January 2007 – November 2009
Discovery Communications is the owner of the popular cable television networks the Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet. With over 20 million unique visitors per month, discovery.com is not only a popular support site for Discovery’s programming, but also a destination for original content, news, and information on topics ranging from space to animals to family.
For my first two years at Discovery, I was the primary front end developer for their direct-to-consumer website operations, responsible for such items as maintenance of the home page promotions and development of an digital video download section. In the summer of 2007, Discovery completed a major reengineering of its online checkout process using Ajax to streamline the purchase process. By leveraging Ajax technology, we significantly reduced the number of steps (and page reloads) involved in the checkout process, thus encouraging more completed sales.
After working in the ecommerce division, I transferred to Discovery’s online division, working directly on Discovery’s flagship site. Among my projects was the development of the Docent Topic Page, a portal of information on a variety of topics managed by experts in that field. This template (pictured left) was built using CSS to create rows of three blocks across. No tables were used to develop the main body of the site.
In addition to template creation, I was often tasked with solving a variety of cross-browser issues, ensuring that our flash and DHTML content worked across all major browsers including Internet Explorer 6.
Discovery Communications is based in Silver Spring, Maryland.