Eclectic Dreams is the web design blog and portfolio of Matt Machell. A thirty-something web developer living in Birmingham, UK.
I make websites of all shapes and sizes. I spent the dotcom years designing sites selling antiques. I designed the glasshaus website way back when. I spent 6 years at Birmingham City University, working on assorted projects. I’m now a Senior Developer at Talis.
I like elegant and usable design with a great visual impact. I do some mean CSS and Javascript, know a lot about accessibility and I’m quite handy with PHP, MySQL and Apache too. Some have commented that I have an Eclectic skillset, hence the name of this blog.
Speaking and Training
I’ve been known to talk at conferences, though I’m more often found as a delegate. I also teach semi-regular training sessions on standards and accessibility for Media Skills. I’ve also talked at Multipack Presents concerning ARIA and Standards and ASP.NET.
Publications
I’ve worked on a number of web-related books as technical editor, lead editor or reviewer. You may remember me from such works as:
- The Flash Anthology, 2004, Sitepoint
- Dreamweaver MX ASP Web Development, 2004, Apress
- Practical Intranet Development, 2003 glasshaus
- Fundamental Web Design and Development Skills, 2003, glasshaus
- Contribute – Hassle free Content Control, 2003, glasshaus
- Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development, 2002, glasshaus
- Dynamic Dreamweaver MX, 2002 glasshaus
- Content Management Systems, 2002 glasshaus
- Usable Shopping Carts, 2002, glasshaus
- Practical XML for the Web, 2002, glasshaus
- Web Graphics for Non-Designers, 2002, glasshaus
- Dreamweaver MX: Advanced PHP Web Development, 2002, glasshaus
I’ve also written some 40-odd articles for DMXZone, on all things Dreamweaver and standards-related topics.