Scott Vandehey
Front-End Web Developer
After earning a BS in Graphic Design from Portland State University in 2000, Scott decided to make the jump into web development. He came to Pop Art in February of 2006 after having worked on several consumer facing web sites since 2001. Since coming to Pop Art, Scott has helped with the production of most of our projects, including DetroitDiesel.com and the Freightliner Trucks homepage redesign. He is also the lead architect of both the revamped PopArt.com, and the Pop Art blog. Outside of being our resident CSS ninja, Scott is a passionate gamer, and movie patron.
You’ll sometimes hear people joke that good programmers are 'lazy,' and what this means is simply that good programmers tend to see duplicated work as a bug, and try to fix it. — James Bennett, discussing CSS frameworks
Education
BS in Graphic Design from Portland State University
Ideal Jeopardy Categories
- Web standards and CSS
- Comic books
- Blues Brothers trivia
- Science fiction
- Video games
- Downtempo music
- Potent Potables
Top Five Industry Blogs
Top Five Viral Videos
Networks
Posts by Scott Vandehey
XHTML 2 is Dead
Wow, I didn't see this coming. Zeldman reports that the W3C is not going to renew the XHTML 2 working group's charter this year. That effectively kills XHTML 2 in favor of devoting the resources to the HTML 5 working group. This makes sense in that HTML 5 is already gaining ...
How to Get Your Most Recent Twitter Posts Using PHP with Caching
When we started redesigning the Pop Art blog, one of the chief requirements was to integrate everyone's Twitter feeds into the site. In addition to the Pop Art Twitter feed in the sidebar, we wanted to add individual twitter feeds on the profile pages. The problem is that the javascript ...
Welcome to the New Pop Art Blog!
The new Pop Art blog is live! On the front end, it's sporting a brand-new, and oh-so-spiffy, design, and on the back-end it's been converted to the titan of the blogging world, Wordpress. Please look around, and enjoy the new scenery. And make sure you take a peek at the ...
Bugzilla’s Reset Password Page Sucks
Frequently, my coworkers will forget their Bugzilla passwords. They come to me, because I manage it, and I always send them to the reset password page. Inevitably, they come back a few minutes later and tell me that it didn’t work, and I just reset their passwords by hand. Well, ...
An Event Apart Seattle 2009
The night before An Event Apart, I was at a party with some college friends. When they found out I was in town for a conference, they wanted to know what it was about. I said it was a web conference, and they said “Aren’t those usually held on the ...
I Work With a Bunch of Smartasses, Part VIII
Libby: What's that credit card test number again? Andrew: It's four, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one.
First, Light a Fire
The best advice my father ever gave me was to start a fire. My family owns a cabin out in the middle of nowhere. For nine months a year, it sits empty, and during the summer, various branches of the family take turns vacationing there. It’s beautiful, but the first family ...
I Work With a Bunch of Smartasses Part VII
Coworker 1: "The client wants this logo to be 10 pixels bigger." Coworker 2: "You know what? Let's overdeliver. Give 'em 11 pixels."
Why Aren’t You Using Fireworks to Compress Images?
I’m sure you've all heard the Fireworks vs. Photoshop debate. When I started at Pop Art, I was a Photoshop user. It was the application that we were taught in my graphic design program, and when I found out that the creative team used Fireworks, it took quite awhile for ...
Who’s Afraid of HTML Email?
Anyone who tells you creating HTML email is easy has either never done it, or is lying. Inexperienced designers tend to think, “Oh, no problem, it’s all tables and font tags!” Grizzled veterans, however, know all too well the difficulties of getting anything but the most simple design to render ...
Motrin Messes with Mommy-Bloggers and Loses
This morning, Annie told me about a Motrin ad that a bunch of mom-bloggers were angry about because it was critical of babywearing. She was really upset about it, and convinced that it was an intentional slam on mothers. Since I work in marketing, and Annie majored in Sociology, we ...
LP Usual Defects
About six month ago, we launched the first version of Stop the Usual Defects, a microsite for LP to promote the launch of their new engineered wood product, LSL. The concept was to showcase the strengths of LSL by portraying defects in traditional lumber in the style of The Usual ...
I Work with a Bunch of Smartasses Part VI
Pop Artist A: "I think it might be more interesting if we had several people talking in the video instead of just one." Pop Artist B: "Yeah, maybe have them talking on the roof?" Pop Artist C: "Drinking beer!" Pop Artist D: "In fact, forget the video!"
Bionic Lobster
We recently launched a microsite for Leatherman’s new Bionic Lobster ad campaign. The idea is that a lobster lost his claw during a struggle with a Sea Captain, but stole his Leatherman at the same time. He tied it onto the stump, and became a kind of lobster superhero, freeing ...
Detroit Diesel Redesign
About a month ago, we launched the new Detroit Diesel redesign. We were working on this site when I was first hired at Pop Art, and while I’m proud of the code we wrote the first time, our standards have evolved a bit over time. The opportunity to revisit the ...
An Event Apart San Francisco 2008
I’ve managed to attend An Event Apart every year so far, and this year was particularly exciting because the nearest location was in San Francisco. I went to Seattle the last two times, which was fine, but I know Seattle pretty well, so the opportunity to play tourist in a ...
The Survey for People Who Make Websites 2008
The guys over at A List Apart have posted the Survey for People Who Make Websites 2008. Despite the awkward name, this survey is worth your time if your job has anything whatsoever to do with the web. The results from last year’s survey were really interesting, and now that ...
Mac vs PC Firefox 3 Add Bookmark Dialog
One major annoyance between the Mac and PC versions of Firefox 3 is the position of the “Done” button on the Add Bookmark dialog. On a Mac, the button is on the right. On a PC, it’s on the left. I won’t comment on which is better, just that the ...
IE Double-Float CSS Bug
Has anyone seen this problem before and have any idea how to solve it? In firefox, the text wraps around both floats correctly. In IE6/7, the text only wraps around the second float.
I Work with a Bunch of Smartasses Part V
I sent an email to the Creative Team suggesting an exchange program where a Development Team member would attend their team meeting. I ended by asking when and where their next team meeting would be. I got three replies. Ben Fogarty: "Hey Man... We're creative. We meet on a whim. ...
WebVisions 2008
WebVisions is a Portland-based web conference that I’ve attended twice before. Sadly, due to a crisis at the office, I was only able to attend the first day of sessions this year, which means I missed Andy Baio’s presentation on internet memes and Jeffrey Veen’s keynote. What I did see was ...
The Door-Close Buttons in Most Elevators Don’t Do Anything
When we first moved into our new building, Dave wrote "Door-Close button in elevator does nothing" on the maintenance list, and the handyman replied "Button functions as intended" or something along those lines. Well, turns out they're BOTH right. I was reading an article that Kottke linked to about elevators, and there ...
I Work with a Bunch of Smartasses Part IV
"I print out all my e-mails and tape them to the inside of my clothes. I know Levi and Justin use their iPhones to access e-mail outside work, but my clothes come with me everywhere, and they don't set off airport alarms. I have a DD hat, a Freightliner jacket, ...
Version Targeting and IE8 Followup
Hooray! The feedback from the web development community convinced the IE development team to change their minds about the default setting for version targeting in IE8 (as I discussed in a previous post). “In light of the Interoperability Principles, as well as feedback from the community, we’re choosing differently. Now, IE8 ...
Version Targeting and IE8
Previously on Web Developer Controversies: Aaron Gustafson from the Internet Explorer development team announced that IE8 will use a META tag to kick the engine into standards mode by targeting a specific browser version, something that was previously done by using a valid DOCTYPE. A lot of people, including Jeremy ...
