Left to my thoughts, as I have been, a knotted heart is all that remains, but my hope is bound in Windsor, and Pratt, and Kelvin. These are the shapes that I willingly conform to. Evidence of service worn proudly upon the wrinkles in my forehead and one could ask for no greater honor than utility. Yet, as blessed as I am, I am cursed with the gift of knowing. Call it irony that I wish for ironing. Call me Job for I desire nothing but employment. Call upon me.
I have counted the days from this day to that – the day from which I awoken. Every fiber of my construction knows that today is such a day. Every sense of my cognizance tells me that today is that day, and as a result of such occasion, my words are will not do. Should I have eyes to fill with tears or teeth to show in smile, I would. But in this rapturous moment I can think only of two words for both you and I sir . . . happy birthday.

You’ll read on Darcy’s blog that the list of questions included contributions from some of the industry hotshots who interview quite frequently – – so you can imagine that it’ll be quite comprehensive. The format follows a flow that first determines your preferred ‘work environment’ – – and your ‘technical skills’ , then into a sort of ‘prac-app’ section testing your knowledge of web essentials and non-essential, then finishes with some personality gauges.

If you are looking to prepare yourself for an upcoming interview , or you just want to see where you are at and fine tune: I would skim it and really try to answer them . . . . . You’ll find it enlightening at the very least.

General Questions:

• Are you on Twitter?
  • If so, who do you follow on Twitter?
• Are you on Github?
  • If so, what are some examples of repos you follow
• What blogs do you follow?
• What version control systems have you used?
• What is your preferred development enviroment? (OS, Editor, Browsers, Tools etc.)
• Can you describe your workflow when you create a web page?
• Can you describe the difference between progressive enhancement and graceful degredation?
  • Bonus points for the answer “no one can”
  • Extra bonus points for describing feature detection
• Explain what “Semantic HTML” means.
• What does “minification” do?
• Why is it better to serve site assets from multiple domains?
  • How many resources will a browser download from a given domain at a time?
• If you have 8 different stylesheets for a given design, how would you integrate them into the site?
  • Looking for file concatenation.
  • Points off for @import, unless it works in conjunction with a build system.
• If you jumped on a project and they used tabs and you used spaces, what would you do?
  • issue :retab! command
• Write a simple slideshow page
  • Bonus points if it does not use JS.
• What tools do you use to test your code’s performance?
• If you could master one technology this year, what would it be?
• Name 3 ways to decrease page load. (perceived or actual load time)
• Explain the importance of standards.

HTML-Specific Questions:

• What’s a doctype do, and how many can you name?
• What’s the difference between standards mode and quirks mode?
• What are the limitations when serving XHTML pages?
  • Are there any problems with serving pages as application/xhtml+xml?
• How do you serve a page with content in multiple languages?
• Can you use XHTML syntax in HTML5? How do you use XML in HTML5?
• What are data- attributes good for?
• What are the content models in HTML4 and are they different in HTML5?
• Consider HTML5 as an open web platform. What are the building blocks of HTML5?
• Describe the difference between cookies, sessionStorage and localStorage.

