Joshua Tuscan. Seattle, WA. Front End Web Developer. Philosopher. Adventurer.

Work

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The Grand Renovation

This project was the result of the MGM Grand wanting to get involved in social blogging for their renovation project to keep their guests up to date about events, the renovation itself, and to get some word of mouth interest generated about the project. For this project we chose Tumblr for its community and content sharing.

I was contracted to develop the Tumblr theme for the site as well as a companion mobile theme. We came up with a compelling interface for their posts that was based on the masonry plugin for jQuery.

iShares Blog

I was brought in to re-vamp the existing Wordpress blog, upgrade some existing functionality, and build out some new features such as the contributors and video sections.

This project involved a lot of custom templating and stretching of the Wordpress framework to allow for manipulation of default Wordpress display functions. These tweaks to the system were all accomplished in PHP hand written by myself.

Sprint Sports Snow

Another project where I came in after the site was built to make modifications and build out some new functionality. Worked with a JSON based API to pull information about ski conditions at various resorts.

101 Worst Places

This site was built for a book launch and was designed with the concept of users sharing their own worst experiences with places they've traveled. I built the site from scratch as a custom Wordpress template, collected from data from users, used a maps API to chart their location and then include their entry after moderation.

In addition, the content from this site was then imported through a JSON feed to power the companion iPad app that was developed by another party.

Millipore

Millipore wanted a complete refresh of their corporate site design that would mark their arrival in the American market, however they did not want to update their code base or CMS. I worked in-house with their development team to re-skin and weave the new design templates into the existing Java + Lotus platform they were using. I was responsible for all page templates and wrote every lick of HTML and CSS myself, as well as a smattering of javascript here and there where needed.

TPG Direct

TPG approached me with the need for a site build for their new design update. They were on a short timeline and wanted to move to a more flexible system. They ended up deciding on Wordpress, and I created a highly customized template for their needs which went well beyond blogging. They ended up with a CMS that allows them to edit almost every block of text seen on the site without needing to know how to write any code.

This entire engagement from start to finish took less than a month.

Gorlochs

Gorlochs hired me to build out their initial web presence. They wanted it to be fairly interactive, so almost all modules in the site are animated or can be manipulated in some way by the user.

I used a heavy dose of jQuery to achieve the multiple sliders and scroll animation, as well as several of the reveal content blocks.

Schools for School - Invisible Children

Built this site while at Digitaria. I handled all front end and integration with the back end which was built in Rails. This site was built entirely by myself and one programmer for the inaugral run of Invisible Children's Schools for Schools program which tracked the money raised by a specific school for the program.

S4S has since undergone a re-design.

Speck Products

Speck contracted me to do the template skinning on their Expression Engine + Magento based e-commerce site. I worked directly from PSD to EE template file to translate the design into working code in the existing system, which required a lot of creative CSS work.

Speck has since undergone a re-design.

Jackpot Records

Worked front end development on a redesign/rethink of Jackpot Records online store. Used the concept of physical objects and had album covers on a series of shelves represent each store item. Site was a full custom build, including a custom PHP e-commerce system.

Jackpot has since undergone a re-design, which blows because this version was much more fun.

KPBS

Developed site page templates for a redesign of KPBS.org while with Digitaria. Very modular design with a lot of PHP templating to dice up the data.

KPBS has since undergone a re-design.

Hacking Autism

Partial project, contracted to flesh out this site's mission section as well as various style and layout tweaks throughout. Site uses an API for various pieces of information associated with the hackathon and I was able to use that for some thing such as the countdown and application count.

Info

My name is Joshua Tuscan and I'm a web developer. I live happily in Seattle, but I wouldn't be surprised if you've seen me in Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, El Centro, Manheim, Lancaster, or Barbados. I reside in a smallish apartment overlooking the sea with my domestic partner and our rambunctious offspring.

I focus on the front-end web development, sometimes called presentation layer or interaction development. What it really means is that I use HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a smattering of server side language to produce the standards based interfaces you see everywhere from your desktop browser to ePub documents to mobile applications.

Another skill that I've picked up along the way is Organic Search Optimization, aka SEO. SEO gets a terribly bum rap thanks to the black hat community, but through my role helping Fortune 100 companies optimize their web properties I've seen tremendous value in understanding how a site interacts with the rest of the web.