I'm a Front End specialist with strong communication, training and team leading skills. I focus on beauty, separation of concerns, design patterns, developer productivity, workflow and effective integration.
My primary driver is the esthetic value of software. Applications should be beautiful, intuitive, and make the user smile. Code, tooling and infrastructure need the same principles; it should make a programmer happy.
After years of employment I decided to start my own business. I prefer to work with productive and lightweight Open Source technology based on JavaScript, HTML5 and Python. I do jQuery and Django, but roll my own specialized frameworks and libraries when I need to.
As a technical consultant I did Ajax/JavaScript project work at clients such as ABN AMRO, ING and CapGemini. I regularly gave classroom training on web development, occasionally being abroad in the UK or the US.
JavaScript programmer, frontend architect. Occasionally hacking in Python/Django. The core functionality of Stepaday is a web app written in JavaScript and HTML5, supported by a Python/Django backend. Wrote a lean and mean event driven widget communication framework, a JSON/REST based “Data Island” system that provides lightweight “databases” in the browser, syncing with the backend JSON storage. The UI features smooth animations, impressive widgets and a true web app feel. Created development tooling that made the whole team (business included) happy and more productive. We used jQuery, modernizr, @font-face, and a lot of custom JavaScript.
Technically, this is one of my most interesting and challenging projects to date. Even though I can’t share the source code, I’d love to give you a demo and a look behind the scenes on request.
Working in a team of Front End developers to rewrite the high-traffic RTLZ and RTL EditieNL websites, integrating with a Roxen CMS using XSLT. I wrote my own lightweight jQuery; the im.js library. Wrote several custom frameworks for the browser and some command line tooling (bash/python/node.js). Both websites are now live.
Note: the “view-source” of the RTL Z and EditieNL websites is quite ugly due to the CMS output/restrictions; the beauty is behind the scenes. Code snippets on request.
Did graphical design, interaction design, Django Back End development and Front End development. Being basically a “one man show”, I created a beautiful Django based web shop including internationalization, shop/checkout, blog and CMS. The Front End required rather advanced CSS techniques. I used Cufon for font faces and jQuery for other widgets and other UX enhancements.
Front End development. Created easy to integrate templates based on a customary made Django based templating and code generation framework. Made an ultra high performance JavaScript carousel that does 100+ pictures (with animations) smoothly on Internet Explorer and jQuery for everything else.
Created the initial HTML/CSS/JavaScript codebase and integration with back end systems for the rewrite of some of the customer facing products to be released this year. Used Python/Django as development environment to create templates fast.
Lead programmer for jQuery powered data driven application using XSLT as a templating language. Built a custom JavaScript web server to work independently from back-end teams.
Created prototype for Rich Form Application integrating with three different backend systems using a single codebase and templating library based on XSLT and a custom JavaScript web server.
boba.js (http://github.com/marcelbeumer/boba.js)
General purpose JavaScript utility functions. Very small library that I like to use in my own JavaScript projects, with some cool functions such as expand and iter.
Im.js (http://marcelbeumer.com/im)
A fast, lightweight jQuery-like JavaScript library built for developer productivity and personal education.
Will likely get an overhaul this year, and might be (re)written in CoffeeScript.
Littlepony (https://github.com/marcelbeumer/littlepony)
Project on hold. Front End development environment based on Django.
Nodewalker (http://github.com/marcelbeumer/nodewalker)
Fast DOM walker. Superseded by im.js.
Django Template Converter
Project on hold. Convert Django to JSP, ASP and more.
Suave JavaScript Toolkit
Project on hold. Built a full web server that runs inside the browser, hijacking all browser page I/O. Worked mighty fine, but did not deliver the joy of development cross browser. The ease of Django, Node.js and the cloud make it less relevant now.
Next to spending lots of hours on programming and surfing the web, I like to listen to music, practice martial arts, read, meditate, spend time with my girlfriend and go out and enjoy nature. Also, I like to spend time on educating myself and come up new with business ideas.