There will be some days in your life as a web developer when you feel like you’ve hit the jackpot. Often this comes in a form of a client whose pockets match their ambition, and you’ll finally be getting paid what you’re worth. However, despite the benefits that await you when you accept, and eventually, finish this big gig, there is a looming trap hidden here; it comes in the form of a big pile of responsibility. Of course, as the price of the project rises, the workload rises too. This calls for...
In the digital era, less and less people rely on paper books. That obviously doesn’t mean people have stopped reading books, just that ebooks have largely flooded the market. There are numerous reasons for this, but the most prevalent is that ebooks can be brought to market quickly whilst their content is still relevant. There are millions of ebooks available, teaching you everything from typography to apps. And incredibly some of the best are available absolutely free. Check out my list of essential...
For a backend developer, designing a user interface for an application can be difficult, primarily because you are not a hundred per cent comfortable with what you are doing. It’s like writing using your left hand when you’re a righty. However, with the inception of frontend toolkits and frameworks, UI design has become a little bit more convenient for backend developers like you. Because of open source UI frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation and Yahoo’s PureCSS, building the interface...
There are countless articles written about which programming language is the best; usually ending with the conclusion that they’re all great, and you just need to choose which you’re most comfortable with. Whilst I agree with that sentiment to some extent, I’m still interested in the question of whether any one language is better for a specific purpose, for example, for web development. What is Python? ... Credited to Guido van Rossum in the late ‘80s, Python is one of the most popular...
There are a few things that separate good from great, a fine line between just getting through, and being truly effective. This applies to almost anything, and especially web development. So what does being effective in web development mean? What are the habits that you need to develop to become great? Let’s take a look: 1) Effective developers use bug trackers ... Be it a software, mobile or web app, any development project needs to have bug and issue tracking services. It’s more practical than...
There are a whole host of Sass mixin libraries out there: Bourbon is a personal favourite, Compass is hugely popular. But sometimes, actually always, it’s better to pick and mix your mixins to suit yourself. It’s never good to rely too heavily on a tool, and if you think Sass mixins begin and end with the @include statement then you should probably try writing out a few of your own. Sass mixins are available for a huge range of tasks, here’s 15 that no developer should be without: box-sizing...
Once upon a time, someone decided to see what would happen if you merged a powerful open source PHP framework with a drag‘n’drop content editor designed for non-technical users. As it turns out, you get ImpressPages. ImpressPages began as more traditional CMS, with an emphasis on user-friendliness. The content editor was also drag‘n’drop, but I recall that the rest of the interface seemed confusing to me. It seemed as though they were trying to cram in everything anyone might need in a CMS,...
If you’re working in web development you probably fit into one of two categories of developer: You think jQuery is the best thing since sliced images and you couldn’t get through the week without it; or, you think jQuery is a bloated crutch used by people too lazy to learn real JavaScript. However you feel about jQuery, there’s no denying the impact it has had on the industry, and the changes rung in by the Web’s most popular JavaScript library. So this week’s announcement of jQuery 3.0 is...