7 Excellent Websites for Learning Sass
In this post, allow me to share my list of favorite sites for learning Sass with you.
The post 7 Excellent Websites for Learning Sass appeared first on Six Revisions.
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art blog(derogatory)

PR's Tumblrdome
Game of Thrones Daily
trying on a metaphor
AnasAbdin
dirt enthusiast
Sweet Seals For You, Always
i don't do bad sauce passes

titsay
styofa doing anything
noise dept.
ojovivo
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Misplaced Lens Cap

Product Placement
KIROKAZE

tannertan36

@theartofmadeline

#extradirty
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@bwg-webdevelopment-blog
7 Excellent Websites for Learning Sass
In this post, allow me to share my list of favorite sites for learning Sass with you.
The post 7 Excellent Websites for Learning Sass appeared first on Six Revisions.
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Understand Overriding in Magento: Controllers
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Free download: 200 flat icons from Smashicons
We love icons, nothing communicates a simple idea with less pixels, and as the mobile web grows and grows we’ll need them more and more. Helping you fill your collection is this awesome set of free icons from Smashicons. There are 200 premium icons in the set. Our favourites include a spartan helmet from ‘300’, a […] ➟MORE
Three Technical SEO Basics You Should Keep in Mind
A good Google ranking is essential for the success of a website. In the past years, we’ve witnessed continuous updates in the Google algorithm that brought several SEO changes. Three technical requirements for websites have emerged since the “Hummingbird” update you should take into consideration. These technical SEO basics are easy to realize and can boost your ranking. 1. Avoid Duplicate Content Here’s the good news: Google doesn’t penalize duplicate content anymore as long as it wasn’t created on purpose. However, deliberately created duplicate content is still penalized. According to the Google Webmaster Guidelines, Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results. – Google Webmaster Guidelines You don’t have to worry about unintentional duplicate content; it won’t carry a penalty. It can, however, affect your website in the Google’s search results. Therefore, try to avoid duplicate content. Internal and External Duplicate Content […]
* You might also be interested in the following articles:
How Does Google’s New Ranking Factor Mobile-Friendly Affect Your
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Online Marketing Basics #4: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for…
Improving the Default Search Experience in WordPress
Online Marketing Basics #5: Best Uses of Search Engine Advertising…
Google Web Fundamentals: Free Handbook for Multi-Device Web Design in…
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Hemingway Editor 2 Review
As SitePoint’s editor for the PHP channel, I deal with a lot of text. Hundreds of emails and dozens of drafts fly before my eyes every week. This may not be obvious, but a lot goes into making the drafts publishable. There’s formatting, language corrections, image processing, code testing, syntax highlights, and more.
So it's important to be able to automate as much of the low-mental-effort work as possible. Automation allows editors to focus more on content and code. This, in turn, prevents the wasting of time. It is where tools like Hemingway can help most.
What is Hemingway?
Hemingway is a writing assistance tool. It keeps an eye on one’s phrasing and sentence structure, and suggests fixes. Typical fixes include shorter sentences, active instead of passive voice, and fewer adverbs. The app is also coupled with a built-in spellchecker for several English dialects.
I've taken a thorough look at Hemingway Editor 2, and what follows is a list of pros and cons. The list may or may not apply to you; it depends on how much writing or editing you do and in which format. As I programmer, I'm also interested in how Hemingway handles things like code and Markdown (MD) syntax. My hope is that the list will serve as a useful guideline when considering the tool for daily use.
Continue reading %Hemingway Editor 2 Review%
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5 Minutes to Min-Safe Angular Code with Grunt
Optimizing page speed is undoubtedly a primary focus for any developer building web applications. Task runners such as Grunt can play a pivotal role in the development process as they automate the activities of code concatenation and minification, which will be the main topics of this tutorial. Specifically, we’re going to use a set of Grunt plugins that will ensure our AngularJS application is safe for minification. Before I begin to discuss about AngularJS and minification, I want to highlight that developers of all skill levels can benefit from this tutorial, however basic knowledge of Grunt is desirable. In this article, we’ll be generating new folders with Grunt, so those new to using task runners will get a nice feel for how things work.
The Problem with Minifying Angular Applications
AngularJS applications are not min-safe by default. They must be written using the array syntax. Don't worry if you're confused as to what the array syntax exactly is, you have probably already written code that utilizes it. Let's take a look at two examples of AngularJS controllers that are being passed the $scope and $http parameters.