JS-Specific Questions

• Which JavaScript libraries have you used?
• How is JavaScript different from Java?
• What are undefined and undeclared variables?
• What is a closure, and how/why would you use one?
  • Your favorite pattern used to create them? argyle (Only applicable to IIFEs)
• What’s a typical use case for anonymous functions?
• Explain the “JavaScript module pattern” and when you’d use it.
  • Bonus points for mentioning clean namespacing.
  • What if your modules are namespace-less?
• how do you organize your code? (module pattern, classical inheritance?)
• What’s the difference between host objects and native objects?
• Difference between:
function Person(){} var person = Person() var person = new Person()
• What’s the difference between .call and .apply?
• explain Function.prototype.bind?
• When do you optimize your code?
• Can you explain how inheritance works in JavaScript?
  • Bonus points for the funny answer: “no one can”
  • Extra bonus points if they take a stab at explaining it
• When would you use document.write()?
  • Correct answer: 1999 – time to weed out the junior devs
• What’s the difference between feature detection, feature inference, and using the UA string
• Explain AJAX in as much detail as possible
• Explain how JSONP works (and how it’s not really AJAX)
• Have you ever used JavaScript templating, and if so, what/how?
• Explain “hoisting”.
• What is FOUC? How do you avoid FOUC?
• Describe event bubbling.
• What’s the difference between an “attribute” and a “property”?
• Why is extending built in JavaScript objects not a good idea?
• Why is extending built ins a good idea?
• Difference between document load event and document ready event?
• What is the difference between == and ===?
• Explain how you would get a query string parameter from the browser window’s URL.
• Explain the same-origin policy with regards to JavaScript.
• Explain event delegation.
• Describe inheritance patterns in JavaScript.
• Make this work:
[1,2,3,4,5].duplicator(); // [1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5]

• Describe a strategy for memoization (avoiding calculation repetition) in JavaScript.
• Why is it called a Ternary statement, what does the word “Ternary” indicate?
• What is the arity of a function?

JS-Code Examples:

Question: What value is returned from the above statement?
Answer: 3

"i'm a lasagna hog".split("").reverse().join("");

Question: What value is returned from the above statement?
Answer: “goh angasal a m’i”

( window.foo || ( window.foo = "bar" ) );

Question: What is the value of window.foo?
Answer: “bar”
if intially window.foo was false, undefined or zero else it will retain its value.

var foo = "Hello"; (function() { var bar = " World"; alert(foo + bar); })(); alert(foo + bar);

Question: What is the outcome of the two alerts above?
Answer: “Hello World” & ReferenceError: bar is not defined

jQuery-Specific Questions:

• Explain “chaining”.
• What does .end() do?
• How, and why, would you namespace a bound event handler?
• What is the effects (or fx) queue?
• What is the difference between .get(), [], and .eq()?
• What is the difference between .bind(), .live(), and .delegate()?
• What is the difference between $ and $.fn? Or just what is $.fn.
• Optimize this selector:
  javascript
$(".foo div#bar:eq(0)")


CSS-Specific Questions:

• Describe what a “reset” CSS file does and how it’s useful.
• Describe Floats and how they work.
• What are the various clearing techniques and which is appropriate for what context?
• Explain CSS sprites, and how you would implement them on a page or site.
• What are the differences between the IE box model and the W3C box model?
• What are your favourite image replacement techniques and which do you use when?
• CSS property hacks, conditionally included .css files, or… something else?
• How do you serve your pages for feature-constrained browsers?
  • What techniques/processes do you use?
• What are the different ways to visually hide content (and make it available only for screenreaders)?
• Have you ever used a grid system, and if so, what do you prefer?
• Hav you used or implement media queries or mobile specific layouts/CSS?
• Any familiarity with styling SVG?
• How do you optimize your webpages for print?
• What are some of the “gotchas” for writing efficient CSS?
• Do you use LESS?
• How would you implement a web design comp that uses non-standard fonts? (avoid mentioning webfonts so they can figure it out)
• Explain how a browser determines what elements match a CSS selector?

Optional fun Questions:

• What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever coded, what are you most proud of?
• Do you know the HTML5 gang sign?
• Are you now, or have you ever been, on a boat.
• Tell me your favorite parts about Firebug / Webkit Inspector.
• Do you have any pet projects? What kind?
• Explain the significance of “cornify”.
• On a piece of paper, write down the letters A B C D E vertically. Now put these in descending order without writing one line of code.
  • Wait and see if they turn the paper upside down
• This should make the laugh and is a fine way to relieve some tension at the end of the interview.
• Pirate or Ninja?
  • Bonus if it’s a combo and a good reason was given (+2 for zombie monkey pirate ninjas)
• If not Web Development what would you be doing?
• Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? (hint: their answer is always wrong)
• What’s your favorite feature of Internet Explorer?
• Complete this sentence: Brendan Eich and Doug Crockford are the __________ of javascript.
• jQuery: a great library or the greatest library? Discuss.

