Vic Webster

Please find below a small selection of some of my work.

I have worked on the websites of many major Australian and international brands, such as Guinness Australia, Pfizer Ireland, Supré, NXFM Radio, Bundaberg Rum and Kostya Tzu's personal site.

For a more thorough listing of my previous work experience, visit my resume section

PHP Web Application Framework

I am currently developing a PHP web application framework, which I will use in a commercial capacity to develop my own websites, and the websites of my private clients.

The framework (unamed as of yet), is built using Object Oriented PHP5 and MySQL. The aim is to provide a completely modular development enviroment, that enables web applications to be quickly and easily ported for use on any client, including mobile web applications, standard WWW websites, or even desktop applications, with maximum code-reuse and minimal need for rewriting.

Pages are specified in an very simple psuedo-language (see screenshots), which is processed by the backend, adding any dynamic content requested, and then translated into the appropriate language for the HTTP response. All the back-end functionality is the same, no matter what sort of device the application is communicating with.

When the client is a web browser, the application produces 100% W3C compliant strict HTML, and works pefectly without any JavaScript or CSS. However, it has been built in a highly flexible manner which allows layers of complex CSS and JavaScript to be added in order to improve the user experience (but not provide functionality), while keeping within a highly modular design framework.

BUPA Australia

BUPA (formerly MBF) is one of the world's largest private health care providers. I was employed as a contractor in their Sydney office, where I worked within a large corporate environment, as part of a large team of managers, UX designers, graphic designers, Java & C# Developers, and database managers, where we employed the Agile Methodology of software development.

At BUPA, I worked primarily as a JavaScript programmer (utilising JQuery), as well as an HTML and CSS developer. The role also involved a small element of graphic design work, although the bulk of this was the responsibility of a larger graphic design team.

Alchemy

The Alchemy program is dedicated to teaching bartenders service and cocktail-making skills, utilizing this website as part of their training tools.

Working within a small team of designers and developers (at Capture Pty. Ltd.), I was responsible for the fron-end implementation of this site, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript (JQuery).

Budget Direct

Budget Direct needed several modifications to their website. These included an "awards" section to showcase their multiple industry awards, which was constructed with a JQuery-powered overlay system to save page space; new homepage hero graphics, including modifications to their existing Adobe Flash modules; and two new claims-related side modules that needed to be built into their Joomla-powered back end system.

Although the client provided very strong guidelines regarding style and their ideas about how this should all look and work, I was soley responsible for implementing the design according to their feedback, as well as the back-end development work on this project, working in my capacity as a front-end developer for Capture Pty. Ltd.

CG Lawyers: social networking

After the initial site was complete (see below), I was again approached by CG Lawyers who expressed an interest to move their business into social networking. This included a WordPress blog extension to the homepage, a Facebook site (including a customised Welcome page), and the linking of their existing LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.

Once again, I was soley responsible for all design and development work on this project, working as a freelance developer.

BigRedCigar.com (WP Blog)

This website was built for a hobbyist as a means of recording and publisizing cigar-tasting notes and other cigar related materials. In order to provide an easy-to-use back-end system, I built this site in WordPress, although the underlying PHP code was slightly modified to allow for different types of articles (e.g. reviews) to be posted and easily formatted.

I was solely responsible for all work done on this site, including graphic design, programming, HTML, CSS and JQuery.

  • This site is not longer available.

CG Lawyers - website

CG Lawyers is a trademark law firm based in Sydney's inner west. The client wanted a clean, modern and professional site that would work well with the logo and colour scheme that had already been defined for their business. Search engine optimisation was also a high priority. I was personally responsible for all design, development and programming on this site, acting in the capacity of a freelance web developer.

To account for search engine readability, this site was built to conform strictly to W3C standards in web development using XHTML and CSS 2.0. The framework is put together using PHP 5.3, as well as a trade-mark search form. The site also includes a liberal use of the JQuery JavaScript library to ease the user experience, particularly on pages that contain large amounts of text.

Bundaberg Rum - Reserve Academy

Bundaberg Rum is a major brand label in Australia. The Bundabery Rum Reserve site was created in order to promote the release of their "reserve" label product onto the market. I built this website working for Capture Pty Ltd in my role as front-end developer and working as part of a small team including a graphic designer, flash developer and Zend PHP programmer.

When building this site, I utilised advanced CSS features and JQuery to create a dynamic online environment that encourages user interaction.

  • This was a promototional site, and is not longer available online.

Mandarin Preschool

Mandarin Preschool is a nursery for babies and children that aims to provide a multilingual environment for the children.

This site includes a WordPress blog under the title of "Teacher's Diary" where the director of the school posts regular updates on the happenings whithin the school and the teaching methods utilised.

I did all of the work on this site, including graphic design, programming, HTML and CSS.

  • This site is not longer online.

Saxanova

This band website was made for popular Novacastrian jazz/funk band, Saxanova.

Two of the challenges of the site were creating a music-player that would continue to play uninteruppted as the user browsed through the site, and integrating a small MySQL database to allow users to commit testimonials, which are randomly displayed on each page of the site.

The music player was created using Adobe Flash. I'm not a big fan of Adobe Flash, but In the past, I have seen no problem using Flash for making little "widget" applications such as this. I think is a demonstration of a sensible, minimalist usage of Flash technology. As HTML 5.0, CSS 3.0 and impressive JavaScript innovations seem to be the way of the future, I have since stopped developing in Flash.