About Me
chrismar.sh is the personal website of Chris Marsh, a web developer, movie lover and aficionado of tea (strong, plenty of milk, no sugar). I’ll be keeping the site (fairly) up-to-date with my latest projects, both at work and at home, movie and music reviews, opinions, ideas and thoughts about other stuff.
You can download my CV here, in the following formats:
I started designing websites when I was at university, studying English Literature. I have Andy Greensted to thank for setting me on the straight and narrow as regards standards and clarity of coding.
After a stint working in TV and in advertising, my wife and I moved to Australia for 15 months, where Sure Fire Marketing, under the supervision of Shaun Stenning, gave me a job building websites. Honing my CSS skills, with assistance and input from Rowan Walker, I developed as a designer and developer and, on my return to the UK in March 2008, set up my own business, Seventeen Ten Limited.
Two years and 20 websites later, I moved on to work for Sense Internet, a highly-rated web agency based in Leeds. Giving myself my own P45 was a strange experience.
At Sense, I worked in the design team with some great people and learnt a lot, especially about Javascript libraries, frameworks and the importance of beer o’clock on Friday afternoon.
In August 2010, Sense Internet, the oldest web agency in Leeds, unfortunately went out of business. Most of the Sense alumni have gone on to new jobs at new agencies, and I was no different – Epiphany Solutions, one of Leeds’ largest search marketing agencies, snapped me up along with graphic designer Gaz Battersby.
Together we’re the R and D team, creating new and exciting web tools, graphics and websites for our existing clients, and pitching new ideas to potential clients. Together, Gaz and I spec out the projects, he designs them and I take over to create the pages in HTML, style it up with CSS and then make it work using Javascript. It’s a challenging job and every week brings new opportunities to learn more web technology.
About This Site
I’m not a graphic designer by trade, although I have picked up some design hints along the way. When designing the site I used HTML5 and CSS3 and the jQuery Javascript library, which means the browser is best viewed using Firefox (good), Safari (better) or Chrome (best).
The site validates using the HTML5 Validator and takes advantage of some of the greatest new features of CSS3, such as rounded corners, transparency and, in the Webkit browsers,CSS transitions and animations (hover over the Social Networking links to the right to see them in action).
Also in Javascript, I’m using a couple of scripts that make browser compatibility easier: the Modernizr script to supply alternative content to browsers which can’t take advantage of the newest HTML5 and CSS3 features; and Keith Clark’s Selectivizr script, which allows all browsers to be able to use CSS3 pseudo elements (such as p:first-of-type to style the first paragraph in a section).
My contact details, as well as using an
tag, uses Microformats, so any of you with the Operator add-on for Firefox or the Chrome Microformats extension can grab my card easily. When will browsers incorporate a Microformats reader by default?Lastly, the site is built using WordPress, which makes it easier to run: I can track links to the site, control all the SEO, ensure the site is secure, and add and edit content easily. I’ve also got Google Analytics on the site, which is a great tool for checking out how many (or how few) visitors I get.
You can get in touch with me by emailing contact@chrismar.sh or by going to the contact page.