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Web Design and Development |OT| Pixel perfect is dead, long live responsive design

so do people use wysiwyg anymore?

I had to use notepad++ in my client side classes, and then visual studio.net (aspx) for server side stuff.

I should get something running on aws, and a wordpress installation and start pottering around in it again....
 

reilo

learning some important life lessons from magical Negroes
WYSIWYG is fine when you have to do something simple(r) like writing an article of some sort. I don't find it useful for managing and creating layouts.
 
How would you rate their stuff for development? I've used some of their courses before for more design based programs (Photoshop etc) and some of the courses were incredibly boring at times.

Has anyone tried any of the courses over at Udemy?

Well they're not interactive so you might be bored if you need that sort of thing to keep your interest up (and if that's the case try CodeSchool, though they only do a limited amount of languages (Javascript + various Frameworks, HTML/CSS, Objective C, Ruby). Lynda's advantage is they cover pretty much everything so it's a useful library to have on hand if you need a quick refresher or a first-look at something. The problem is with any of the online 'schools' is that they only really get you to intermediate learning at best. The really advanced concepts are learnt or found in books / which can get pretty dense (boring) unless you really love the subject.
 
my company used SVN about a year ago and made the switch to git. Right around the time when we switched to git was when the company switched from php to node.js/express/etc. All our legacy sites are using svn so when I have to maintain an old site I have to use it. Going from SVN then to Git and then SVN periodically, it almost feels dirty...the code instantly being merged without anything needing to be accepted haha.
 
I hope none of you use TFS or SVN.

Most of us probably use whatever the work environment we entered into uses. "I don't use X or Y" doesn't go very far in interviews.

I couldn't even conceive of doing modern web development on Windows. You will spend more time fighting to get command line tools to work than you will actually coding. Especially if you are working on large projects with other dveleopers. You may as well dual-boot into a Linux OS if you're not willing to get a Mac. I see Windows devs struggle all the time. It's not worth it. If web development is your primary source of income, consider seriously Mac or Linux.

There's absolutely nothing wrong, difficult or "command line tools"y with ASP.NET MVC on IIS. This is nonsense.

I'd still recommend a rMBP with Parallels for Windows work, but that's more from a hardware perspective.
 
Don't get the hate for TFS as source control. It's pretty easy to work with, seamlessly integrated into VS, and I've never run into any real problems with it.

My only real gripe is that there's no auto-detection of changes that happen outside of Visual Studio. Considering I maintain a few DotNetNuke sites (which modifies/adds/deletes files inside its working folder when doing upgrades), that can be kind of a pain.
 
For CMS in the OP, I'd throw in Expression Engine. It's not as beginner friendly as say Wordpress (you'd want to get familiar with Code Igniter to get the most out of it), but it's very flexible when it comes to front end design/creating your own design templates.

1) Magnificent thread, and I'm going to spend a bit of time in each of the links provided to learn...HTML and CSS have long been on my list o' things to learn and keep in pocket.

2) I'm going to third Expression Engine. My firm uses it for design and we've (well, they, I'm not a designer) have produced magnificent stuff. As I understand it, Kreed is right about it not being as beginner friendly as WP, but it's a bit easier to use than say, Drupal.
 

Kinitari

Black Canada Mafia
Has anyone here used PhoneGap for development of native apps across multiple mobile OSs?

What do you think? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
I've made a few production apps with cordova/phonegap, and it's been an overall good experience.

The strengths are mostly that you can use html/css/js and get "native" apps across many platforms quickly, which lets web developers use what they know instead of having to learn other languages.

The shortcomings are that you don't have easy (or sometimes any) access to some native apis. And the more demanding apps aren't as performant - don't make a 3d game with phonegap.

There are more little issues here and there, but the important stuff to consider is, what do you need your app to do? If all you need is some basic UI with access to some of the supported phone apis, then phonegap is wonderful. If you want to make a robust game with all the native game features, maybe phonegap isn't the right choice.
 

Prelithe

Member
Has anyone here used PhoneGap for development of native apps across multiple mobile OSs?

What do you think? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

I found that getting UI libraries (e.g. Sencha jQuery mobile) to run well even on fast devices to be a pain, so I pretty much said screw it and write separate iOS and Android natively, rather then deal with performance issues.