In the first example below, the module's factory and controller are wrapped in arrays that begin with DI annotations, and as you can see it does not follow the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle.
Continue reading %5 Minutes to Min-Safe Angular Code with Grunt%
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Video: Designing a Simple Navigation Based App
In this video I'll demonstrate how to create a navigation based app.
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Continue reading %Video: Designing a Simple Navigation Based App%
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The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate Part 3: The Last Steps
In the second part of this series, we prepared simple admin facing functionality for our plugin. We provided the users with an options page where they can tweak the plugin according to their preferences.
If you missed part 1 and 2, please find them below:
The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate Part 1: Speed up Development Using the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate
The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate Part 2: Developing a WordPress Plugin
For this article, we're going to implement the public facing functionality of the plugin. This means that we're going to retrieve the user preferences, determine whether that specific post is outdated or not, and display the notice accordingly on its single post view. Let’s get started!
Preparing the Theme
We need to prepare our theme so that we can test it out later. We are going to use the Twenty Fifteen theme that is shipped by default with WordPress. Rather than populating the posts manually, we are going to use the theme unit test data provided by the Theme Review team to populate the posts.
We need to download the theme-unit-test-data.xml provided on the above Codex page and import it into our WordPress installation. The WordPress built-in import functionality can be found by navigating to Tools > Import from the sidebar.
We will be presented with various choices, and since we are importing the WordPress export file, we are going to choose WordPress. Depending on the WordPress installation, a plugin popup will be displayed if we do not have the WordPress Importer plugin installed. Just go ahead and install the plugin first if you do not have it and we will proceed with the actual importing process once it is done.
Continue reading %The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate Part 3: The Last Steps%
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Free Vector Download: 350+ Vector Art Freebies
Illustrators, we have a huge free vector download for you! In these vector packs you will find over 350+ separate vector art freebies you can instantly download and use in your own designs. You can use them on websites, prints, logos, drawings, illustrations and any other kind of art projects you would like to create. […]
The post Free Vector Download: 350+ Vector Art Freebies appeared first on Line25.
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Sponsor: FullStory
See your site through your users' eyes.
FullStory records each customer session exactly as it rendered in their browser – unlocking pixel-perfect playback, DOM and console inspection, searchability on any page element or interaction, and more.
Watch and understand how real users are interacting with your site. Go beyond analytics to see why customers aren't taking the expected actions, or troubleshoot problem sessions exactly as they occurred without needing to re-create the bug after the fact. See what it's like …
Sponsor: FullStory is a post from CSS-Tricks
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12 Best Slack Communities for Every Professional
If your company isn't using Slack, chances are, the company next door is. In February, the team communication tool had 500,000-plus daily users—making it the fastest-growing business app ever. But Slack isn’t just dominating the cubicle. Recently, people have been using the platform to found and maintain “digital communities:” forums for collaborating and connecting with […]
Continue reading %12 Best Slack Communities for Every Professional%
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Making Minimalism Work in Mobile and Web
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”
This quote is attributed to a gentleman by the name of Ernst Schumacher, an influential thinker, economist and author of ‘Small Is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered’. The Times listed it among the 100 most influential books published since World War II.
Ernst was mostly talking about financial systems but the quote should resonate with a lot of designers and UX people. Often the simplest designs – created with the fewest elements – can provide the largest bang for your buck. Of course, we are talking about minimalism.
As the well-worn maxim goes, “less is more” and no matter if you’re designing for mobile or gigantic retina monitors there are some effective tips and tricks, dos and don’ts that will help you get the most out of the little bits you’re using.
Wireframe Usage
There are really no hard and fast rules with minimalism aside from downsizing your content but one of the most effective steps you can take to achieve the minimal effect in your work actually happens before you start throwing down all of your elements. This is the step of using a wireframe.
It is a lot easier to start with a blueprint than going in swinging when it comes to scaling back and down. The great thing about this process is it can be done anytime, anywhere and on anything, unless of course you’re trying to write on someone’s walls then I amend my previous statement.
While you may already know the power of prototyping you must understand that with minimalism your sketch requires more attention to detail. Because you are going for a specific style it is important to understand the function of each and every element you place down. One thing that should be at the top of your consideration list while in this phase is your layout. Unique, non-traditional setups have chances of rendering a stunning design when you start subtracting your elements.
