Website Development

Fully customised website development and build partner for website projects.

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

From optimizing your design process to automating web performances

The difference between a new designer and a seasoned one is seen in the techniques they employ to optimize their design process. The more mature one is more administrative in approach, organized, more precise and more focused.

Optimize Your Design Process

The present is always the best time to take a step back and analyze your design process, because there’s nothing more valuable than your limited time on this planet. Could you spend your time making a bigger impact? Are you getting bogged down in details that don’t matter? How can you use your time more wisely?

If you have a good design process, you’ll create better design and more of it (which should also mean more money). These tips are mostly applicable to designers, but developers can certainly benefit as well.

Let’s dig in.

Creating Custom Shipping Methods In Magento

In this tutorial, we will use Magento’s powerful shipping-method code abstraction to create a shipping carrier.

We will create three shipping methods that provide a fixed shipping price, allow for free shipping promotions, define logic based on an item’s weight and, finally, make it all configurable in the admin panel.

We will cover the following...

Build Partner & Custom Web Development

More than just a simple website, it is possible to create sophisticated applications for use on the web or mobile devices like iPhone, iPad and Android.

We personalise your website user experience as well as the administration area so that you can do what you want in the easiest way possible for you and your site users.

We can help you match your vision...

Automating Web Performance Best Practices with mod_pagespeed

Web performance is a brilliant, but sometimes complex world. Concatenating and minifying files, optimizing images, setting up caching, these are all tasks that can lead to great performance wins.

We know that this stuff is good for performance but actually putting these strategies into practice can sometimes be tedious. A team at Google recognized this problem and came up with the idea of creating a web server module that would take of a whole bunch of performance optimizations for you; thus mod_pagespeed was born.

Learn how to set up mod_pagespeed on an Apache web server.

Page speed is like the pulse of any web page. Two websites may have the same quality of content but the one with speed will win the race. The other will lose traffic. So take advantage of this tutorial. This could be what you need to do for your next design. (via Choc Chip Digital)

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

Images, images, images

The way to a web user's heart is through his eyes! That's right, that's how important images

are. They are your hook, your charm, your one sure way of catching someone's attention. So

this list is all about images. . .

Creating a Photo Tag Wall With Twilio Picture Messaging & PHP

Twilio’s recently announced Picture Messaging has vastly opened up what we can do with text messaging, now we can attach photos to our text messages and have them get used in different ways.

In our case, we are going to build a Photo Tag Wall, which will contain photos linked to tags that will be displayed on a website. This can be handy for events, or parties, or just about anything where you want to associate photos and tags.

To process our photos, we’ll be doing a few different things...

How to Fix a Broken Image

If you’ve ever created a website using HTML and had an image not show up or a picture that you can’t see, you have what’s called a broken image. This can be caused by a couple of different problems, but fortunately, it’s easy to fix. If you’re not familiar with file systems, you may want to read my previous article about working with files and folders before moving on.

In the Google Chrome web browser, the above picture shows what a broken image typically looks like on a web page. It’s usually an icon that looks like a photograph or a piece of paper that’s been ripped in half. A image could be broken for any number of reasons. For example, the image might not exist, it might not be named properly, or the file path in the code might be incorrect.

In this article we’ll go over more advanced file system concepts...

Getting Started with the WebP Image Format

When it comes to optimizing websites for performance one of the biggest goals is to reduce the amount of data that needs to be sent to the browser (the payload). As images commonly make up the  largest chunkof the overall page size, it’s a good idea to find ways to reduce the size of your images.

There are plenty of tools available that can compress images in order to decrease the file size but you’re still limited to a certain extent by the file type. The way in which images are encoded has a big impact on the size of the resulting files.

In this blog post you’re going to learn about a new image format called WebP...

Fix the pictures on your website

Do you need help with the images on your website? Your in-house team can handle the graphic

design and marketing for your website, but might not have the expertise to build it using the

latest web development techniques.

We partner with design agencies, tourism bodies, government and large business, and can use Drupal or a custom system to build exactly what you need.

As your build partner we can provide the code to match your vision...

Pictures are powerful. The images that you add or take out may define the result of your next analytics. Best be equipped on it and know as many options you have as you build with it.

(via treehouse)

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

Keeping up with the Web Industry

Changes continue to happen in this industry, it's inevitable. But though it is a good thing, it can sometimes be overwhelming. That break we just had was a much-needed one and I hope that you got yourself the refreshing you need to launch into a whole new year!

How to Keep Up with the Web Industry

It can feel impossible to stay up to date with the latest news and information in the web industry. It seems like every week there are new front-end frameworks, new JavaScript projects, new must-have apps, and so much more. How can one person possibly know everything?The truth is this: Nobody knows everything, and indeed, it is impossible to keep up with everything. I’m sure there’s lots of fantastic web apps or jQuery plugins that could have saved me hours of bygone headaches had I only known about them. Half the battle is just identifying a problem you’re having and searching for a solution, but even then, it’s easy to miss the perfect fix. I’m telling you this, because at some point when you’re showing a project to someone, they’ll say, “Why didn’t you just use ______ instead?” and you’ll smack yourself in the forehead.

It’s OK, it happens all the time, and it’s usually a helpful lesson.

Improving Your Development Workflow with Yeoman

With so many great tools available to front-end web developers these days it can sometimes be difficult to understand how they all fit together. Deciding on a workflow that you’re happy with is often a very personal endeavour, but getting started isn’t always easy. Yeoman aims to solve this problem by defining a workflow for creating modern web applications, while at the same time mixing in many of the best practices that have evolved within the industry.

Learn how to harness the power Yeoman to create fantastic web applications.

