Martin Ridgway is a web developer with 14 years of experience, currently holding the position of Interactive Services Director and Lead Developer at a Houston-based marketing company. For the majority of that time he's been a proud proponent of accessibility and web standards, and has developed usable, functional and attractive web sites for clients like Hewlett-Packard, Reliant Energy, Sony, Microsoft and Sysco. To find out more about his work, please check out his portfolio.
Martin is originally from the UK. In 2004 he moved to Houston, Texas with his wife and their two cats. His two greatest passions – outside of web development – are music and cult British science-fiction (if you're lucky, he'll even show you his Dalek).
Feel free to contact Martin using the handy-dandy form. Alternatively, he can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
Colophon
This site was designed in Adobe Photoshop. The structure was lovingly hand-coded using HTML5, CSS3 and – where appropriate – JavaScript, which has been used to enhance the user experience. Importantly, JavaScript is not required to use this site. The whole shebang is delivered to you piping-hot using the ever-so-spiffing ExpressionEngine content management system.
martinridgway.com was built to adhere to the principles of Progressive Enhancement, and most definitely doesn't look the same in all browsers. However, Martin has employed the excellent IE7 script by Dean Edwards to fix a few small rendering issues for users of Internet Explorer 6 and below. The content of this site is available to all visitors, no matter what their browsing environment may be.
Typography
All headers are set in Athelas, and body copy is set in FF Dagny Web Pro. The font rendering on this site comes courtesy of TypeKit. All fonts have a web-safe fallback: Georgia for headers, and Arial for body copy.
Martin's logo and tagline are both set in Palatino Linotype. Which – for a tagline all about Englishness – isn't very English, granted.
Invalid CSS
The CSS used on this site doesn't validate. Why is this? Well, as the excellent resource CSS3.info puts it:
New CSS3 features are often “tested” by browser manufacturers by implementing them as vendor specific extensions. These are allowed by both CSS2.1 and CSS3, yet, the validator errors on them, even when its validation profile is set to CSS3.
So what is a vendor specific extension?
A vendor specific extensions can start with a “-” (dash) or a “_” (underscore), usually followed by an abbreviation of the company or the browser project: For instance, “-moz-” for Mozilla browsers, or “-webkit-” for WebKit based browsers. This vendor specific prefix is followed by the property name. A good example is
-webkit-border-radius, or-moz-border-radius.Why is it important to test new properties like this?
For a specification to leave the CR phase and become a final recommendation, it has to have two complete implementations. Without testing it like this, a specification would almost never reach the final recommendation phase.
Martin is happy to allow invalid CSS into his site, as it's completely safe, does no damage to browsers that don't support it (they ignore it completely), and the act of incorporating these extensions helps move the industry forward. A few red "errors" from a validator is a fair trade-off.