DO for Web
Go for modular, column and hierarchical layouts as this will yield you a better flow to your final look. Remember that manuscript grids or box looks in minimal design, while still effective in its own right, can have your design looking flat and boring.
DO for Mobile
Use an online wireframe tool for better planning. This will allow you to avoid layout issues if you go ahead and plan for each specific mobile device instead of working from paper to digital only to find out your minimal look isn’t exactly minimal.
DON’T for Web and Mobile
Never go into the wireframing stage without a list of the content that you need to have in the final design and don’t forget to experiment with more than one layout.
Refine & Simplify (or simplify until it breaks)
They say “You break it, you buy it” but if your site is on the brink of breaking then it's likely you’ve just nailed the best minimalistic look your design could yield. That, or you are seriously into a punk rock ethos and just like breaking stuff.
When you are designing you need to make sure that everything has a purpose. If you can’t find a reason why a certain item is there then you need to get rid of it. With minimalism designing it really is okay to start big and scale down. In fact it is a lot easier than starting with absolutely nothing.
Think of the removal stage as some good old fashion spring cleaning. Look at everything as a whole and then start throwing those fifteen plus pillows out the window, you really don’t need all of them and your design is going to reflect that. Essentially the key here is to dial back as much as you can. If you’re not sure if you have “broken” your design you simply need to run some functionality tests and see if your design’s meaning is still in tact.
DOs for Web
Create purpose within your design. Remember that a minimal website design isn’t about dumbing down your site’s content. It is about reducing unnecessary content so visitors can get to the good parts without missing anything.
DOs for Mobile
Due to the nature of mobile devices, smaller screens, you want to make sure that the spacing between your elements doesn’t look like you’ve just deleted something and forgot to place something there. You’re simplifying to create a clear eye path, not to show gaps.
DON’Ts for Web and Mobile
Never remove so much that your design doesn't have a focal point anymore. When you are simplifying there should always be a “look at me” element. This will allow you to design AROUND the focal point instead of designing FOR it.
Continue reading %Making Minimalism Work in Mobile and Web%
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CSS is Alive and Well
Due to the ever-growing popularity of React, Facebook’s user interface library, there has been some discussion on the topic of CSS and whether or not it has a future in its current form — that is, in the form of declarations in a separate stylesheet that provide presentation information for a given page or section of markup.
I’m not going to rehash the conversation or the pros and cons here. For those not familiar, here are a few links you can check out:
The Debate Around “Do We Even Need CSS Anymore?” by Chris Coyier
React: CSS in JS slides and video presentation
But what I will do is provide some strong evidence that CSS is alive and well.
The developers are restless
When I read the reactions and heated debates in comment sections of articles like this one or this one, two things become clear:
Developers are passionate about CSS
Developers are not happy with some of the proposed solutions for large CSS projects
The two links in the second bullet point in the introduction above are a slide deck and video presentation by Christopher Chedeau, a developer working for Facebook on the React project. This past week was the first time I tried delving into React a little bit, thanks to this great tutorial by Shu Uesegi. After that simple introduction, the slides gave me a little more context.
Christopher addresses 7 CSS architecture problems that he believes can be solved by using JavaScript to manage and implement styles. This is the kind of thing that makes a lot of purists shudder because, with React, you’re basically writing your markup and styles in your JavaScript — something that’s usually discouraged in keeping with “separation of concerns”.
The screenshot below captures one of Christopher’s pertinent slides in this regard, outlining the 7 problems that React attempts to address:
Christopher makes a great case for solving CSS’s problems in JavaScript, so I highly recommend you keep an open mind and check out his slide deck (although I’ll forgive him for saying that w3schools is his favorite website for learning JavaScript!).
So it’s clear that it feels like a CSS revolution is needed and some might say it’s already under way. But it’s also clear that CSS in its current form is not going away anytime soon.
CSS tips and tricks are in high demand
If you were keeping tabs on your RSS feeds and Twitter stream in the past week or so, then you probably came across my most recent CSS article. That was one of the most enjoyable articles to write, and judging by the incredible response in the comments and on social media, I’m glad to see that it was as enjoyable for readers.
