The goal of a Single-Page Application (SPA) is to let you do everything you need to do without ever leaving the page you’re on. It provides a pleasing experience for site visitors who no longer have to sit around and wait when in the past a new page would have to load. These are a couple of recent examples of what I’ve worked on.

Annual License Calculator

A JavaScript app that allows customers to estimate the cost of their annual software license by entering the number of each type of record the customer has. The table automatically updates itself as the customer enters their information allowing them to run what-if scenarios. The customer can then print a copy of the estimate.

Inspiration Generator

A jQuery app that allows visitors to click a button and get inspirational quotes. The app pulls quotes from a separate JSON file I maintain.

jQuery and JavaScript plugins/widgets aim to be slotted into a web page to serve some specific purpose. Most programmers have entire libraries of these on their hard drives, but here are a few I did recently that are more useful for a general audience.

Weather Widget

A jQuery app that allows you to look up the current conditions and five-day forecast for any ZIP Code. [View Weather Forecast]

Acronym Finder Widget

A jQuery app that lets you enter an acronym and get a list of many possibilities of what it stands for. (Someone suggested I add a potential language warning as some acronyms aren’t safe for work…) [Go to Acronym Search]

Lights Out

This puzzle game looks easy enough, but it can quickly get incredibly frustrating. The goal is simple: turn all the lights out. But, there’s a catch…

The game uses jQuery to control the lights, calculate whether the board is ‘won’, and so forth. [Play Game]

Tic Tac Toe

It’s not War Games, but my son wanted me to write this. [Play Game]

I’ve been writing technical documentation, standards, and style guides as part of my work for much of the past 20 years. This has ranged from single-sheet handouts to giant manuals (or now the Internet equivalent). I love to write and translate complex concepts into understandable language, so this has always been a natural fit for me.

MTD Keystone Help Library

The Keystone Help Library is a 200,000-word Help system for Keystone, a comprehensive, custom, information management software package for Habitat for Humanity Affiliates. I developed, wrote, coordinated, produced, and edited the system and content over the past several years. This required extensive use of information architecture and technical writing. It was developed in MadCap Flare. [View Keystone Help Library]

Here are two examples of brochures on which I provided both copywriting (the content) and some design support.

MoreThanData

Lessons With Ease

There really are no limits to what you can create online now. With the first two, I took pieces I wrote and turned them into much more visual experiences. The third is actually the first version of my online portfolio. The fourth is a doodle app my son enjoys. But each uses the same fundamental building blocks of code.

The Autism Parents Creed

This single-page inspirational story for autism parents uses HTML5, photos, and text within a responsive CSS framework. The CSS was generated using Sass to make the media queries, break points, and other elements easier to generate and customize. [View “The Autism Parents Creed”]

Prayer of St. Francis for Autism

This is a multi-slide, visual presentation of a piece I wrote using HTML5 and JavaScript and developed using Hype. It has multiple break points to allow for viewing on a variety of devices. I’ve written a Kindle book about being an autism parent, and wanted to use this medium as a prototype ultimately for a completely different kind of book. [View “Prayer of St. Francis for Autism”]

My Other Portfolio Site

A similar version of my portfolio, including the home of some of these portfolio items, resides on this site. This site uses HTML5 with the Bootstrap framework. [View Site]

Doodle App

This Doodle app takes advantage of the Canvas capability of HTML5 to make a fun page to color on. With the help of some jQuery, you can choose from a color palette and even define your own colors. (Note: not yet for mobile devices.) [View Doodle app]