Coding in the Cloud

The Internet has allowed us to work anywhere we want, giving us tremendous flexibility in choosing where we’d like to plant ourselves to build the next great app. Not being tied to an office desk has been a blessing to many who cherish the ability to work in varying environments and draw inspiration from their surroundings. But for the most part, we’ve needed to have a full-blown development machine to make this happen.

We could leverage the cloud as a development environment itself.

Using New Relic Custom Metrics to Monitor All the Things

When you first get introduced to New Relic, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the features. But like with most tools, as you slowly climb the learning curve and get familiar with the features provided out of the box, you begin to wonder how it all hangs together under the hood and if there is more you can do with what you have at hand.

Today I will look at how New Relic actually monitors transactions and how you can hook into the process.

There is so much out-of-the-box possibilites that relic has to offer the web industry but others that rely on this one much more heavily than they think. It makes a lot of sense, too, to apply these things in business situations. But like I always say, it's always good to go back and relearn when need be as there are so many new things coming up. Not just this year but in the years to come. (via Nettuts)

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

Getting started on your website

Sometimes, all that you need is the push to the right direction and everything just fall in from there. So here are some blogs that may help you get started on some of the things that you need for your latest projects.

Setting up Google Authorship for Your Website

You will have probably noticed that Google added a new addition to their search results a little while back. Verified content creators can now have a headshot and byline displayed alongside their links in the search results.

In this blog post you’re going to learn how to set up Google Authorship so that you too can start appearing in search results.

More on 'setting up Google Authorship for your website' here.

Getting Started with Stylus

Within the web development community, we hear a lot about two popular CSS preprocessor: Sass and LESS. You don’t often, however, hear about the third big preprocessor: Stylus. When it came to redesigning the Mozilla Developer Network, I chose Stylus for a few important reasons:

Since Stylus is NodeJS-based, we didn’t need to add another technology to our stack (Sass would have required Ruby)

Stylus provides a JavaScript API so that preprocessing can be further customized

Stylus doesn’t require brackets, colons, or semicolons: the syntax is completely space-based. You can, however, add any of those punctuations and Stylus will still compile correctly.

An additional component and mixin library called Nib is also available.

Click here to know 'how to get started with Stylus'.

An Introduction To Full-Stack JavaScript

Nowadays, with any Web app you build, you have dozens of architectural decisions to make. And you want to make the right ones: You want to use technologies that allow for rapid development, constant iteration, maximal efficiency, speed, robustness and more.

You want to be lean and you want to be agile. You want to use technologies that will help you succeed in the short and long term. And those technologies are not always easy to pick out.

More on 'An introduction to full-stack JavaScript' here.

Build Partner & Custom Web Development

Here's a team that specialises in Drupal development, using the latest web technologies to build sites that are usable, accessible, compliant, and mobile-friendly.

They also provide training and support for your team (or your clients) to make it easy for them to utilise their new asset.

Continue reading 'Build Partner & Custom Web Development' here.

Whether you decide to form partnership with a web developer or go for it on your own, it's always good to start on the right track. Have a good holidays everyone!  

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

Video backgrounds, Gumby Framework and the web design community

I don't know about you but I might have already been consumed by the holidays. So I'm going to make this quick and easy and lay out these interesting links for you to go through.

11 Great Examples of Video Backgrounds in Web Design

Video backgrounds were certainly very popular during 2013. And since this trend is still staying strong among designers, we decided to gather a few examples of websites using this approach to grab the attention of their visitors.

The key with video backgrounds is to properly optimize so you speed up load times without sacrificing quality.

Check out the 'examples of video backgrounds in web design' here.

10 Resources To Help You Become More Active in the Web Design Community

Designers as well as developers have always been a close-knit group (there always seems to be a problem you need help with, right?), but online interaction and presence amongst this industry has just recently started growing over the last few years.

While social media and forums became a necessity quickly for many professions—marketers, writers, sales representatives, etc.—it wasn’t something the development and design community jumped on right away. Now that this is changing, it’s more important than ever to get involved.

The question then becomes easy: If I’m a developer and/or designer and want to be more active in the online community, where do I even start?

Know where to 'start becoming more active in the web design community' here.

Building a Complete Website With the Gumby Framework

In this, our final video tutorial on Gumby, we’re going to put all we’ve learned into practice. We’re going to build a complete website using Gumby’s semantic grid, parallax effects, toggles and switches, covering workflow best practices as we go. There’s plenty to cover, so let’s get started!

Get started on Gumby framework here.

Edit your website yourself

Your site can include a full-featured e-commerce store for selling online. This can include secure credit card payments, paypal, stock control, sales reports, automatic delivery of downloadable products and more.

And just like the main part of your site, the product listings are easy to edit so you can change prices or update a photo any time you like.

Each website comes with an admin login and password which enables you to easily edit the content, add new pages images and links as often as you like.

If you want a website that you can edit yourself, check this out!

Did the exploring birth into a beginning? I would surely hope so. Enjoy the holidays!

(via Web design tuts)

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

Guides on text editors, mobile landing page optimization, and groundwork for extensibility

Everyone needs a guide. Be the need as simple as which text editor to use or as complex as laying down the groundwork for extensibility, guides are good at keeping us within the scope of our projects. So here are some good guides to look through for the week.

Which Text Editor Should I Use?

One of the most common questions I’m asked by students is, “Which text editor should I use?” That’s a really great question with no simple answer. However, I can understand why it’s confusing. Wikipedia’s comparison of text editors is ridiculously lengthy and feels beyond human scale. Yet it makes sense that there’s an abundance of variety, because a text editor is a programmer’s most important tool and it mostly comes down to personal preference.

A text editor is a computer program that allows you to create and edit files that contain plain text. This is very different than a robust word processing program like Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, or Google Docs, because they add special formatting that’s hidden to the user. When you’re writing computer code, you don’t need or want any special formatting. In fact, your code probably won’t work at all unless it was written and saved in a plain text environment.

