mess around with JavaScript, the DOM, and other things on the client-side!
Usability, accessibility, semantic markup, unobtrusive JavaScript, progressive enhancement and clean API design are all things that I try to integrate into everything I build. I am a perfectionist.
How did I get into web development?
I haven’t really decided on a definitive answer for this all-too-common question yet but I’ll give it my best shot.
Back when I was nine my dad gave me a copy of NetObjects to play around with. It totally confused me at first but I did eventually manage to launch my very first website with it. The website was a gallery where I posted pictures of my favourite cars, pretty basic but back then I was amazed at just the concept of everyone in the world being able to view it! Not to long after that I was introduced to Dreamweaver (back then in version 4.0) which I immediately dismissed as too complicated and didn’t even touch it until five years later!
At 14 I was given a laptop under the impression that it would help me progress academically. For some unseen reason I started to get interested in websites and how they were built. I downloaded a bunch of free site templates and started to tinker around with them until I had something presentable. At this time I rarely dug deeper than the WYSIWYG’ness of Dreamweaver, i.e. back when code scared me!
By the age of 16 I had built a few websites for school/personal projects and was finally in a place where I felt confident in my skills, so much so that I started freelancing. By this time I was really into the underbelly of web development and the various technologies used. Having a grasp on HTML and CSS I decided to look into PHP… And eventually decided to steer back to client-side development and towards the realms of JavaScript, which even to this day I am still learning about!
To my own surprise I managed to land a couple of freelance jobs while still at school, one of them was a quite a long term deal which lasted right up until I got an awesome internship at AKQA London in July, 2008.
What do I want to do in the future?
I have no idea! I hope to do something where I can continually develop my skills, whatever the industry. I never want to be stuck in a dead-end job with no prospects… I want to be constantly innovating and creating new things… That’s the dream!
Any questions? Feel free to shoot me an email. A reply is guaranteed if your email is sufficiently intriguing!
