Steven Vachon

About This Site

This website strives toward semantics, usability and accessibility.

The front-end of the site is structured with valid HTML5, styled with plenty of well-formed CSS3, and topped off with some unobtrusive JavaScript. With the exception of the happy face located in the footer, all design, graphics and Flash animations were custom made.

Behind the scenes, this site runs on a Linux server and is powered by Apache, PHP, MySQL and WordPress.

“Thanks” goes out to the developers of the following WordPress plugins:

Technology

The technology Steven works with and mentions on this website are discussed in summary and detail here:

Design

It’s been said that design is just making things line up. While that simplifies it, the most important part is for it to instantly make sense to the audience. Once that’s done, it’s time to make things look cool! Learn more

Usability

What good is an application that you cannot understand nor work with? Usability is the task of organizing and simplifying a set of complex interactive controls into something that reaches the largest audience possible. Learn more

Flash

For complex animations and powerful graphic-rich software, there’s nothing as flexible as Flash. This is what the coolest websites in the world are built with. Learn more

HTML & CSS

The bare bones of the web. HTML is the content—paragraphs, spreadsheets, etc. CSS is how that content is styled to appear prettier and friendlier. Learn more about HTML and CSS

SEO

In today’s world everyone is using a search engine. And for a website to be found, Google must be able to comprehend it. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. Learn more

JavaScript

For creating complex site dynamics, animations, and user interface elements without the use of Flash (or other plugins), JavaScript is the only client-side scripting language available. Learn more

AJAX

Technically JavaScript, but more accurately a technique, AJAX allows real-time communication with the server. It really comes in handy when the audience would otherwise lose patience and go “postal”. Learn more

PHP

A general-purpose server-side scripting language. Very popular and effective. Learn more

Audio

Custom sound effects, music composition and recording. Learn more