Freelance Insights

It is time for another yearly overview of my freelancing career: the third year.

You could read the report on my first and second year, too.

CLIENTS

During the last year, I have been working with four clients on multiple projects. The clients contacted me via:

• Toptal,
• recommendations, and
• my website.

All clients but one had more than one project where they needed my expertise.

Only one client came from Europe, Germany, while others came from the United States. I have a continuous agreement with all my clients. Some clients need my services more often, some only a few times a year. …

WEB DEVELOPMENT

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article about called “The essential skill of a developer”. That particular skill is learning or the need to continue learning new things. Some people noted this is not a revolutionary conclusion or a breakthrough. It isn’t, indeed, but I do believe learning is the essential skill for every developer.

If you are a beginner, where would you begin these days? Would you learn backend, frontend, PHP, NodeJS, React, JavaScript, CSS, Sass? Would you watch courses, read books or articles, would you take classes or go to boot camps?

There are so many choices these days, and I believe some people might be overwhelmed and discouraged at the beginning. I got some ideas about how to start and where to begin, especially if you are interested in the frontend user interface development. …

Web Development

Let me tell you a story about Silvestar, a fellow who learned how to code, took some chances during his career and become a solid, confident web developer.

Silvestar never coded in his life. He thought he would work as an IT engineer. But the situation at the market made him apply to a web developer job ad. Future boss provided an opportunity for him to learn about web development. If Silvestar succeeds, he could work in this company. He was not the only candidate, so he needed to work extra hard to prove his worth.

In the beginning, Silvestar was overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. The boss helped candidates by providing learning materials. The boss also gave the assignment to every candidate. Few times a month, the boss organized a class where he showed the solution, answered questions from candidates, and talked about programming. …

Visual Studio Code

Last week I saw an interesting tweet about showing modified tabs in the VS Code from Matt Bierner. Although I already knew about this super useful setting, it made me revisit my VS Code settings.

By the way, the setting could be found as “Workbench > Editor: Highlight Modified Tabs” in VS Code Settings. If you also want to see the modified indicator in your current VS Code window, go to Settings, search “Window: Title”, and add ${dirty} option. Here is how it looks in my settings:

${dirty} ${activeEditorMedium}${separator}${rootName}

Modified settings

I have 364 modified settings in my VS Code. To see these modified settings, go to Settings, and select “Show modified settings” from the drop-down menu or type @modified in the input field. Some of these settings aren't modified in a way that they have a non-default value-they are just present in the settings.json …

Web Design and Development

During the last week, I have been working on redesigning my site. Here is the list of all changes:

• refreshed design,
• added dark mode,
• updated Disqus configuration,
• updated responsive images, and
• updated headers.

Refreshed design

WordPress

Here’s what I think: page builder might not be a good idea. In this post, I wanted to share my thoughts about page builders and why you might think twice before you consider using it (again).

The observations are subjective but based on my experience. I am referring to the WordPress and Shopify ecosystems here, but these problems could be found on other platforms, too.

Disclaimer: If you use page builders and you don’t have these problems, please let me know in the comment section. I would very much like to learn how you manage to do it.

TL;DR

Here are the most common problems, in my…

Static Forms

Recently I wanted to add a multi-step form to my site. Since my site runs on Hexo, a static page generator, I had some doubts about how to execute this task. I already had a static form on my site, and I didn’t want to spend too much time on the development of features like steps, show/hide logic or validation.

I was delighted to learn that Kwes now offers a multi-step form functionality. Before I tell you how I did it, let’s see what a multi-step form, sometimes also referred to as multi-page form, is.

A multi-step form

A multi-step form is a long-form that is broken into pieces. The reason for doing this is to make the form easier to complete. Each step represents grouped inputs that are related to each other, so users are not frightened by the length of the form. It might be more comfortable for users to fill the information step by step because their minds should process fewer fields at the time. …

Mentorship

I had this idea for a while, and I have decided to give it a shot with mentoring. Last week I asked a question about mentoring on dev.to and the community responded positively. This encouraged me to start my own mentoring program for UI developers.

Since I work remotely, I am talking about remote mentoring here. That means I would accept applications from all over the world.

Note that I am located in Croatia, and I speak only English and Croatian. 🇭🇷

Background

You could read more about me on my personal site, but here’s the short version.

I am an experienced web engineer who has been working with web technologies since 2011. I have started my career as a PHP backend developer. I slowly progressed to becoming a frontend developer, and now I work as a UI developer. I have been working in a local company and later in a local startup until 2017 when I started working as a remote freelance developer. I am also part of the Toptal talent network. …