Continue reading on 'text editor' here.

A Simple Guide to Mobile Landing Page Optimization

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ve seen the smartphone and tablet explosion happening around us. This isn’t set to slow anytime soon and designers are now finding themselves with more and more projects that need to be built for multiple screen sizes.

This is because tablets are gaining ground on traditional PCs, the latter of which are seeing the worst decline in sales in their history. Add to this the amount of internet traffic which smartphones now account for, and it’s clear that design is evolving. Tablets and mobile currently account for 15% of the world’s internet traffic and this has been projected to rise to 50% in four to six years’ time. As the below chart from Adobe shows, this has been a steady and consistent rise that shows no sign of stopping.

More on 'mobile landing page optimization' here.

Laying The Groundwork For Extensibility

The Web has succeeded at interoperability and scale in a way that no other technology has before or since. Still, the Web remains far from “state of the art”, and it is being increasingly threatened by walled gardens.

The Web platform often lags competitors in delivering new system and device capabilities to developers. Worse, it often hobbles new capabilities behind either high- or low-level APIs, forcing painful choices (and workarounds) on developers.

Click here for more on 'groundwork for extensibility'.

Web Applications

Your in-house team can handle the graphic design and marketing for your website, but might not have the expertise to build it using the latest web development techniques. As your build partner we can provide the code to match your vision.

More than just a simple website, it is possible to create sophisticated applications for use on the web or mobile devices like iPhone, iPad and Android.

We personalise your website user experience as well as the administration area so that you can do what you want in the easiest way possible for you and your site users.

Want to know more about web development partnership? Click here.

These here are just a few of the few go-to guides available online; and if none fits, go Google! As we always say, Google's our friend.

(via Treehouse Team)

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

B is for Basics

Foundations are important.You'll know if a senior musician is a good one by the wisdom he shares. They don't talk much about themselves, they advise younger musicians to study the basics before getting lost in the pool of creativity. It goes the same with programmers.

WebGL With Three.js: Basics

3D graphics in the browser have been a hot topic ever since it was first introduced. But if you were to create your apps using plain WebGL, it would take ages. This is exactly why some really useful libraries have recently came about. Three.js is one of the most popular, and in this series I will show you how best to use it in order to create stunning 3D experiences for your users.

Before we begin, I do expect you to have a basic understanding of 3D space before you start reading this tutorial, as I won’t be explaining stuff like coordinates, vectors, etc.

Read more on WebGL with three Js here.

Objective-C Basics

The foundation of iOS development is the Objective-C programming language. In Objective-C Basics, expert teacher Douglass Turner starts with C, the language Objective-C is based on, and then branches into the fundamentals of Objective-C.

By the end of this course you’ll have a firm foundation in Objective-C and be ready to dive into Building an iPhone App.

More on Objective-C programming language here.

Logo Design Basics

Want to design your first logo? Or just brush up on your skills? Logo Design Basics just launched on Treehouse!

In Logo Design Basics you’ll learn what a logo is, types of logos, and the logo design process. Then you’ll move into designing a real logo from start to finish. Expert teacher Mat Helme will guide you every step of the way.

Click here for more on Logo design basics.

Sign up for the Hour of Code

You may not realise it, but every day you see computer science at work everywhere around you.

People from all walks of life use mobile phones, withdraw money from ATMs, have social media accounts, use tablets or laptops, play digital games or use the internet for research.

And yet many people are still intimidated by the terms “programming”, “coding”, “information technology” or “software”. There is a misconception that computer science is only for the math geniuses or exclusive to the technology industry.

Interested to sign up for the Hour of Code? Click here.

When things are going rickety. The best thing to do is to go to the foundations and check the pillars and work it from there.  

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

Freelance issues: Client-side security & dealing with creative block

Going freelance appear to go well with a lot of developers. However, when you're doing freelance, you don't have a team of people thinking things out with you, you're basically going for it on your own. In short, you shoulder all the headaches. Anyhow, these might be of help.

Client-Side Security Best Practices

Thanks to HTML5, more and more of an applications’ logic is transferred from server-side to client-side. This requires front-end developers to focus more on security. In this article I will show you how to make your apps more secure. I will focus on techniques that you may not have heard about, instead of just telling you that you have to escape HTML data entered in by users.

Of course I don’t want you to serve your content with FTP or plain TCP. What I mean is that if you want your users to be safe when using your website, you need to use SSL (HTTPS). And not only for login sites, or valuable information. For all of your content. Otherwise, when someone is accessing your app from a public network, what they see may be malformed by some hacker inside this network. This is called a main-in-the-middle attack:

When you use SSL, all of the data is encrypted before it’s sent, so even if the attacker gets it, he would not be able to modify or capture it. This is by far the most important step in securing your app.

Learn more 'client-side security' here.

How to Break a Creative Block

Nothing can kill your energy like a creative block. One day you’re confidently burning through your to-do list and listening to your favorite tunes, and out of nowhere, a problem comes along that leaves you stuck. I recently hit a pretty difficult block, but I was able to work through it and get inspired again by using a few simple strategies.

I’ve been meaning to redesign my personal site for the last few months, and this time around I wanted to create a logo to identify myself. I knew that I wanted to use my initials (NP) and include a visual cue alluding my profession in web design. I’m able to work pretty fast when it comes to websites, so I thought making a simple logo would be an easy task I could knock out in a few hours. Instead, it took me several weeks.

Read more on 'how to break a creative block' here.

The Future Of Video In Web Design

Federico was the only other kid on the block with a dedicated ISDN line, so I gave him a call. It had taken six hours of interminable waiting (peppered with frantic bouts of cursing), but I had just watched 60 choppy seconds of the original Macintosh TV commercial in Firefox, and I had to tell someone. It blew my mind.

