Author: admin

Learned a bit about SASS

If you don't know what CSS and don't care, this post is not for you.  Watch this video and move along. 🙂

For those of you who do care about CSS, SASS is a new-ish preprocessor.  So basically you write stuff in SASS and it turns into CSS.  

For example in CSS you have to explicitly define every color.  If you want a certain shade of a color you have to type in #e5f4g6 (not a valid color code of course) In SASS, at the very beginning of your code you define that color ( #e5f4g6) as "blue2".  So every time you want that shade of blue you just type blue2.  Much simpler and easier to remember. 

If you want to know more, read this article on CSS preprocessor. That is all. 
Posted on by admin

Learned a bit about SASS

If you don't know what CSS and don't care, this post is not for you.  Watch this video and move along. 🙂

For those of you who do care about CSS, SASS is a new-ish preprocessor.  So basically you write stuff in SASS and it turns into CSS.  

For example in CSS you have to explicitly define every color.  If you want a certain shade of a color you have to type in #e5f4g6 (not a valid color code of course) In SASS, at the very beginning of your code you define that color ( #e5f4g6) as "blue2".  So every time you want that shade of blue you just type blue2.  Much simpler and easier to remember. 

If you want to know more, read this article on CSS preprocessor. That is all. 
Posted on by admin

Coda 2 – mini review

Screen_shot_2012-05-25_at_10

Coda 2 came out yesterday and I bought it.  It is made by Panic software and it is a really nice program. After using it for a day, here is my initial thoughts and feelings. 

The Good
  • The Preview mode is awesome.  One click there, one click back.  Smooth and it just works. 

(one click.  Smooth.)

  • I love the text auto-complete.  It is much easier to write correct html when you don't have to type out the tags and properties.  
  • I love the visual page switcher at the top.  When you have base.css, and index.html, and apps.html sometimes it is just nice to have a visual representation of the page you are working on. 
The Not so Good

  • Sometimes the auto-complete puts your curser in awkward places that require some arrow key work to get to where you really want to be. 
  • Tag Matching! This is slightly ridiculous.  When you arrow key the cursor over a round bracket "(" in javascript Coda will make a little radar blip on the matching cursor.  Which is nice.  But when you click on the bracket it doesn't do the same thing.  And tags don't do anything.  When you are closing 6 </div> in a row, is gets super confusing.  The computer is great at matching tags, why in the world is this not an option? 
At first use, Coda 2 is a very nice IDE for creating web pages.  I will use it more and post a more complete review soon.  In the mean time, if you want to try it out, it is $100 dollars on the Mac App store. 

Screen_shot_2012-05-25_at_90screen_shot_2012-05-25_at_9

Posted on by admin

Coda 2 – mini review

Screen_shot_2012-05-25_at_10

Coda 2 came out yesterday and I bought it.  It is made by Panic software and it is a really nice program. After using it for a day, here is my initial thoughts and feelings. 

The Good
  • The Preview mode is awesome.  One click there, one click back.  Smooth and it just works. 

(one click.  Smooth.)

  • I love the text auto-complete.  It is much easier to write correct html when you don't have to type out the tags and properties.  
  • I love the visual page switcher at the top.  When you have base.css, and index.html, and apps.html sometimes it is just nice to have a visual representation of the page you are working on. 
The Not so Good

  • Sometimes the auto-complete puts your curser in awkward places that require some arrow key work to get to where you really want to be. 
  • Tag Matching! This is slightly ridiculous.  When you arrow key the cursor over a round bracket "(" in javascript Coda will make a little radar blip on the matching cursor.  Which is nice.  But when you click on the bracket it doesn't do the same thing.  And tags don't do anything.  When you are closing 6 </div> in a row, is gets super confusing.  The computer is great at matching tags, why in the world is this not an option? 
At first use, Coda 2 is a very nice IDE for creating web pages.  I will use it more and post a more complete review soon.  In the mean time, if you want to try it out, it is $100 dollars on the Mac App store. 

Screen_shot_2012-05-25_at_90screen_shot_2012-05-25_at_9

Posted on by admin

Another website is born…

Today I finished my creation!  It is simple, and not finished, but it lives.  

