Let’s start with the simplest part: download Chirpy at codeplex. Start fiddling around. If something doesn’t work complain about it. If something does work, tweet or blog about how awesome your life has become. Finally, if you’re feeling really frisky, download Chirpy’s source code and add something. I don’t care what it is. Just add something. Surprise me. I’ll probably love you forever. Or, I’ll throw something at you.

When we talk about “improving” our skills as knowledge-hungry developers, I find it interesting that we rarely mention the people in our lives (not Karl Seguin, alas) who we inevitably and repeatedly injure with our sloppiness: namely, designers. Yes, those people, over there, cloaked in Urban Outfitter attire, crying, listening to Bon Iver (or, like, whatever).

Let’s face it. Developers aren’t the most fashionable folk. We can’t dress ourselves, we don’t kiss well, we don’t understand human interaction with other humans, touching feels complicated to our fingers, etc. As such, when it comes to designing and laying out our webpages, we’re not the most graceful fellows.

First, an interesting fact: according to Alexa.com, searches for “css url” account for the largest percent of search traffic pouring into Phil Haack’s blog. Statistically speaking, roughly one percent of all of Phil’s web page hits spawn from the “css url” search. I found that pretty shocking, and, shocking as it is, it’s a fact that either…