Web Development
Experience
In the past I have been part of the development, design and deployment of a wide range of websites. These websites include, the website of Hostel Seven, IIT Bombay; the webpage for the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science, IIT Bombay; Mood Indigo (2003), the student's cultural festival of IIT Bombay; and the Sheet Metal Forming Research Association (India). These were static websites with infrequent changes to the content.
I have also worked on dynamic websites for Insight, the student's newspaper of IIT Bombay; a billing and processing website for Regional Sophisticated Instrumentation Center (RSIC) (a project I had to abandon due to paucity of time) and a modular ERM solution (commercial) for Supra Infotech. For the Insight website, I had to implement a workflow that involved gathering of news, organising and presenting it. I wrote from scratch, an implementation of PHP-MySQL based system, that relied heavily on CSS for content formatting and presentation. For the RSIC portal, I was expected to implement a billing and order processing framework for the various services that the Center provided to Industry and Academia (local as well as external). This was implemented in JSP/PostgresSQL; which I am unfamiliar and uncomfortable with - but was insisted on by the relevant authorities providing the infrastructure. The ERM solution was implemented again using PHP-MySQL. All these projects involved, user controls, user and administration interfaces, varying workflows and security concerns.
I also worked with design and interface implementation for Webaroo, a mobile web applications company, that dealt with their web portal, offline html/javascript based interface, and interface for handheld devices (primarily Windows CE and Windows Mobile based devices). The primary objective was to take designs and mockups to interface implementations using HTML/Javascript/CSS - with the challenge of using the limited and quirky mobile browser capabilities. The asynchronous data query system was my first serious implementation of an AJAX system, and involved writing an entire library of functions to deal with the special concepts involved in the product.
As private projects I have helped marginally in setting up tlavsDPS.com a tribute to a deceased friend and a bulletin board style group for literary activities. The site has fallen to ruin is now defunct. Shashi and I have also started a wiki style website for enthusiasts of food and the associated travel, called the Perky Platter project, inspired in part by SigFood.org, a now defunct group of restaurant enthusiasts in IIT Bombay. Due to a lack of time on both our parts the project was progressing very slowly and has been abandoned.
In all websites and portals that I have worked on, I have put a considerable effort into ensuring compliance with W3C standards for HTML4.0, and CSS1.0. Where possible, I like to implement XHTML1.0 Strict compliance.
This Website
I have been running a personal website for close to 9 years now. I initially hosted the website on IIT Bombay central servers, and also on the servers of the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science. Subsequently, I choose to separate my website from the institute resources and hosted it on rootshell.be. In mid-2006 I came upon a sum of money and decided to buy a domain name and hosting space on a commericial hosting service. The name karkata, is the name of the Cancer constellation also known as the seven weeping sisters; from the Sanskrit word "kark"; meaning "crab". I chose the name firstly because I am fond of Sanskrit mnemonics, especially female names; and because I wanted the name to be phonetically simple - globally.
I initially bought the domain and hosting space with rediff.com - in the hope that their local offices would be of some use. I later moved my hosting service to IX Webhosting, who provide great support, a very neat set of services, at a very reasonable price. Subsequently, I found a better hosting service with MediaTemple - which is not only friendly to use, but provides a better set of features including shell access, cron jobs and better e-mail user management. In the past I have used Google Apps, Reddiff's POP3 Hosting and IX Webhosting IMAP services for e-mail. Now except for Jabber Messaging (Google Apps), I rely on MediaTemple for all my webservices. In the past the design of this website has been inspired by many things, including, the Mac "teardrop" buttons and the acqua interface, still seen in the favicon.ico; the image filmstrip in Windows; transparency and alpha processing in browsers and intermittent use of AJAX systems.
For the current version of this website, I have organized the basic design, structure and functions on this website in a set of (text only) documents. The static parts of this website are XHTML1.0 Strict and CSS1.0 compliant. All efforts are made to keep the pages consistent across browsers. Also, whenever possible, an effort is also made to keep the dynamic content compliant with standards. I have to add the caveat that this is a continuous process, I keep fixing "bugs" on the pages all the time. The images on the site are all produced using GIMP 2.2, and were part of the period when I used a Linux Desktop. I currently use PixelMator on my MacBook Pro to create and edit images. I use DreamWeaver extensively to put together the static content. The dynamic content is in two sections - the blog and the photography blog - both handled by Wordpress 2.5 - using PHP/MySQL. The design of the website is themed around the cube/block seen on the main page and the primary colors used are red (73% Red, 0% Green and Blue - #bb0000) and grey (20% Red, Green and Blue - #444444) against a white background. The pages are designed to be 2 dimensional, easy to read with sufficient contrast bewtween design elements. The structure is designed to provide a superficial organisation with work and leisure providing the major divisions, along with the section about me.
