Chris Coyier, most notably of “CSS-Tricks” and “Digging into WordPress”, was kind enough to sit down with us for an a brief Interview, here’s what he had to say.

How did you first get into web design & development?

I was a computer nerd as a kid, which turned into getting into programming in high school, and then graphic design and art in college. I was always attracted to the web because of how easy it is for people to see and interact with the things you create. Even though the web curriculum at the college I went too wasn’t great (to be fair, it was fairly early) I kept at it after college and after doing print work for a few years finally got a job doing web stuff.

Creativity can be an elusive thing, with what seems like such a lot on the go, how do you go about finding or creating a “creative space” for yourself.

I don’t have any particular problems or frustrations with finding the time or space to be creative. Typically the process is thinking “you know what would be awesome?” then doing that.

What gets you really excited about the web as its developing now?

The speed at which browsers are moving right now is exciting. All the major vendors are pushing new versions more frequently which implement new features, move old features forward, make themselves faster, and try to improve user experience. We need them to keep doing that so the things we build inside them can do the same.

Do you have any design & development pet hates.

When people take things too seriously.

Having had a great amount of success with things like CSS-Tricks, Digging into WordPress and having moved over to Wufoo, what is the next big challenge for you moving forward?

I’m keeping busy with plenty of stuff. My list of things I’d like to do is so long it would take many years to get through. I tend to go day-by-day and work on things that are the best balance between what interests me the most and what I think would benefit the project I’m on the most.

 and Whats in the future for CSS Tricks, we’re big fans, can you offer us a sneak preview?

Here’s a super secret sneak preview: I’m slowly working on a new area of the site I’m tentatively calling the “Almanac” which I hope to be a complete online reference to all properties and selectors of CSS (to start). It’s a lot of work, so it’s going to take a while, but I think CSS-Tricks is a great place for something like that. 

What has been your greatest personal achievement over the past few years, and is their a secret great aspiration behind the scenes still to be achieved?

The times I feel most like I’ve achieved something is when I’m asked to speak at a conference. It’s flattering and validating to know that people are willing to take time away from their day and go to a place just to hear you talk about something. I’d like to continue to do a moderate amount of that. Other than that, just keep chugging along working on things where I can both learn new things and put the things I already know to good use.

Are their any “secret weapons” in your toolbox you wouldn’t reveal on CSS-Tricks?

Nah. If I had anything like that I’d rather just publish it because it would probably get great traffic! There are very few things I won’t just give away, but one example is like the current theme I’m using on the site. Sometimes I get email of people just asking me to zip that up and send it to them, and I say no to that. For one, it’s so specific to my site I doubt it would be that useful, and two, I prefer people are inspired by things they like and then harness that inspiration to build their own things, not just copy outright.

We love WordPress and know you do too, in fact we consider you a bit of an expert, are their any serious limitations or challenges for the platform you see currently or on the road ahead?

I think it would be more interesting to ask people on the WordPress core team that themselves. Personally I don’t see any limitations to WordPress. You can already use it to build a huge variety of types of sites. You want it to do eCommerce? It can do that. Forums? Yep, by extending it through bbPress. Social network? Sure, through BuddyPress. Run a big network of sites? Yep, through multi-site. Blog? Clearly it reigns supreme there. I think the challenge for them will be continuing to grow while keeping the core trim.

Do you foresee a follow up to Digging into WordPress, and would you approach it differently this time around? 

I can’t see writing another book about WordPress at the time being. That book has just about everything I wanted to say about WordPress in it. I can see new versions coming out but I’m not currently working on that. Jeff Starr, the books co-author, is taking over most of the operations on that book, but it’s possible we work on future updates together. As far as self-publishing goes, love it, would do again.

Do you have any advice for young designers and developers starting out?

Just work on a bunch of websites. Like learning an instrument, you don’t get better overnight, you get better by practicing a ton over long periods of time. 

Finally, the arb geeky question for today, we’d like to know your thoughts on footers, love them hate them rate them? and do you think big ones show a desire to compensate for something?

Every design is a solution to a problem. Each problem is unique. A footer of any size may or may not be part of that solution. It’s impossible to say “big footers are bad” or “big footers are good” without knowing a heck of a lot of detail about what that website is trying to do. Or were you trying to get me to say: WEBSITE WITH BIG FOOTERS HAVE TINY COCKS. =)

Many Thanks to Chris for taking the time out to talk to us.  We’re all big fans of both CSS-Tricks and Digging into WordPress, if you don’t know these sites, check out the links. they’ve both been very helpful to us.  Chris is now part of the team at Wufoo, a great service for almost instantly creating web forms, a great development time saver also worth checking out.