Rachel Andrew

Rachel Andrew is a web developer, writer, speaker and one half of edgeofmyseat.com — the company behind the CMS Perch. When not working on her own product, Rachel likes to help other people transition from consultancy and client services to profitable product businesses — without needing to seek investment or risk everything by “doing a startup”. She is the author of CSS3 Layout Modules.

Appearances

Episode 115 Predicting the future

The landscape of what's possible in web page layout is changing. Jen has a theory that this change will be a big one — perhaps the biggest change to graphic design on the web in over 15 years. Rachel, Jeffrey, and Eric join her to debate if that's true or not, and to surmise what the future might bring. This special episode was recorded live at An Event Apart Nashville.

Episode 114 Laying Out the Future

Everything about web page layout is changing. New CSS specifications will make it possible to do designs we've never seen before. Rachel Andrew joins Jen Simmons to talk about what's happening.

In This Episode

  • The radical change that's coming to layout on the web
  • Grid, Flexbox, Alignment, Multicolumn, and more
  • What we've had to do for the last 15 years because we have not had proper tools for doing layout in CSS
  • Why we started using 960 Grid, Bootstrap, Foundation and other such layout frameworks
  • What can Grid do that floats cannot do
  • How is Grid different than Bootstrap
  • What's the difference between Grid and Flexbox? Why do we have two specs for layout?
  • How can we learn all these things?

Episode 104 Remembering the Everyday Developer

An inordinate amount of attention is being paid these days to complex tools chains, JavaScript frameworks, and the assumption that the web is an application platform. Has the web actually been taken over by this one flavor of site? Aren't we getting off-track when we act like nothing else exists anymore? What about the everyday developer? Rachel Andrew joins Jen Simmons to discuss.

In This Episode

  • What is all this emphasis on JavaScript being the end-all be-all of web development?
  • We keep saying “everyone is doing [such-and-such]” — really?
  • The wide diversity of kinds of websites and the different skill-sets of the people who build the web
  • "Native vs. the Web"
  • Are you supposed to know how to use everything?
  • How to keep up with all the changes
  • How things got so complicated
  • What about the people who just want to put their stuff online?
  • Which skills you definitely need
  • How the lack of core skills among developers leads to a mishmash of tools and techniques
  • Celebrating the big impact you can have when working on small projects

Episode 49 CSS Layouts

Page layout on the web has been constrained for many years by the available technologies. But new technologies that are coming in CSS3 — flexbox, grid layout, regions, and more — promise for an interesting future. Rachel Andrew joins Jen Simmons to explain.