Natalie Downe is a Brit living in the Californian sunshine. Her professional experience spans both software engineering and natural history.
After getting a degree in Computer Information Systems from Bath University, she worked with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers and the Devon Wildlife Trust, then as frontend engineer for Torchbox and Clearleft.
Then whilst travelling the world with her husband Simon Willison, together created Lanyrd which they ran for 3 years and sold to Eventbrite. Natalie transitioned to Director of Frontend Engineering at Eventbrite. In moving herself, her family and her team over to San Francisco, California, Natalie learned more than she wanted to about government buracracy.
Nowadays Natalie works for herself combining her love of nature and web development, occasionally doing public speaking on CSS or Bats (though not at the same time), volunteering for the California Bat Working group, the Marine Mammal Center and assisting the California Acadamy of Science with their tidepool monitoring.
On Sunny days Natalie can be found hiking around the bay area with her husband and her dog Cleo. On rainy days she mostly eats chocolate.
Natalie Downe gathers the forest creatures in from the cold and shows them how some clever combining of an inquisitive mind and a JavaScript API can produce some amazing results.
Natalie Downe segues seamlessly onto the subject of CSS 3 transforms and transitions with some examples of how a little CSS magic and a modern browser can bring what might otherwise be a flat layout to life.
Natalie Downe sets the presses rolling with an in-depth look at the state of print stylesheets in 2007. Often neglected by developers but much loved by the user, the simple print stylesheet can really add that finishing touch to even the best site designs. So get this down you. Ding dong!
Natalie Downe describes a simple approach to usability testing for those of us working to tight timescales or budgets. That’d be nearly all of us then. Learn how to make the most of your available user testing time, and perhaps this year you’ll not end up quizzing auntie as she stuffs her face with turkey.