Video on the Web has improved quite a bit since that first jittery low-res commercial I watched on my Quadra 605 back in 7th grade. But for the most part, videos are still separate from the Web, cordoned off by iframes and Flash and bottled up in little windows in the center of the page. They’re a missed opportunity for Web designers everywhere.

But how do you integrate video into an app or a marketing page? What would it look like, and how do you implement it? In this article, you will find inspiration, how-tos and a few technical goodies to get you started with modern video on the Web.

More on the 'future of video in web design' here.

Learn How to Freelance on Treehouse

When we mention that we teach business at Treehouse, many people immediately come to the conclusion that we’re focused on teaching how to start a startup. But in technology today an amazing number of people make a great living and build amazing things working for themselves.

In How to Freelance, Pasan Premaratne will teach you what you need to know to start and run your freelancing business. We’ll walk you from getting set up, through pricing strategy and contracts, and help you think about where you want to take your freelancing business for the long term.

Click here for more on 'how to freelance'.

What works for others may not necessarily work for you. It could be the best thing that ever happened for you or it can be your worst nightmare. So consider and weigh your options. It's really more than just having the courage to go for it, there are valid reasons to consider. The best decisions are those weighed evenly up on the head.

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

On Apps and Plugins

Part of the continuous evolution of the web industry is the mushrooming of many different apps and plugins that make the internet consistently new and exciting. This week, I thought it interesting to get you in on the latest on apps and plugins by linking you to some really cool blogs.

Designing Web Apps For Multiple Devices

Before 2010, there were few devices on the Web other than smartphones and desktop/laptop computers. Developers could assume phone users had a small screen, low bandwidth and used a webapp for brief moments. Desktop users were assumed to have a large screen, high bandwidth and spend large amounts of time within an application.

Designing a webapp now means designing for 2014 and beyond, where users buy giant phones, phablets and tablets in many sizes. 4G connections may be faster than DSL or the throttled Wi-Fi at a coffee-shop. A number of laptop and “all-in-one” computers have touchscreens. Users may spend an evening hour on the couch with a tablet. And it was never true that all desktop users wanted apps to take up their whole screen – writing an e-mail or report often requires consulting another app, which ought to be content with half the screen.

Click here for more on 'designing web apps for multiple devices'.

Web Startups Will Move to In-App Purchasing on the Model of iOS

As the Web becomes more and more commoditized, I predict that, with in-app purchasing sweeping across iOS, selling services on the Web will slowly move to the same approach. The only real way to make money on iOS nowadays is to give away a great product and then entice your users to buy in-app enhancements that will better their experience. You will begin to see this same behavior for Web services as time goes on.

iOS in-app purchasing is most closely equivalent to the Web’s freemium model system, where you offer a free service that’s more restrictive than a paid service you have ready to offer on demand, hoping that customers will upgrade when they’ve maxed out what they can do without paying. The major difference is that the Web’s freemium model has a recurring fee associated with the paid plan and in-app purchasing is a one-time fee to enhance a certain feature. The best example of in-app purchasing is buying gems in the wildly popular Clash of Clans. As a player of CoC, you can use Gems to better your base and defend against opponents. That company’s use of in-app purchasing was so successful that they just sold 51% of their company to Softbank for $1.5 billion.

Continue reading 'web startups will move to in-app purchasing on the model of iOS' here.

Best Free WordPress Plugins for Common Website Functionality

The latest release of WordPress 3.7 has provided even greater tools & support for this PHP/MySQL system. Since the project launched over a decade ago it has seen various iterations on the administration panel, theme development, and plugin API(among other things). WordPress has grown into a fully-reliable CMS which pushes beyond the functionality of a simple blogging platform.

Because of the fast updates and tremendous community there are more people switching over to WordPress every month. This platform can be used for an e-commerce shop, photo gallery, production company, school webpage, online portfolio, or practically anything you can imagine. In this guide I’ve organized a number of helpful plugins you may want to use when putting together a new WordPress project.

Want to know what 'the best free WordPress plugins for common website functionality are'? Go here.

Introducing How to Build a WordPress Plugin

We’re excited to announce the release of our latest course on the WordPress Track, Introducing How to Build a WordPress Plugin. In this course expert teacher Zac Gordon will teach you the basics of building a WordPress plugin, from the basics of How WordPress Plugins Work to Launching and Supporting a WordPress Plugin.

In this project we learn how to build a WordPress plugin. We will start with an overview of what plugins are and how they work. We will then move into best practices for coding in the WordPress environment and some basic functions and reference material you need to know. In the process you'll learn actions, filters and how to create widgets and shortcodes. You'll even learn how to integrate with 3rd party APIs and create your own WordPress plugins from scratch.

Learn how to build a WordPress plugin here.

Speaking of WordPress, did you know that they've released to Creative Commons? Let me just leave you with that one last link and I'll begone for now! Have a great week ahead!

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

On Creating wireframes and using browser stack

Wireframes work best in communicating requirements to web developers and designers than mockups. They are simpler to do and pretty much provides the layout and the organizaiton of the functional elements of your web pages.

Treehouse Workshop: Creating Wireframe and Photoshop Mockups

We’re excited to announce the release of a recent Treehouse Live workshop, Creating Wireframe and Photoshop Mockups. In this workshop teacher Nick Pettit wireframes a fictional to-do list app in Balsamiq and then creates a high fidelity Photoshop mockup. Later he works through the process of converting the mockup to HTML and CSS.

Treehouse Live workshops happen every Tuesday at 2 PM EST on our  YouTube Channeland are free to watch live for everyone so be sure to check out future events!

See more about this 'creating wireframe and photoshop mockups workshop' here.

Using Browser Stack for Cross-Browser Testing

Browser testing is the bane of our existence. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Multiple browser versions and browser fragmentation can make it difficult to get good test coverage for your sites especially when you factor in the different operating systems developers use to build with.

