A few weeks ago, I was working with a fellow developer and trying to figure out how we could enhance the functionality of a Wordpress website that required managing visitor logins. The site, which was for poets and writers, would allow visitors to set up accounts, submit content, interact with others on the website and share content to outside circles on Facebook and Twitter. After scratching our heads for a number of days, we came to the conclusion that BuddyPress would provide the needed solution....
The official January 2011 launch of the robust HTML5 has brought with it a number of powerful coding elements. Among them is the <progress> tag, a very useful tool in putting together quick, attractive online presentations. CSS3 provides a highly flexible methodology for customizing default HTML5 tags. At present, both technologies are undergoing considerable revision. ‘Pseudo-elements’, such as those prefixed by -moz- and -webkit-, were implemented within the CSS3 framework...
“Just when you think you've made something foolproof, God makes a better brand of fool.” This maxim of manufacturing also applies to software development, especially on a highly accessible technology like web applications. As much as programmers attempt to anticipate every possible action or combination of actions that a user can take when encountering a web application, no one can foresee them all. When the user takes an unanticipated course of action and “breaks” the application, the...
The web development industry is one that is always growing because of how we use the web. No longer do we expect the Internet to simply host a digital pamphlet for a business. The expectations nowadays are for a site to be rich with content, provide the means for visitors to interact and be dynamic in every interaction. With the demand at an all time high, freelance web developers may think that there is little they could do to harm their career. Unfortunately, there are many ways that people in this industry...
Responsive Web Design took a big step forward on June 19, when a highly influential W3C Working Group published a draft recommendation stating that an additional slate of media queries should be incorporated into web browsers. The CSS Working Group's proposal would enable browsers to render web design layouts in a much more flexible manner, based on factors such as screen size, color depth, and device orientation. Media queries consist of a media type (ex. screen or print), combined with defining...
When it comes to publishing tools, Wordpress is most likely on top of the food chain. Its simplicity and ease-of-use is especially favored by publishers and its wide community support by developers makes it particularly attractive for plug-in development. Wordpress is also an excellent medium to improve your website’s search engine rankings. The countless number of SEO plugins that have been developed for Wordpress are a good start for most people. SEO for Wordpress is however slightly different...
With the progress element, HTML5 pages can display the progress of a task, for example a download or background activity. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to use the progress element in your pages, with a simple JavaScript function updating the element as the task executes. At the moment the progress element is only really supported in Firefox, Chrome and Opera, with support developing in Internet Explorer and Safari, so you can't rely on it just yet. For demonstration, we are simply going to...
If you have started to dive into the wonderful world of CSS preprocessors (LESS or Sass), you might have also heard of Compass. If you haven't decided on either LESS or Sass, I would make the investment and learn one, or both, of the technologies. It's well worth the time and will make your coding and development life a lot easier. Today, we're going to look at Compass, an open-source CSS authoring framework built on Sass. Similar to Sass, it is installed via the command line (Terminal in Mac OS X) and is run...