My current project is so different from the others I’ve worked on. Instead of building logic, I’m doing front-end HTML/CSS/Javascript, working from Photoshop layers and design PDFs. I installed SASS so that I could gradually untangle the long strings of selectors my predecessor left me. Reading the code, I have a lot of sympathy for him. I imagine he felt like a fish out of water with both CSS and Drupal. I’m doing reasonably well. I’m not as fast as I am when working on Rails or Drupal back-ends, but I get stuff done. I don’t feel like I’m floundering in the land of “I don’t even know what I don’t know,” like it was when I was working with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and IIS 5. This one I can handle. Who knows, we might even turn the project around.

I’m learning more about refactoring code, adding CSS3 styles, using Cufon for typography, and dealing with a large number of small changes. AutoHotkey scripts and Emacs macros have been amazing time-savers. On the AutoHotkey side, I’ve been taking advantage of tools like SmallMeasure and WhatColor.

Emacs makes editing lots of PHP files easy. The previous developer used dozens and dozens of node templates instead of using panels or block visibility, and there was a lot of copy-and-paste code. I started moving common parts to files that I could include, but I wanted to make sure that I didn’t accidentally overwrite something he had customized. I grepped the directory for the strings I was interested in. Then I used a keyboard macro to interactively go through each of the files and replace the common text. Win!

I’m looking forward to making my workflow even better. I’ve got a couple of weeks more in this project, and I might work on other CSS theming things in the future. (Good to encompass more of the development pipeline!) Here’s what I’m thinking of trying:

• Use the monitor downstairs. Keep code on my laptop, and the browser/reference documents on the big screen.
• Make my browser window translucent with WinWarden, and position it so that the browser window overlaps the reference. If I undock the Chrome developer console, that will make it even easier to work.
• Deal with IE sooner rather than later, although IE 8 should be reasonably okay.

Looking forward to it. =)