Over the years, we've relied on a variety of tools to help us with this challenge including virtual machines, tools that simulate browsers and even having multiple devices on hand to work with. It'd be great if there were a way to have one viewport that allowed us to easily test across any major browser and their individual versions without jumping through hoops.

BrowserStack.com aims to offer this via it's browser-based virtualization service and in this article we'll cover the service and how it helps tackle the cross-browser testing problem.

More on 'Browser Stack for Cross-Browser Tester' here.

The Beginner’s Guide to Objective-C: Methods

Writing a killer iPhone or iPad app doesn’t require you to be a master of Objective-C, but the more comfortable you are with the language, the more you’ll enjoy it! Writing your own app may seem insurmountable at first, but if you start at the beginning with learning how and why a programming language works, then you can use those building blocks to create complex and amazing things, one step at a time.

Getting comfortable with the Objective-C programming language requires getting your hands dirty with some code. But you don’t want to dive right in without any prior knowledge, which is why we are here at Treehouse! This is the second in a series of posts that talk about the basics of Objective-C and how you can use it to write iOS apps. In the previous post we talked about the language itself and understanding variables, and in this post we will focus on an important basic concept known as methods. 

Click here for more on 'Beginner's Guide to Objective-C: Methods'.

Build Partner & Custom Web Development

Your in-house team can handle the graphic design and marketing for your website, but might not have the expertise to build it using the latest web development techniques. As your build partner we can provide the code to match your vision.

We partner with design agencies, tourism bodies, government and large business, and can use Drupal or a custom system to build exactly what you need.

You can get to know more about these 'web development partners' here.

What are your objectives? What are your goals? The best web structures are built on collaboration of great minds.

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

More ways than one with web development

What makes web development exciting is knowing that you can do a million different things in a million different ways. Okay, so that's a little exaggerated. But you get what I'm saying. Sometimes being safe is okay, but it pays to step off your comfort zone every once in a while.

There’s more than one way to mockup a website

You’ve probably seen PSD to HTML advertisements around the web. If you type “PSD to HTML” into your favorite search engine, you’ll find lots of companies that will turn your Photoshop mockup into code. You’ll also find innumerable tutorials that demonstrate how to do it yourself.

This might leave you with the impression that every web project starts with a Photoshop mockup and, through some mystical voodoo, ends up in a web browser as beautifully crafted HTML and CSS. This is a half truth and I’d like to dispel some of misconceptions.

There’s too much variety in modern websites for there to be a one-size-fits-all approach. Photoshop can aid the design process, but it should be labeled as one of many mockup tools at your disposal, and it can even be skipped entirely in many instances. In my experience, the three most helpful tools for conceptualizing websites are wireframes, Photoshop, and code. Each has qualities suitable for certain situations.

Learn mock-up variations here.

Hidden Productivity Secrets With Alfred

Good developers are always looking for ways to be faster and to automate their workflows. Today, we present a series of workflows in Alfred that will boost your productivity and rock your world.

WHAT IS ALFRED?

For those who don’t know, Alfred is an award-winning Mac OS X app that saves time when you search for files online or on your machine. The new version 2 brings a series of improvements and, with the Powerpack, enables you to create your own workflows.

Go to 'list of workflows' here.

Tips for Designing More Noticeable Website Sidebars

Website sidebars are a common design in most layouts. This commonly holds page elements which are not detrimental to the content, but include other means of traversing the website. These elements may include category listings, recent user profiles, a search bar, even badges for social networking profiles.

But what exactly makes your sidebar unique in comparison to the rest of your webpage? I want to go over some possible ideas for designing creative yet intuitive sidebars. Each website has different needs from visitors, so the purpose of your sideline-content will not be the same on every project, but understanding how users interpret sidebars can help to gauge how you should structure your own designs.

Click here to read 'Tips for designing more noticeable website sidebars'.

Partner with web devs who can do the specifics for you

Sometimes, when it comes to building your own website, you need to take your hands off it and have someone else make a go for it.

If you're a little hesitant, you can have someone who can work with your in-house design team as a 'build partner', doing the coding to support your designs.

Get the best web development team who can provide the know-how you need. Here's one that specialises in Drupal development who are highly skilled in using the latest web technologies to build sites that are usable, accessible, compliant, and mobile-friendly.

More on this team here.

So whether you're an old-timer, an aspiring one, or just someone from the outside looking it, that's alright. Web world is as exciting as you make it to be. Let go, try new things, explore! The possibilities for you are endless.

Image Source: Saad Faruque, flickr.com/photos/cblue98/7635644966/

(via Smashing Magazine)

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

The design part of web development

When it comes to working for a degree, the opinions vary. For some, they point out the saddest reality about university studies – many grads were passed on outdated skills by their profs; on the other hand, some web developers think there are still some things to learn in the university like solid foundations – the rest, they say is up to you.

Web Designers Don’t Need College Degrees

College is a considerable investment of both time and money. If you want to be a web designer, is college worth it?

Let’s unravel this multifaceted and complex issue by examining a 4-year bachelors degree in the applied arts and sciences. I’m a perfect example: I have a Digital Media B.A. degree from the University of Central Florida. There are numerous other fields like politics and medicine where the rules of the game are different (which I’ll mention throughout), but this will help anchor the discussion.

The Theory

College is a well respected social institution. The reigning public opinion is that it’s the best path to an honorable and prosperous career. For many parents, their child’s degree is a tremendous source of pride, especially if there’s a family tradition of a common alma mater. College is also an opportunity to join clubs, play sports, and find lifelong friends. If you want to be a web designer, surely this is an excellent value proposition. Right?

Want to know if web designers need college degrees?

Announcing Design Foundations

We’re proud to announce the launch of Design Foundations, the latest course on Treehouse!

