Aaron Gustafson

Front End Expert

Aaron has been working on the web for nearly 15 years and, in that time, has cultivated a love of web standards and an in-depth knowledge of website strategy and architecture, interface design, and numerous languages (including XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP). Aaron and his wife, Kelly, own Easy Designs, a content-focused web development consultancy based in Chattanooga, TN. When not neck deep in code, Aaron is usually found evangelizing his findings and sharing his knowledge and passion with others in the field.

Aaron has trained professionals at The New York Times, Gartner, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (among others), and has presented at the world’s foremost web conferences, such as An Event Apart and Web Directions. He is Group Manager of the Web Standards Project (WaSP) and serves as an Invited Expert to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Open Web Education Alliance (OWEA). He created eCSStender, serves as Technical Editor for A List Apart, is a contributing writer for .net Magazine, and has filled a small library with his technical writing and editing credits. His most recent book is Adaptive Web Design.

Reviews by this author

  1. (Issue No. 34)
    Reflecting on the Revamped Sherpa

    Our Publisher Aaron turns the spotlight on the Sherpa site and walks through some of the choices we made for the mobile-first overhaul of this site.

  2. (Issue No. 14)
    Cleaner Living Through Content Management

    Half the battle with adopting any CMS or framework is to figure out how to best organize your content within it. Aaron shows how Norwin Alliance might approach a CMS migration.

  3. (Issue No. 9)
    Getting up to Speed with Lighthouses

    Responding to Worldwide Lighthouses’ request to help them speed up their gallery pages, Aaron discusses file ‘munging’, compression and organization to improve performance.

  4. (Issue No. 6)
    A Legendary Misunderstanding

    Aaron unearths code consistency issues at American Express, and shows how we can use fieldset and legend more effectively in the markup of web forms.

  5. (Issue No. 2)
    Improving the Tweet Box

    Twitter.com’s redesign was much welcomed and rightly so. Aaron explores its most prominent feature: the tweet box, and looks at how it can be made more accessible with just a few minor adjustments.

Ask the Sherpas by this author

  1. Question About Rounded Corners and Progressive Enhancement

    You bring up some interesting issues Triel, thanks for the question! CSS Benefit #1: Forward Compatibility First off, CSS is a web standard which means it is not likely to go away anytime soon.…

  2. Question About Cross-Browser Audio and Video

    Adding audio and video content to a web page is nowhere near as easy as we might like it to be. It’s not that the syntax is hard, but rather that the codec wars have made it rather…

  3. Question About Apple Products and Mobile Assumptions

    I think there is a tendency in our industry to focus on the latest and greatest technology, which many would say includes Apple products. That should come as no surprise though. Most…

  4. Question About Finding a Web Designer

    Finding talented, reliable people is probably one of the hardest tasks a business owner or manager must do. And, unfortunately, there’s no magic formula to find them, nor is there a well…

  5. Question About Nested Divs

    Like many things regarding web design, it depends. The most important thing to remember when marking up a document is the meaning of each element you use, and whether it is appropriate for the…