Q1. You are the "One" on SingleFunction this week, so, who are you really?

I’m Ozh, 37.05 years old, father of two, husband of one. I live in France and work for a mega corporation in a job that has mostly nothing to do with computers.

People knowing me online either do because I’ve been a sort-of-famous european Quake player, or because I released popularish WordPress plugins.

Q2. What made you start web development/design in the first place?

I began making static HTML websites in 1996, for fun and friends, and about various topics. In 1998 I created a site that quickly grew into a vivid community news site, so uploading a new page every night by FTP was getting seriously cumbersome and frustrating, I really needed something faster, easier, and that would allow readers to interact and comment. So I started to learn perl and coded a home made CMS that still powers the site today.

Q3. What inspires you?

I’m currently obsessed by simple apps with uncluttered simple interfaces, naive and colorful designs. This is part of my recent Twitter addiction

What inspires me really is when I want to do something and realize there’s no way to make it as I want. This happened with scr.im when I wanted one day to share my email on Twitter, this happened also with every WordPress plugin I coded.

Q4. What’s a typical day for you?

Get up at 7:00, hug the boys in their beds to wake them up, check my mails & blog comments before shower, eat, spend an hour in front of my computer in pajamas and with a toothbrush in my mouth before I go to work. From 9:15 to 18:45 I’m at work where it’s as boring as it can get, with hopefully a nice paycheck at the end of the month. Back to home at 19:00, spend time with my kids and wife. It’s around 21:00 when I can sit in front of my computer and have some time for myself till, usually, way too late.

Q5. How does your "Command Center" look like?

My home office has 2 computers, one for my wife and the kids to play and surf the web, and mine for everything else.

My desk is usually totally cluttered with random stuff (messy, but clean: *no* dirty greasy stuff like food) but it’s been rather clean for a couple of weeks now. I’m not sure why

You’ll see on my desk: a spare camera I lend to kids, my iPod nano, USB thumb drives, CD, DVDs, various cables, papers and pens, my PDA docking station, the DSL router, a webcam so kids can Skype grandma on week-ends.

I guess this is really the average home computer desk, except maybe for the old school CRT monitor. This one is brand new, my awesome 19′ Hitachi died a couple of weeks ago. This is for the sleeping hardcore gamer inside me, I dislike flat screens, they’re too slow, too ugly.

Q6. What operating system do you use?

My main box used to be a high end gaming computer but I stepped out of this a couple of years ago. I’m running Windows XP with no fancy stuff and the minimal number of services at startup.

Q7. What’s the programming language you are most comfortable with?

PHP is definitely the language I’m the best with, although if I look back at what I did during the last couple of years, there was probably as much Javascript. OK maybe not as much, but close. I think I’m getting decent with jQuery and doing fun stuff on the client side.

Q8. What’s your favorite tool/IDE?

I don’t like fully-fledge IDEs like Eclipse, they’re too complicated and bloated for me. I’ve been using Notepad++ for the last 4 years I think: tabbed interface, function list, and the best syntax highlighter I’ve found.

Notepad++ is my tool of choice for all the server side stuff. For all the client things, ie interface layout and javascript, I think I would never code anything again if I couldn’t use Firebug anymore. This tool is the most awesome tool I’ve ever used.

Q9. How do you start a new project?

An idea pops into my mind. I start coding and re-use a few things to a point it gets functional but messy. So I pause things a bit, try to do some sketches and flowcharts, but after a few minutes my patience has gone and I want to code again

Q10. What’s your design philosophy?

My goal is a balance between dead simple (one task, no option) and feature packing (many options). As a user, I like powerful and very flexible apps with a gazillion of options, but I know a lot of users are easily confused or intimated, so I always try to imagine what the average user would like, dislike, understand or not. The Wife Test is something I like to do because sometimes it really highlights something I would definitely overlook.

