Welcome to Alternate Gateways

Welcome to Alternate Gateways - the homepage of Helen Meyer. I started this site with the purpose of showcasing my work and providing web tutorials, which you can find here.

A little about me

I am a web developer, specialising in CSS, XHTML and web standards. I also write fiction, mainly of the supernatural genre. If you've landed here by accident, why not take a look around...you might see something you like!

Skills

I specialise in building accessible, attractive websites that adhere to web standards, as well as PHP and MySQL development. I use Photoshop, to create the graphics for my websites, and will sometimes build animations in Flash, using ActionScript 3, though I tend to use jQuery, as it's more SEO friendly!

Web Design SOS

If you would like to request a tutorial, or are in need of web design help, feel free to drop me a line @ helen@alternategateways.com.

This site

Here's what's going on in and around Alternate Gateways.

News

01apr
09

Tutorial on how to use the CSS clear property to eliminate unnecessary code

I decided to write a tutorial about using the CSS clear property to save time and code, because I find it really useful, and, when used properly, it will cut down on your coding. This tutorial can be found here.

23mar
09

Tutorial on how to make headers for fluid layouts

It's been a while since I have written anything for this site, so apologies for that! Deciding to get back into the web design swing of things, I wrote a tutorial on how to create headers for fluid layout sites. I've heard people saying that they feel they must simplify their headers just because they're dealing with an unknown width, but this isn't the case. You can still create flashy or complex headers for fluid width sites. I have addressed how to do this in How to create a header for a fluid layout.

20dec
08

XHTML 2 Tutorial

With more people talking about XHTML 2 I decided to write an article about what's new in XHTML 2 - so here it is.

26nov
08

London Marathon 2009

A client of mine (Gary Eccleston from Cloud9Craft) is taking part in the 2009 London Marathon and has kindly asked me to place a link on my site enabling people sponsor him. His chosen charity is WellChild, which supports sick children and their families.

Click here for more information, or to make a donation.

5oct
08

PNG Transparency Tutorial

Wrote a tutorial on how to achieve PNG transparency in IE6. Why do I care about IE6? Well, I don't, but people still use it, so, as much as I'd like to ditch it, I can't. I'm counting down the days until we can wave a permanent goodbye to Internet Explorer 6 and forget that it ever existed!

19jul
08

Styling List Items

Added another CSS tutorial, this time on styling list items, which you can find here. It describes how to change a bullet point, positioning bullet points, swapping bullet points with images and applying a background-image to an list item.

16jul
08

All about CSS Transparency

Added a tutorial on CSS Transparency, which you can find here, as I felt there wasn't enough clear, concise information out there about transparency in CSS.