[caption id="attachment_110386" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Artwork by SitePoint/Natalia Balska.[/caption]
The popularity of those types of articles demonstrates that developers still love CSS in its traditional form. Tweets by Ilya Grigorik, Smashing Magazine, CSS-Tricks, and others were shared and favorited hundreds of times. And the traffic to that article and its predecessor has been amazing.
The content in my articles is mostly covering stuff that’s been available in browsers for years, not just the new “CSS3” features. In fact, I intentionally tried to use as many cross-browser CSS tips as possible and the response has been overwhelming.
But this sort of thing is not unique to my article. Consider past CSS articles on other sites that have been hot in the community. Two that immediately come to mind are, not coincidentally, both by Heydon Pickering:
Tetris and the Power of CSS
Quantity Queries for CSS
Continue reading %CSS is Alive and Well%
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Model Web Pages with the Page Object Pattern
We interact with web pages every day. On the low level, clicking on various HTML elements or entering text in text forms using input devices. What's the higher-level purpose of doing those things? It's trying to get something done. Completing a Google search, submitting a contact form, or rating something. The Page Object pattern is a great, object-oriented way to keep your code clean while accomplishing those higher-level things as your application grows.
Fundamentals of the Page Object Pattern
Why use the Page Object pattern? Two words: code reuse. Let me explain.
Suppose you're making an application that will go to a search engine and perform a search using a particular phrase. To do this, you will need to:
Go to the web page
Locate the HTML element where you can input text and enter your keyword (the text box)
Find the Search button and click it
Continue reading %Model Web Pages with the Page Object Pattern%
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Mark Llobrera · Professional Amateurs: Memory Management
When I was starting out as a web designer, one of my chief joys was simply observing how my mentors went about their job—the way they prepared for projects, the way they organized their work. I knew that it would take a while for my skills to catch up to theirs, but I had an inkling that developing a foundation of good work habits was something that would stay with me throughout my career.
Many of those habits centered around creating a personal system for organizing all the associated bits and pieces that contributed to the actual code I wrote. These days as I mentor Bluecadet’s dev apprentices, I frequently get asked how I keep all this information in my head. And my answer is always: I don’t. It’s simply not possible for me. I don’t have a “memory palace” like you’d see onscreen in Sherlock (or described in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall). But I have tried a few things over the years, and what follows are a few habits and tools that have helped me.
Extend your memory
Remember this: you will forget. It may not seem like it, hammering away with everything so freshly-imprinted in your mind. But you will forget, at least long enough to drive you absolutely batty—or you’ll remember too late to do any good. So the trick is figuring out a way to augment your fickle memory.
The core of my personal memory system has remained fairly stable over the years: networked notes, lots of bookmarks, and a couple of buffer utilities. I’ve mixed and matched many different tools on top of those components, like a chef trying out new knives, but the general setup remains the same. I describe some OS X/iOS tools that I use as part of my system, but those are not a requirement and can be substituted with applications for your preferred operating system.
Networked notes
Think of these as breadcrumbs for yourself. You want to be able to quickly jot things down, true—but more importantly, you have to be able to find them once some time has passed.
I use a loose system of text notes, hooked up to a single folder in Dropbox. I settled on text for a number of reasons:
It’s not strongly tied to any piece of software. I use nvALT to create, name, and search through most of my notes, but I tend to edit them in Byword, which is available on both OS X and iOS.
It’s easily searchable, it’s extremely portable, and it’s lightweight.
It’s easily backed up.
I can scan my notes at the file system level in addition to within an app.
It’s fast. Start typing a word in the nvALT search bar and it whittles down the results. I use a system of “tags” when naming my files, where each tag is preceded by an @ symbol, like so: @bluecadet. Multiple tags can be chained together, for example: @bluecadet @laphamsquarterly. Generally I use anywhere from one to four tags per note. Common ones are a project tag, or a subject (say, @drupal or @wordpress). So a note about setting up Drupal on a project could be named “@bluecadet @drupal @projectname Setup Notes.txt.” There are lots of naming systems. I used this nvALT 101 primer by Michael Schechter as a jumping-off point, but I found it useful to just put my tags directly into the filename. Try a few conventions out and see what sticks for you.
My file naming system for text notes.