I’m also more prone to releasing stuff earlier than before. A couple of years ago, I would publish something only after every little details was polished and exactly as imagined. While I think I did a good job, it makes things more difficult to re-arrange or to implement differently when users want something you didn’t think about.

I try to think differently now: release an app with core features, and wait for the public to ask about extra options. This way, I don’t implement things that are eventually not used, and I also have more feedback from users about how they’d like their additional feature, which might differ from my need.

My little web service over at scr.im was recently a very interesting experience. I did show friends and wife an alpha version and watch how they would use the interface, what they would click or not, what they would think would be an option, what if they would understand in a glance what the app would be about. Even after release, user feedback was rich and fostering.

Q11. What was your first website?

Back in the days when websites were mostly “home pages”, my first site was in 1995 or 96 a wicked awesome page hosted on Compuserve. I was a real hipster at the time: scary background picture, l33t sp34k, tags, and enough animated gifs to crash my 28.8k modem connection. Those too young to remember can google for "JeffK", my site was something like the first result will show.

Of course, the purpose of that page was just to show I had a page on the internet.

Q12. What’s your favorite creation?

As of today, this would be scr.im because it’s the first time I really release something *simple*. Plus, the design is cute

In the long run though, my favorite creation would be the online gaming community site I founded FrenchFragFactory.net. It really gathered a number of exciting people and events, and I met invaluable peeps through it. When I’m old, I’ll remember this more than any of the WordPress plugins or other fun websites I’ve done.

Q13. What’s hot now and you would like to let everyone know about?

I think the hottest stuff on Earth actually is Twitter, but I guess no one needs this information

Q14. What’s next?

What’s next with me: I have several WordPress plugins under way, but nothing I want to advertise at this point. I’ve also began coding a service related to Twitter that should be fun. I think people should follow me on Twitter to know more

What’s next with the world: I don’t know. I’m not one of these inspiring visionary people who can predict what will be next

Q15. Being the One, what’s the one advice you would give to the wannabes out there?

Well, "the One", that seems a bit too presumptuous

As a coder, my recurring advice has always been: read sources. Reading open source code teaches you how to do things, shows how to do them differently and sometimes better than what you had in mind.

Q1. You are the "One" on SingleFunction this week, so, who are you really?

I’m 40 year old freelance designer, programmer and analyst from Czechia. Married with two lovely daughters. “Ye olde league” of the webdesign. The older, the better, anyway.

Q2. What made you start web development/design in the first place?

I’ve been addicted to computers since I smelled them first time, somewhere in the deep 80′s prehistory. I still can recall the smell of the heating Sinclair Spectrum… Later I studied programming at the university, but when a friend took me (in early 90′s) to a DTP studio and I saw these huge displays and ebony macs displaying newspaper pages as wysiwyg, I became addicted to design, DTP and typography. I spent all the 90′s with Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop in newspapers, advertising and publishing. When the web started to be more than a toy for nerds, I moved to the new media allowing me to join both design and programming skills into a new amazing profession.

Q3. What inspires you?

What can NOT inspire me?

Q4. What’s a typical day for you?

Oh, don’t tell me. I’m night-owl and I love to work through the night. Everything had changed 2 years ago, when my daughter started to go to the kindergarten. It’s horrible now. Before 7am I have to get up, drive the car to the kindergarten, go back, have some breakfast, have some cofee, do something on the computer for several hours, have some more coffee, and then, at about 10-11am, when I wake up, I start wondering where I am and what am I actually doing. Then I try to work all afternoon which is disturbed every other minute by my daughters. But when they fall asleep, and when my wife falls asleep too, my activity culminates. At 2-3am I have to use a force to myself to stop working and go to bed to be able to be a morning zombie again…

Q5. How does your "Command Center" look like?

As you can see, it indeed isn’t a home-sweet-home polished navigating bridge. It’s a busy working place, it’s Lister’s, not Rimmer’s spot. All my activities have to fit in this tiny corner.

Q6. What operating system do you use?

