What I’m Doing in June 2009

As of lately, I’ve been working on a bunch features to add to an ASP.NET MVC site for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). For those that don’t know, SEO is improving your ranking in search engines. This helps new people find your web site through the use of a search engine like Google.

Technically, using the MVC stack, there’s a lot of nice features we’ve been taking advantage of, including Routing. This isn’t exclusive to ASP.NET MVC, but gives better URL structure to some links that you might need some attention when given keywords.

Aside from the professional details, I’m enjoying some (mostly) nice Iowa weather and looking forward to a wedding and vacation in the next month.

About Chris Missal

My name is Chris Missal, currently I’m a software developer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I have a passion for creating software that works well. I have a very strong opinion that testing software is the most important piece of delivering quality projects, and delivering them on time. Not only does it provide the peace of mind that the application does what it is supposed to do, but provides faster turnaround times when adding new features and functionality.

My Background

Most of my background is in web development using ASP.NET with C#. I have developed several web sites in PHP and related technologies, although lately, I’ve been focusing more towards .Net and its Open Source frameworks and libraries. Major strengths of mine include XHTML, CSS & the jQuery JavaScript library. I do my best work in web development, but have some experience in desktop applications and Windows services. I have started learning Ruby more recently and can write Ruby, but haven’t put it towards any large projects yet.

Skills

The following is a list of skills of which I am comfortable sharing my perceived skill level. These will be either beginner, intermediate, advanced, or expert.

ASP.NET WebForms (Intermediate)

I’ve been working in ASP.NET for 3 years using VB.Net and C#.

ASP.NET MVC (Advanced)

I’ve been working extensively with ASP.NET MVC since Community Preview 3 in June 2008.

C# (Advanced)

I do most of my coding in C# and I’m comfortable using all features up to version 3.0

VB.Net (Intermediate)

I’ve used VB.Net on various web and windows applications, but little experience of the language in great depth or detail.

(X)HTML (Expert)

I’ve been actively using XHTML for over 10 years and keep up to date with W3C recommendations and improvements.

CSS (Advanced)

Proficient in applying CSS to new and existing web pages. Extensive knowledge of cross-browser complient styling.

jQuery (Advanced)

I’m very comfortable with jQuery for dynamic web content as well as many of its plug-ins.

Contributions to Open Source Projects

I like to contribute to open source software whenever I can. Here are some projects that I’ve helped out with:

• DotNetKoans : A set of Koans to teach the DotNet language. Based off of EdgeCase’s RubyKoans
• Groop : User Group Site
• jQuery Horizontal Bar Graph : The Horizontal Bar Graph allows you to display a set of data semantically while giving it some visual appeal.
• Blogsharp : A .Net blog engine.
• Docu : A .Net documentation generation tool
• Castle Project : .Net tools, libraries and frameworks.
• jQuery Validate : A client side jQuery validation tool.

Non-Professional / Miscellaneous

Some other things about me that I’d like to share is that I’m a newly avid disc golfer. I picked it up semi-seriously at the beginning of summer in 2008 and have been playing quite a bit since then. Additionally, I’m a big fan of movies. I like to watch them, collect them and pick them apart.