Brian J. Dillard

programming blog

Agile Ajax

open source projects

Really Simple History

tutorials

Ajax Overhaul at IBM developerWorks

presentations

Slideshare

movie review portfolio

interactive html page

dormant music sites

armchair dj

plastikfan

current c.v.

HTML format

PDF format

networking

LinkedIn

JS.Chi() Meetup Group

Chicago Front-End Web Developers

I've got an ever-growing collection of tattoos, most designed by my buddy Kevin Lytle of Eternal Tattoo (Livonia, MI) and inspired by my love of comics books. A catalog of my tattoos and their inspirations can be found at my Flickr account, the front door of which lives here:

blogs & stuff

FriendFeed

Twitter

Tumblr

social networks

Google

Yelp

Facebook

Friendster

MySpace

music, books, etc.

Last.fm

Shelfari

Readernaut

photos

Flickr

wish lists

Amazon

I'm a web developer and writer living in Chicago.

I've been a web developer since 1996. I focus on the view layer: CSS, HTML and especially JavaScript. I've built user interfaces in several generations of web application frameworks, from ASP classic, JSP and WordPress to Ruby on Rails and SOA. I've got lots of server-side programming skills, but I prefer to focus on the parts of the application users actually see.

I've been writing online since the early '90s. My music site, Armchair DJ, has been dormant for a long time but I'm slowly coming around the the idea of relaunching it. I've contributed hundreds of movie reviews to the All Movie Guide. During a previous gig at a Chicago-based software shop, I blogged about user-interface development several times a week at Agile Ajax.

As the headline says, I'm a big fan of both tattoos and "Buffy The Vampire Slayer." I'm also a cycling enthusiast and a vegan, but I try not to be annoying about either.

This site is my writing, programming and social-media playground. It's a place to aggregate content by and about me. More importantly, it's a place try out new technologies. As such, it's a permanent work in progress.

The current crop of techniques and technologies include:

• My own personal JavaScript library, adj.js.
• The jQuery, Base, Pure Template JavaScript libraries
• The FriendFeed API via JSONP
• The HTML5 Canvas element
• Eric Meyer's Reset Reloaded stylesheet
• CSS3 border-radius and gradients
• CSS3 @font-face support via TypeKit
• The asynchronous Google Analtyics API
• Progressive enhancement