If there’s one thing I hate more than tracking down bugs, it’s documenting code. It takes forever, it’s almost a project in itself, and I never seem to factor it into my project lifecycle. Setting out to solve that problem for me, and anyone else whose life is too short, is Couscous. Couscous takes markdown files and converts them into professional standard HTML docs that colleagues, or fellow developers, can easily follow. You can preview the resulting site on your local machine, correct any...
After long hours of what may have seemed to be an unending series of mockups, coding, heavy-metal music and energy drink, you’ve finally finished your project. And you did an awesome job. Your client loved it so much he wanted to marry it. But you know that despite this swift moment of respite, you still have some things left to do and one of those is testing. Testing your site can be disheartening despite its value. You have to look at all the pages of your site in all the browsers, and devices. If I haven’t...
Do-It-Yourself websites are here, and they’re not going anywhere. That’s just a basic fact of our industry. However, there is a large misunderstanding about the ease of use concerning WordPress and other Do-It-Yourself website-building platforms, and it needs to be addressed. To start off, WordPress is fantastic. I use it for building the majority of my sites, it’s great for navigating throughout each site, both the front end and the back, and has a fantastic group of folks who write beautiful...
In 2014, if you have a website that isn’t responsive, it doesn’t count. Responsive web design has now become a standard when it comes to creating new websites. More and more people are viewing websites from their phones, it has become really important to adapt to those changes and design websites in such a way that they work across a variety of different screen sizes. But if you’ve been tasked with creating a mobile responsive design and aren’t sure where to start, this list of resources is sure...
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...