What do I use notes for? Every time I run into anything on a project, whether it’s something that confuses me, or something I just figured out, I put that in a note. If I have a commonly-used snippet for a project (say, a deploy command), then I put that in a note too. I try to keep the notes short and specific—if I find myself adding more and more to a note I will often break it out into separate notes that are related by a shared tag. This makes it easier to find things when searching (or even just scanning the file directory of all the notes).
Later on those notes could form the basis for a blog post, a talk, or simply a lunch-and-learn session with my coworkers.
Scratch pad
I have one special note that I keep open during the day, a “scratch pad” for things that pop into my brain while I’m focusing on a specific task. (Ironically, this is a tip that I read somewhere and failed to bookmark). These aren’t necessarily things that are related to what I’m doing at that moment—in fact, they might be things that could potentially distract me from my current task. I jot a quick line in the scratch pad and when I have a break I can follow up on those items. I like to write this as a note in nvALT instead of in a notebook because I can later copy-and-paste bits and pieces into specific, tagged notes.
Bookmarking: Pinboard
So notes cover my stuff, but what about everyone else’s? Bookmarks can be extremely useful for building up a body of links around a subject, but like my text notes they only started to have value when I could access them anywhere. I save my bookmarks to Pinboard. I used to use Delicious, but after its near-death, I imported my links to Pinboard when a friend gave me a gift subscription. I like that Pinboard gives you a (paid) option to archive your bookmarks, so you can retrieve a cached copy of a page if link rot has set in with the original.
Anything that could potentially help me down the line gets tagged and saved. When I’m doing research in the browser, I will follow links off Google searches, skim them quickly, and bookmark things for later, in-depth reading. When I’m following links off Twitter I dump stuff to Pocket, since I have Pinboard set to automatically grab all my Pocket articles. Before I enabled that last feature, I had some links in Pocket and some in Pinboard, so I had to look for things in two separate places.
Whatever system you use, make sure it’s accessible from your mobile devices. I use Pinner for iOS, which works pretty well with iOS 8’s share sheets. Every few days I sit down with my iPad and sift through the links that are auto-saved from Pocket and add more tags to them.
Buffers: clipboard history and command line lookup
These last two tips are both very small, but they’ve saved me so much time (and countless keystrokes) over the years, especially given how often cut-and-paste figures into my job.
Find a clipboard history tool that works for you. I suggest using the clipboard history in your launcher application of choice (I use Launchbar since it has one built in, but Alfred has one as part of its Powerpack). On iOS I use Clips (although it does require an in-app purchase to store unlimited items and sync them across all your devices). Having multiple items available means less time spent moving between windows and applications—you can grab several items, and then paste them back from your history. I’m excited to see how the recently-announced multitasking features in iOS 9 help in this regard. (It also looks like Android M will have multiple window support.) If you don’t use a launcher, Macworld has a fairly recent roundup of standalone Mac apps.
If you use the command line bash shell, CTRL+R is your friend: it will allow you to do a string search through your recent commands. Hit CTLR+R repeatedly to cycle through multiple matches in your command history. When you deal with repetitive terminal commands like I do (deploying to remote servers, for instance), it’s even faster than copying-and-pasting from a clipboard history. (zsh users: looks like there’s some key bindings involved.)
Finding your way
I like to tell Bluecadet’s dev apprentices that they should pay close attention to the little pieces that form the “glue” of their mentor’s process. Developing a personal way of working that transcends projects and code can assist you through many changes in roles and skills over the course of your career.
Rather than opting in to a single do-it-all tool, I’ve found it helpful to craft my own system out of pieces that are lightweight, simple, flexible, and low-maintenance. The tools I use are just layers on top of that system. For example, as I wrote this column I tested out two Markdown text editors without having to change how I organize my notes.
Your personal system may look very different from the one I’ve described here. I have colleagues who use Evernote, Google Docs, or Simplenote as their primary tool. The common thread is that they invested some time and found something that worked for them.
What’s missing? I still don’t have a great tool for compiling visual references. I’ve seen some colleagues use Pinterest and Gimmebar. I’ll close by asking: what are you using?
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The Tuts+ Guide to Template Tags: Seventh Batch
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How to develop the perfect web skillset
Understanding the true value of the work we do is one of the first lessons many of us learn. Turning away spec work, focusing on growing the skills that are important to us, and using those skills efficiently are among a few things we all go through early on. When it comes to valuing our […] ➟MORE