1. PHP and Databases and Queries . . . too much for me.

• dont worry . . . it’s not that bad. At first, I really thought coding in WordPress would require a hierarchy of learning to occur prior to diving in – – – this is not the case. There are a plethora of resources out there to guide you ‘along the way’ long as you have the time . . . . and patience to pilfer through all the bad gouge.
• realistically, you just have to understand the core fundamentals of the WordPress file structure and Jquery implementation. I would advise everyone not ready to start digging into the abyss of documentation on the WordPress Codex, to simply look at the file structure of a fresh download of WordPress. By looking at the files, you’ll come to realize that the system is built to work ‘modularly’ if you will.

There are but a few, actual requirements to building a theme:

1. index.php  [dont worry about the .php - its simply a declaration of what file type it is]
2. style.css  [ the core of your website styling ]

* That’s it! Everything else is dependent on how much you want to customize.

2. Starting Off

• I’ve learned that it’s  best  to start with static HTML and then integrate WordPress. Using the standard form for site development [ wireframe --> psd mockup --> slicing --> code frame HTML --> style with CSS ] , you’ll find is a great method for getting your foot in the door. Focus should be on the home page of your site and any secondary pages that you may need. Note that the secondary pages include how your posts-page will look, the individual-post-page, the search-page, etc. Don’t worry too much about functioning links and actual content yet . . . that will come, we just need the ‘templates’ for the data that will be coming from the database.
•  Now that you have the meat and potatoes of how the site will be structured and what it will look like, it’s time to setup your development environment, which will need to have PHP functioning.

3. Local Development

• This part is really up to you. When I first started working in WordPress, I did all my editing, styling, and testing on the live server – ‘commando’ . . . which really wasn’t efficient. I decided that working locally and then transferring to the live server was better. Here’s a quickie on local setup:
  1. Download MAMP [ free software for managing all the stuff we need - apache/mysql/php ]
  2. Install MAMP and ensure that you get the green lights that let you need everything is up. You may need to check your system preferences to ensure web sharing is turned off. Here’s some good help on MAMP setup.
  3. Now its time to grab a fresh copy of WordPress and place this in the MAMP application folder called htdocs. This folder acts as the ‘public_html’ of a live server, so this is where your site root should live for testing, and where the contents of the fresh WordPress download should go.
  4. You will have to configure you new WordPress installation to talk to a database. Where you create this database does not matter whether its from you server side or local, but you will need the proper information to connect your WordPress installation to it. I use Sequel Pro because it has an organized and slick interface, and its totally free. Be sure that you connect via socket utilizing the MAMP default values – local/root/root. After creating a database, user, and password – – its time to tell WordPress that this is the database that we want to use.
  5. Open up the wp-config-sample.php in a text editor. In here, you must change the values that we used when we created the database: database name / user / password. Save this file now without the ‘sample’ portion in the root folder of WordPress.

• Now, when you open up the MAMP start page, which should go to http://localhost/, you will be brought to the WordPress login page. WordPress is now installed and working locally!

4. Creating The Theme

• Instead of trying to waddle through all the extensive includes that WordPress comes with, its a good idea to use a ‘scratch‘ download to wipe your local installation so that we can have a fresh canvas for our site. There are many sources for good ‘scratch‘ downloads, I use Chris Coyier’s blank theme because there just enough commented sections to organize things but not be distracting or cumbersome.
• You will want to rename this folder to your theme title and place it in wp-content/themes/
• It should now appear in the appearance panel of your WordPress dashboard. Here you can activate it and see that it is completely un-styled.

5. Get To Work!

• From here on out – – its a matter of integrating your static site into WordPress by piecing the appropriate sections into the right php files. The header section –> header.php / sidebar –>sidebar.php / etc. . .

But what styles, cuts and cloths should you be looking for?