Mac OS X (Leopard) is primary and Windows XP (virtualized) for testing and debugging purposes only.

Q7. What’s the programming language you are most comfortable with?

ECMA/Javascript. And jQuery last months. I love it, it’s the best thing since the DOM. On server side I prefer PHP.

Q8. What’s your favorite tool/IDE?

BBEdit, CSSEdit. I like simple tools with powerfull background.

Q9. How do you start a new project?

With an analysis. I think the graphic design is the last and the less important thing. I need to know the purpose, the target group, the message to be conveyed. Then the structure and navigation logic has to be designed. And if all background information is gathered, I start to sketch. First on paper, than in Fireworks.

Q10. What’s your design philosophy?

KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Don’t confuse them, don’t make them choose too much, don’t make them think. Drive the user to the target.

Q11. What was your first website?

It had to be a local company presentation, I guess. I don’t remember, it’s a 1996 prehistory. Recently, I found one of my first sites, it’s a Jarre’s fan site from 1997. Very funny.

Q12. Speaking of music and hobbies, how many do you have?

I have lots of them, mainly regarding arts. In fact I’d need several hours more a day, for I have too less time for my hobbies. I play several instruments, mostly guitars; both acoustic and electric, try to learn mandolin and I’m planning to buy a bass and a banjo. I also sometimes use keyboards (but I don’t dare to say I can play it). And some woodwinds and brass too – I play flutes, clarinet and looking forward to buy some saxes in the future… Unfortunatelly I’ve never been in a band, I always play alone; but I’m happy with it too. I also compose music and really enjoy today’s technology: cheap and easy-to-use software pieces make for me a studio equipment only professionals could have ten years ago. It’s very impressive for me.

Besides music I write (poetry, song lyrics, funny columns), I like to translate for fun (i.e. Dave Barry’s columns)… I used to be a blogger, in fact I had one of the most visited blogs, in the pioneer era years ago. Sometimes, I play with photos, make Photoshop collages, I tried to paint etc. – but I really had to reduce everything to a tolerable level. Anyway, I feel it’s very hard to be resigned with the fact I can’t learn everything I’d like…

And since I have kids (now my daughters are 2.5 and almost 5 years old) my hobbies are reduced to play and sing some kid’s songs, play a couple of guitar licks every other day and try to write rhymed fairy tales for them…

Pixy Jamming at the Czech Webdesigners Potlach

Q13. What’s your favorite creation?

I prefer to love everything I’m recently working on. When I’m done I’m starting to see bugs and I want to redesign everything immediatelly. I always have to move on and focus to the next favorite thing.

Q14. What’s hot now and you would like to let everyone know about?

To me, it’s not any particular project or web site. For me the hottest thing is the fact the browsers finally started to behave. After many years of chaos I feel a touch of a standardization. The very first time in the history I dare to say I can code almost anything I can design. And I’m happy about this.

Q15. You are the author of a bestseller book in Czechia, can you tell us a bit more about it?

The title is "CSS: The Complete Guide", but all the information is in Czech only, I’m afraid. It’s a detailed CSS2 reference with browsers support and compatibility tables. It was published in February 2003 and still being sold – which is unbelievable in webdesign where everything goes so fast…

Q16. What’s next?

Today’s coder work is all about implementing browser incompatibilities. I think, these incompatibilities will reduce and perhaps in 5-10 years there finally will be good translators or compilers, able to fully replace the coder’s work. I think the webdesigner in a few years will only draw the web in a IDE and they won’t need to know HTML/CSS anymore. It’s just a prophecy, of course, everything may be totally different – but I’d rather be prepared.

Q17. Being the One, what’s the one advice you would give to the wannabes out there?

Graphic design is NOT the most important thing in the webdesign. Do not start designing web from graphics, finish with it instead. No web site is successful because of its graphic design, and vice versa: there are many successful sites totally graphicsless. Graphic design is only a bonus.