Design touches every part of our lives. In this course you will learn what design is and how to harness its power. We’ll break down the components that conjure the perfect aesthetic.

You’ll also learn the problem solving process and why it’s so vital to a designer.

Know what Design Foundations is all about here.

Is a minimalist website right for your business?

You may have come across the term “minimalist design” and wondered if this is the right one for your business.

Minimalist design is currently a popular trend in web design, and if executed properly may be an effective way to present your brand and business online.

Creating a minimalist website simply means taking out elements such as apps, buttons, text, additional options and features that your website can do without and keeping only the bare essentials that will allow it to function online.

Need more information on Minimalist website design? Click here.

Firefox Developer Tools and Firebug

If you haven’t tried the Firefox Developer Tools in the last 6 months, you owe it to yourself to take another look. Grab the latest Aurora browser, and start up the tools from the Web Developer menu (a submenu of Tools on some platforms).

The tools have improved a lot lately: black-boxing lets you treat sources as system libraries that won’t distract your debugging flow. Source maps let you debug source generated by transpilers or minimizers.

The inspector has paint flashing, a new font panel, and a greatly improved style inspector with tab completion and pseudo-elements. The network monitor helps you debug your network activity. The list goes on, and you can read more about recent developments in our series of Aurora Posts.

Check out these developer tools and firebug here. 

I don't know about you but I might have to disagree with my friend when he says a university has more to offer than we think. I think we're at a revolutionary age when learning can happen anywhere with persistence, resourcefulness and determination. What do you think?

(via Mozilla Hacks) 

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

From coding for beginners to managing people

I can always rely on Treehouse for blogs that go beyond the technicalities of the job. In this list, I've arranged step #1 learning to code to imparting a vision that you may be running a business on it someday. So here you go:

The Secret to Learning Code

Learning how to code can be a daunting task for anyone, whether you’re a complete beginner or an experienced professional. Just getting started is hard enough, but sometimes the best still get stuck.

Reverse Engineering

If you’ve never coded before,Treehouse is a great way to get started. Once you have your footing and you know a language or two, it’s easy to understand code you’ve never seen by reverse engineering, or as I like to call it, “breaking stuff” to see how it works.This method rarely gets the emphasis it deserves (especially in formal educational environments), yet it’s amazing how useful it is for learning. In fact, being able to understand code without any instruction is an essential job skill, because it’s common for programmers to maintain code they didn’t write themselves.

Now before you take a proverbial hammer to your favorite website, you should know that you can’t just break anything with reckless abandon and expect to learn something. You have to take a methodical approach and break one thing at a time, then analyze the results of your changes. When breaking things, you should be looking for the relationship between parts to understand their function in the whole.

Want to learn more secrets to learning code? Read this.

Thinking Inside The Box With Vanilla JavaScript

During the past four or five years of blogging regularly and doing research for other writing projects, I’ve come across probably thousands of articles on JavaScript.

To me, it seems that a big chunk of these articles can be divided into two very general categories:

1.jQuery;

2.Theory and concept articles focused on things like IIFEs, closures anddesign patterns.

Yes, I’ve likely stumbled upon a ton of other articles that don’t fall into either of these categories or that are more specific. But somehow it feels that most of the ones that really get pushed in the community fall under one of the two categories above.

Continue reading on Javascript features here.

The Value of Side Projects

We developers constantly have ideas floating around our heads. There’s always something shiny and new that we want to put in a definite form. Often it’s an excuse to fiddle around with a new programming language that we’re not familiar with or to take a break from the monotony of the same old codebase (a new codebase is as appealing as a new pair of pants). So playing with a new technology and getting to know a new codebase can induce the wish to work on side projects, but how can we know when it’s worth it to do that?

As a lifelong entrepreneur, and only a recent developer, I’ve always had side projects in my life. When I was running my first company, TypeFrag, I worked my off-hours on a little web hosting company on the side. Then at Carbonmade, I ran a now defunct but at the time very popular art and design blog. Now at Uncover, I’ve been working on writing a book on startupsand bootstrapping and chipping away at a website for fans of slow cooking that will one day see the light of day. It’s always been a part of my nature to do something on the side. Over beers last night, Gregg Carey, Marc Lizoain and I talked a bit about it.

Click here for more on the 'value of side projects'.

How to Project Manage Part-time People

A little backstory: I began learning to program in early 2012 to build my new startup. In starting my company, I took two atypical approaches:

I wanted to learn to program to build the first version and

I decided to continue my tradition of bootstrapping instead of raising money.

Having had a couple of financial successes with my previous companies, I was able to work full-time on Uncover without taking a salary whereas my co-founder and the other people I work with would only be able to work part-time, during their off hours. The differences in our time commitments have left me to take on a lot of different roles, and I wanted to share my experience with project managing part-time people. Because of our unique situation, I’ve come up with a way to project manage Uncover that may also help you with planning out your Side Projects.

Want to know more about managing part-time people? Click here.

If you're into the internet, chances are, you already know that this age and time is kind. The internet opens up a big new world, not only for the technologically advanced, but for anyone who are willing to do the process. And though it needs some hard work from you- the competition is fierce, it can be done. (via Treehouse)

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

Being a Microlancer and things about API

If you're thinking of ways to earn some extra income especially now that the Christmas season is coming up, check out this new idea being introduced by Envato called being a Microlancer!

Make More Money as a Web Dev + Awesome Desktop Wallpaper

Envato, the people behind Nettuts+, have created a new avenue for web developers to earn an income doing what they love.

It’s called Microlancer, and we’ve recently started allowing freelancers to offer web dev services like PSD to HTML, WordPress plug-in development, and website customization.

