Jen Simmons

Last updated
Jen Simmons
Jen Simmons AEACHI (cropped).jpeg
Simmons presenting at An Event Apart in 2015
Education Gordon College (BA)
Temple University (MFA)
Occupation(s)graphic designer, web developer
Website jensimmons.com

Jen Simmons is an American graphic designer, web developer, educator and speaker known for her expertise in web standards, particularly HTML and CSS. [1] [2] She is a member of the CSS Working Group and has been prominent in the deployment of CSS grid layout. [3] She worked as a developer advocate at Mozilla and later at Apple.

Contents

Life

Simmons earned a BA in sociology from Gordon College in 1991. [4] In 2007 she graduated from Temple University with an MFA in Film and Media Arts. [4] In addition to working on websites since 1998, Simmons is a designer for print pieces and live performance, including projection and lighting design work. [5]

She is a creator of Bartik theme for Drupal, which became one of core themes and a default in Drupal versions 7, 8 and 9. [6] [7] [8]

In 2013 she joined the Responsive Images Community Group one of groups of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). [9]

She was a designer and developer advocate at Mozilla since 2016, [10] where she designed the Firefox browser's Grid Inspector. [11] [12] Since 2020 Simmons is a developer advocate at Apple for the Web Developer Experience team for WebKit and Safari. [13] [10]

Simmons is a member of the CSS Working Group created by the W3C since 2016. [1] [14] She joined CCS WG when working for Mozilla and continued as an Apple employee. [15] [14] She helped prepare and communicate CSS grid layout specification (level 1 and 2), [16] [17] CSS Containment Module Level 3, [18] CSS Cascading and Inheritance (level 5 and 6), [19] [20] CSS Shapes Module Level 1. [21] She was an editor on CSS Box Sizing Module level 4 [22] and on CSS Grid Layout Level 3. [23]

Significance

Simmons run the YouTube channel "Layout Land" [24] [25] and coined the term "intrinsic design" to refer to her philosophy of web layouts that mix fixed, content-sized, and fluid layout. [26] She is a frequent conference speaker at events such as An Event Apart, South by Southwest, Fluent, DrupalCon, and SmashingConf. [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [12]

Simmons has been on Twitter since 2007 and has over 50 thousand followers. [33] In 2007, she coined the term "fail whale" for the website's error message illustration that showed during outages until 2013. [34] [35] [36]

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References

  1. 1 2 Warren, Tom (2018-01-04). "Chrome is turning into the new Internet Explorer 6". The Verge. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  2. ↑ Coyier, Chris (2019-03-04). "CSS Remedy". CSS-Tricks. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  3. ↑ CaSE Podcast Team (2017-03-08). "Modern CSS with Jen Simmons". CaSE: Conversations about Software Engineering. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  4. 1 2 "Monday Profile: Jen Simmons". Web Directions. 2016-06-20. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  5. ↑ "Jen Simmons - An Event Apart". aneventapart.com. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  6. ↑ "Core Themes: Bartik". Drupalize.Me. 2017-03-30. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  7. ↑ "Bartik". Drupal.org. 2010-02-22. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  8. ↑ "Bartik". Drupal.org. 2016-10-27. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  9. ↑ "Use Cases and Requirements for Standardizing Responsive Images". www.w3.org. 2013. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  10. 1 2 Notarianni, Mauro (2020-06-03). "Jen Simmons, la specialista degli standard web ora lavora per Apple". macitynet.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  11. ↑ Huijing Chen (2017-12-04). "Debugging CSS Grid Layouts With Firefox Grid Inspector". Smashing Magazine . Retrieved 2022-11-01.
  12. 1 2 "Jen Simmons Bio". talks.jensimmons.com. Archived from the original on 2019-08-30. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  13. ↑ Mearian, Lucas (2022-02-10). "Apple wants to know why you hate Safari". Computerworld. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  14. 1 2 "CSS WG members". www.w3.org. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  15. ↑ "CSS WG members". 2017-05-19. Archived from the original on 2017-05-19. Retrieved 2023-03-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  16. ↑ "CSS Grid Layout Module Level 1". www.w3.org. 2020. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  17. ↑ "CSS Grid Layout Module Level 2". www.w3.org. 2020. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  18. ↑ "CSS Containment Module Level 3". www.w3.org. 2022. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  19. ↑ "CSS Cascading and Inheritance Level 5". www.w3.org. 2022. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  20. ↑ "CSS Cascading and Inheritance Level 6". www.w3.org. 2021. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  21. ↑ "CSS Shapes Module Level 1". www.w3.org. 2022. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  22. ↑ "CSS Box Sizing Module Level 4". www.w3.org. 2021. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  23. ↑ "CSS Grid Layout Module Level 3". drafts.csswg.org. 2021. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  24. ↑ Slefo, George P. (2019-07-18). "CSS Grid is finally starting to live up to its potential in web design". adage.com. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  25. ↑ "The 15 best new podcasts for web designers and developers". The Media Temple Blog. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  26. ↑ "The Web Layout Revolution: An Interview with Chen Hui Jing". The Media Temple Blog. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  27. ↑ "Jen Simmons on Speaker Deck". speakerdeck.com. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  28. ↑ "Mozilla Developer Roadshow: A Day Working on CSS Grid + Layout with Jen Simmons". generalassemb.ly. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  29. ↑ "Jen Simmons - An Event Apart". aneventapart.com. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  30. ↑ "Jen Simmons's schedule for CSS Dev Conf 2014". cssdevconf2014.sched.com. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  31. ↑ "Web Directions hover 2022". webdirections.org. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  32. ↑ "Jen Simmons - SmashingConf SF 2019, April 16–17". smashingconf.com. 2019. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
  33. ↑ "Jen Simmons (@jensimmons)". twitter.com. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  34. ↑ "La vera storia della balena di Twitter" [The real story of the Twitter whale]. La Stampa (in Italian). 24 January 2015. Archived from the original on 2021-03-08. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  35. ↑ LaFrance, Adrienne (2015-01-08). "The Story of Twitter's Fail Whale". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  36. ↑ Simmons, Jen [@jensimmons] (November 4, 2010). "Oh, fail whale, you are making my website fail. No more wordpress-twitter-crossposting" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
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