This site is the personal web appearance of Klaus Komenda, an Austrian Web Developer. I was born in Vienna and graduated from Communications Design (InterMedia) at the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences in Dornbirn, Austria in fall 2006. During that time, I focused more and more on website development according to Web Standards.
Since May 2007, I am employed as a Web Developer at Yahoo! Europe in London, dealing with XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP.
I actually had a couple of different jobs so far. I worked as a mailman (summer job), at a car engine factory at the assembly belt (summer job) and in the quality ensurance department at a car manufacturer (summer job). I even was a fitness trainer for a couple of months.
In 2000, I started working in the IT industry, being employed at Informix Software and then, after they had bought the company, IBM. After my graduation in October 2006, I worked for Lovely Systems, a web development company based in Dornbirn, Austria, for half a year.
My resume gives you an in-depth view about my education and work experience.
On one hand, it’s a place to keep the outside world updated about my life - on the other hand, entries here are and will be about the web world. It is kept in English so I can reach a bigger audience instead of German, my native language.
If you count them all, this is the 5th version of my personal website, so that’s the reason why - and it was not too difficult, I guess - it is called “v5″. The glorious wayback machine has probably still got some screens of my older versions in its archive - if you’re lucky.
As you have probably noticed: I am no designer. Although I graduated from a school emphasizing creativity and design, I focused more on the “technical design aspects”, to put it that way. I sometimes wish I would be equally skilled in design and programming, but then again: you can’t do it all. I think in the ends it’s about knowing your weaknesses and build on your strengths.
During the design process, I had to look for some inspiration - like everybody does, I guess. I believe that it is very rare that a design comes straight out of the blue. Sites that helped included:
After some pencil-sketches, I had an idea about how the site could be look like. So I started to create design mock-ups (using glorious Photoshop) and wireframes, a very handy technique when it comes to interface design. Well, to tell you the truth, I did not do the wireframes, cause I ran out of time. But I should have - cause this is an essential part of the whole web design and development process. Luckily the system that manages this site already has the functions you would expect (and even more available through plugins) built-in.
This site is powered by the overall-popular blogging software and cms WordPress, comforted with some hacks and tweakings. Nothing serious though. The following WordPress Plugins are in use:
It was built with XHTML 1.0 and CSS and is hosted by Kontent. There is also a RSS Feed available for those of you who like to comfortably follow my blog using their favorite Newsreader.
I think it is important to mention that everything that gets published here represents my own personal thoughts and opinions. I only speak for myself, not for any of the aforementioned employers.
Please let me know what you think by providing feedback.