You can set your own prices, turnaround time, and the terms of your services. We connect you with buyers who pay upfront to work with you. It’s an awesome new way to earn an income doing simple web dev jobs without having to worry about quotes, bidding, chasing up payment, invoicing, or self-promotion. We bring buyers, you do the work, Microlancer takes care of the rest, and you get paid.

Learn more about being a Microlancer here.

Poka-Yoke: The Quest for Mistake-Proof Designs

Poka-Yoke is a Japanese term that means “mistake-proofing”. In other words, the goal is to make an object that prevents the user from messing up. We live in a complicated world, but good design concepts like poka-yoke help us navigate everyday experience. Small design features and visual clues can influence the safety and efficiency of everyday objects, even without realizing it. This concept is more prevalent in industrial design, but it applies to software as well.

For completeness, I should mention that poka-yoke is closely related to affordances, but they’re not interchangeable. An affordance is more of a cue that informs how the object should be used, but may not necessarily prevent a mistake.

Continue reading on mistake proof designs here.

An Introduction to The Page Visibility API

The days of browsing the web using a single window (or tab) are long gone. Most of us now browse with multiple windows and/or tabs open at the same time. As developers we have never had a way of telling whether our web page is visible to the user or if it’s buried away amongst a stack of inactive tabs. This is all changing due to the introduction of the Page Visibility API.

The Page Visibility API gives developers a way of checking to see if their web page is visible to the user. The API also includes an event that gives developers the ability to easily write code that will be executed when the page’s visibility changes.

In this blog post you are going to learn how to use the Page Visibility API to pause a video when a web page is hidden, and then resume playback when the page becomes visible again.

Click here for more on 'page visibility'.

Coding a Dynamic IMDb Webapp using My Movie API

The online IMDb website is a crucial resource for any type of digital video media. Online web series, TV shows, and movies are all cataloged with credits to the cast and studio help. IMDb is probably the oldest resource for learning about your favorite shows or movies.

In the spirit of building on top of web applications I went to the site looking for an API section. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear that IMDb has an official API – but we do have My Movie API.

This is a RESTful web service which pulls data from IMDb based on a unique ID or title. You have access to a number of popular datasets along with various return formats including JSON and XML.

For this tutorial I want to demonstrate how we can build on top of this API to create a small IMDb webapp. You can do so many different things with this program, but I put together a simple example which can provide a template for other web developers. Check out my live demo to get an idea of what we are creating.

To learn more about using my movie API for IMDb Webapp, go to this link.

There's a whole lot of advancing going on with websites tying up with online APIs and may web devs are benefiting from it. I won't be surprised to hear random new directions happening. In fact, would love to hear of them. Let's have it! 

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

Firefox and Relic: It's all development from here

Firefox OS Development: Web Components and Mozilla Brick

Want to know the possiblities of web components for WebApp devs? Are you familiar with Mozilla's Brick library and how this collection can help you transition? This exciting new development is detailed to you by Mozilla's Matthew Claypotch.

The Why of Web components

There is a problem with the Web as a platform for applications: HTML, the language that makes it easy to mark up documents and give them meaning doesn’t have enough elements to build applications. There are quite a few new elements in the HTML5 spec, but their support is sketchy across browsers and there are still a lot of widgets missing that other platforms like Flex or iOS give developers out-of-the-box. As a result, developers build their own “widgets” like menu bars, slider controls and calendars using non-semantic HTML (mostly DIV elements) and make them interactive using JavaScript and theme-able using CSS.

This is a great workaround but the issue is that we add on top of the functionality of browsers instead of extending the way they already function. In other words, a browser needs to display HTML and does a great job doing that at least 60 frames per second. We then add our own widget functionality on top of that and animate and change the display without notifying the browser. We constantly juggle the performance of the browser and our own code on top of it. This leads to laggy interfaces, battery drain and flickering.

Watch this video on Chris Helman's interview with Matthew Claypotch:

More on 'Web components and Mozilla Brick on Firefox' here.

New Features in the Firefox Developer Tools: Episode 26

Firefox 26 was just uplifted to the Aurora release channel which means we are back to report on new features in Firefox Developer Tools. Here’s a summary of some of the most exciting new features.

Inspector: pseudo element support

To get more flexibility in the design of an element without using additional nodes, it’s very common to use CSS pseudo elements, eg (`:before/:after{content:”"}`). In the Inspector it’s now possible to see the rules applied to pseudo elements.

Continue reading on the 'new features in the Firefox Developer Tools' here.

Getting Started With New Relic in 30 Minutes

I remember working on a Rails app a few years ago and someone floated the idea of using this new service that had appeared on the scene. It was called New Relic and they were promising to give you more insight into the performance of your Rails app, than you ever could get before. We gave it a try and it was impressive, more importantly it was something the Ruby web development ecosystem truly needed.

Fast forward to now and you’d be hard-pressed to find a Ruby web application that doesn’t have New Relic hooked in. New Relic as a company has continued to provide tools to monitor your Ruby apps, but they’ve also branched out into a number of other languages such as Java, Python and even .Net. But of course as the number of features you provide grows so does the complexity and the amount of documentation out there. It becomes hard to figure out where to start especially if you’re not yet an expert.

Today I thought we could go back to the roots of New Relic and look at how we can get started with the service to monitor a Rails application.

Want to know more on how to monitor a 'Rails' app? Click here.

5 Reasons Why New Relic Is a Developer’s Best Friend

Once you start digging around New Relic you begin to realise just how many interesting features the service has to help monitor the performance and health of your application. It was truly difficult to pick just five things to talk about, so rather than focusing on the obvious features let’s look at some of the less hyped functionality that New Relic provides and how we can use it in interesting and sometimes unorthodox ways.

When we left you last time, we had a basic ‘Hello World’ Rails application (called New Relic_rails1, living in ~/project/tmp/New Relic). We will continue using this app, extend it and see if we can use it to demonstrate the features of New Relic that we’ll be looking at.