Walle

(My sites usually end up like Walle, while in my head they are Eve.)

I will link it into my main site tomorrow.  I learned a lot building this little site.  I spent probably 2 hours trying to fix a bug that my dad saw and fixed in 3 minutes.  I used legit jQuery for the first time. I also used a new css framework, the Skeleton.  I used the Apple API's to access the large format images of the app icons, and I made a working button.  In addition to all that, I learned that I have a lot to learn.  

#LetsDoThis
Posted on by admin

CSS frameworks

House-construction

If a website is like building a house, a framework is like getting 4 sides and a roof. Just put that baby together and you are done.  You still have to know what you are doing (electrical, plumbing etc) but it is a lot faster.  

I learned about Blueprint today, a CSS framework. I like it.  But at the moment, it is not responsive. So I decided to use Skeleton instead.  To use a framework, you have to understand it.  It doesn't do everything for you.  But it does make it a lot easier.  For example, if you wanted to make a 3 column layout in Skeleton, you would define you object with a class of "three columns" and the framework does the rest.  You still have to worry about how big the object you are adding is, and how it reacts, but it arranges it for you.  

I didn't finish the project that I was working on, but be prepared to be blown away with a nice 3 by 3 grid tomorrow. 
Posted on by admin

CSS frameworks

House-construction

If a website is like building a house, a framework is like getting 4 sides and a roof. Just put that baby together and you are done.  You still have to know what you are doing (electrical, plumbing etc) but it is a lot faster.  

I learned about Blueprint today, a CSS framework. I like it.  But at the moment, it is not responsive. So I decided to use Skeleton instead.  To use a framework, you have to understand it.  It doesn't do everything for you.  But it does make it a lot easier.  For example, if you wanted to make a 3 column layout in Skeleton, you would define you object with a class of "three columns" and the framework does the rest.  You still have to worry about how big the object you are adding is, and how it reacts, but it arranges it for you.  

I didn't finish the project that I was working on, but be prepared to be blown away with a nice 3 by 3 grid tomorrow. 
Posted on by admin

I made a quick site: The 6 B’s

I saw 10 Principles of Good Design a while ago and I wanted to do something similar.  Today I present to you…

It took me about 45 minutes.  It would have been quicker but I added the css line by line in order to see the effect that it had on the content.  It is really a great feeling to create something and be able to put it on the internet where anyone can access it. I put up a 2 minute video of the 45 minutes of work that went into it being replayed in 2 minutes.  Behind the scenes video. 

I intend to register a domain and put this up permanently.  Which do you think is better? 

Or something else? I am leaning towards thesixbees because the I am worried people would read the first as "The Six Bess".  What do you think? 
Posted on by admin

I made a quick site: The 6 B’s

I saw 10 Principles of Good Design a while ago and I wanted to do something similar.  Today I present to you…

It took me about 45 minutes.  It would have been quicker but I added the css line by line in order to see the effect that it had on the content.  It is really a great feeling to create something and be able to put it on the internet where anyone can access it. I put up a 2 minute video of the 45 minutes of work that went into it being replayed in 2 minutes.  Behind the scenes video. 

I intend to register a domain and put this up permanently.  Which do you think is better? 

Or something else? I am leaning towards thesixbees because the I am worried people would read the first as "The Six Bess".  What do you think? 
Posted on by admin

Smart use of jQuery and an API to autofill from ZIP code.

I hate entering things twice.  When I get a form mostly filled out, and something happens to cause me to lose the data, oohh.  I hate that.  

So entering the city and state on every form is bad too.  If you have a correct zip code, you know the city.  Then I found this nifty tutorial to auto fill the city from the zip code. Check it out.  Smooth.

I decided to look into zip codes a little more. 

From Wikipedia. 

ZIP codes are a system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service (USPS) since 1963. The term ZIP, an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan,[1] is properly written in capital letters and was chosen to suggest that the mailtravels more efficiently, and therefore more quickly, when senders use the code in the postal address. The basic format consists of five decimal numerical digits. 

Interesting.  I pledge to never make anyone fill out a zip code and a city.  
Posted on by admin