Read more on 'why new relic is a developer's best friend' here.

Other than all these features, the new Relic has other interesting features. One of the best thing about scienceand tech is that you put it out there and your peers can give you feedback on it. So check the new Relic out and share with us anything you've discovered from using them!

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

Parallax scrolling websites and Dropboxes

Do you want to create a Parallax scrolling website? Here's a good overview on what it is and how to do it.

How To Create A Parallax Scrolling Website

The trend for parallax scrolling in modern websites shows no signs of stopping. As a technique it has been used by games designers and other artists for many years, and has only in the last two years taken off as a popular way for web developers to show off their skills and get creative.

What exactly is it? In short, parallax scrolling creates the illusion of depth in a 2D environment by moving two or more objects simultaneously at different velocities. Occasionally confusion occurs when bloggers label scroll triggered animation as 'parallax' but whilst this can provide a similar experience, it is not technically the same.

More on 'Parallax scrolling' here.

Cross-Domain Messaging With post Message

As we build an ecosystem where web applications can interact with one another we need a way of securely sending messages between windows. The postMessage() method provides just that.

For a long time sending messages between windows was only possible if the windows used the same protocol, port, and host. The postMessage() method lifts this restriction by providing a way to securely pass messages across domains.

In this blog post you are going to learn how to use the postMessage() method to communicate between a controller window and a receiver window running different domains.

Continue reading on 'Cross-domain messaging with post message' here.

Build Partner & Custom Web Development

We can work with your in-house design team as a 'build partner', doing the coding to support your designs. Or you may prefer us to handle the entire project for you.

Either way our experienced web development team can provide the know-how you need.

We specialise in Drupal development, using the latest web technologies to build sites that are usable, accessible, compliant, and mobile-friendly.

We also provide training and support for your team (or your clients) to make it easy for them to utilise their new asset.

Click this link for more on 'Build partner and custom web development'.

Dropbox Datastores and Drop-Ins

Let’s begin by discussing what datastores are. You can think of them as a small database to keep key/values pairs of information. Now, you may say that your application could use a web service with a database and your data will be the same across all devices, and while this is true, by using the Datastore API, we are taking away the overhead of handling a back-end service.

With this in mind, applications that don’t need to store a large amount of user data and don’t require heavy processing, can delegate the database management to Dropbox and forget about handling it manually. Take for instance a multi-platform game. You would want to allow the user to play it on their iPad in the morning, head to work and while in the traffic, continue playing on their iPhone. In this scenario you’d normally need that user to log into the system, play, and then save their progress.

Click here if you want to know more about 'Dropbox datastores and Drop-ins?'

Recently, there have been reports on a female educator losing some very important files on Dropbox. Dropbox is a trusted name but be safe and keep extra copies. And make sure you read the terms, if you are using their free service, Dropbox deletes your files automatically after 30 days. 

[websitedevelopment22-blog]

That issue about coding

There's a lot of articles out on whether one should learn to code or not. Learning to code is a good thing but don't put unrealistic expectations on yourself. Take it a day at a time and enjoy the process and I promise you, you'll develop real love for it.

What Learning to Program has Done For Me

Learning to program was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my adult life. I started to learn a little over a year and a half ago, in early 2012. I’d started and stopped a dozen times before I learned that learning to program requires an idea. Getting my feet wet as a programmer has opened so many doors for me. For example, it landed me my technical co-founder for Uncover. And although I consider myself a non-career programmer and an entrepreneur instead, I could always brush up on my skills and take a programming job if I needed to. We all know that programmers are in great demand.

More than anything else, learning to program has made me new friends. Since I learned, I’ve come to know new people through programming Meetups in NYC and through people reaching out to me from the articles I’ve written on Treehouse’s Blog and through .my own website Those emails have led to coffee meetings, Skype calls and long email threads. It always brightens my day to chat with a programmer.

Continue reading 'What learning to program has done for me' here.

Must entrepreneurs code?

There’s no question that the Internet has changed the way business is done.

It’s a new “land of opportunity”.

Because of this, many entrepreneurs starting new businesses focus on online services or new technology. And it is often implied that if you’re starting a technology business you should know how to write programming code.

Click here for more on 'Must entrepreneurs code?'

Why iPhone Developers Should Learn Mandarin

Have you heard the rumors about the new iPhone 5c? Where the ‘C’ supposedly stands for cheap, okay maybe not, they say it probably stands for the various color options.

Then again, these are rumors, so it could stand for checkmate mobile industry, now your move. On the heels of these rumors comes another announcement that Tim Cook met with the head of China Mobile which is like the Verizon of China.

Apple has already been selling iPhones / iPads in China and the numbers are far from paltry, however this deal could create a massive explosion in sales.

Read more on 'why iPhone developers should learn Mandarin' here.

Bootstrapping Your Startup Idea

Malcolm Gladwell once wrote that it takes ten years and 10,000 hours to become an expert on a topic. While I’ve only been programming for a year and a half, I’ve been bootstrapping startups for over ten years and 10,000 hours I want to share a little bit about what I’ve learned to help others interested in starting their own startup.

I have a lot of developer friends and think of myself as a part-time developer as well. A lot of these developer friends of mine have a lot of great ideas, but they think that they either need a lot of money to get started or don’t have the time. They get discouraged thinking that they’ll either never be able to raise the money necessary or be able to put the hours in that they need to get their idea off the ground.

The truth is that you don’t need much money at all and the hours come from working with other people you know. The hardest part is getting started, but you do need to keep in mind a couple of key things in mind when you do.

Know what to do to 'bootstrap your start-up idea' here.

I totally agree with Fry here. There are resources all over the internet – all you need is to be resourceful and humble. Ask help when you need it. Have a great weekend everyone! (via Choc Chip Digital)