It certainly depends on how complex your app is. Personally I feel that unless you're having troubling learning iOS and Android SDKs, you should stick to native.
 

reilo

learning some important life lessons from magical Negroes
I use SVN. It's what my company has always used. I can understand preferring Git but what do you dislike so much about SVN?

Even the most basic things like having a global .ignore file, or how you merge files. Then you got the nitty gritty of where branch handling and performance is much better in git. Much better.

Plus, there's no replacement for github or bitbucket.
 

KiKaL

Member
Has anyone here used PhoneGap for development of native apps across multiple mobile OSs?

What do you think? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

I agree with what the others have said.

One other thing is that Android and iOS have different UI Guidelines. So with that said, phone gap shouldn't necessarily be used as away to create an app once and publish to multiple platforms because at least one of those apps will violate their respective guidelines.
 

D4Danger

Unconfirmed Member
Has anyone here used PhoneGap for development of native apps across multiple mobile OSs?

What do you think? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

If you're looking at PhoneGap then this might be of interest. posted today on the Chrome blog.

http://blog.chromium.org/2014/01/run-chrome-apps-on-mobile-using-apache.html

In September we introduced a new breed of Chrome Apps that work offline by default and act like native applications on the host operating system. These Chrome Apps are currently available on all desktop platforms. Today we're expanding their reach to mobile platforms with an early developer preview of a toolchain based on Apache Cordova, an open-source mobile development framework for building native mobile apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

The toolchain wraps your Chrome App with a native application shell and enables you to distribute your app via Google Play and the Apple App Store.
 

The Mule

Member
I've made a few production apps with cordova/phonegap, and it's been an overall good experience.

The strengths are mostly that you can use html/css/js and get "native" apps across many platforms quickly, which lets web developers use what they know instead of having to learn other languages.

The shortcomings are that you don't have easy (or sometimes any) access to some native apis. And the more demanding apps aren't as performant - don't make a 3d game with phonegap.

There are more little issues here and there, but the important stuff to consider is, what do you need your app to do? If all you need is some basic UI with access to some of the supported phone apis, then phonegap is wonderful. If you want to make a robust game with all the native game features, maybe phonegap isn't the right choice.
thanks for the advice. i'm only interested in phonegap for making a very simple app that can be viewed on Desktop and a whole range of mobile devices. No intensive tasks or graphics required
 

JeTmAn81

Member
Anyone know the best way to handle automatically skipping to the next field on form entry for something like a credit card number? I should probably just make them hit the tab key or just use a single field but I thought it would be nice to have it do it automatically.

I've got it working with the following Javascript function which is called on key press, but it doesn't work for the case when the user tabs back to a previous field and starts entering numbers to replace the numbers in the field. It requires you to hit backspace or delete before you can re-enter numbers in a field.

function AccountNumberEntry(currentSection, maxLength, nextSection) {

if (window.document.getElementById(currentSection).value.length == maxLength) {
window.document.getElementById(nextSection).focus();
}
}
 
Anyone know the best way to handle automatically skipping to the next field on form entry for something like a credit card number? I should probably just make them hit the tab key or just use a single field but I thought it would be nice to have it do it automatically.

I've got it working with the following Javascript function which is called on key press, but it doesn't work for the case when the user tabs back to a previous field and starts entering numbers to replace the numbers in the field. It requires you to hit backspace or delete before you can re-enter numbers in a field.

function AccountNumberEntry(currentSection, maxLength, nextSection) {

if (window.document.getElementById(currentSection).value.length == maxLength) {
window.document.getElementById(nextSection).focus();
}
}

For what it's worth, I personally find that annoying. Probably because it's not the norm, so I end up hitting tab anyway. Maybe if it can be made to ignore the tab press if it's the first entry into an otherwise empty field.
 

Kinitari

Black Canada Mafia
Anyone know the best way to handle automatically skipping to the next field on form entry for something like a credit card number? I should probably just make them hit the tab key or just use a single field but I thought it would be nice to have it do it automatically.

I've got it working with the following Javascript function which is called on key press, but it doesn't work for the case when the user tabs back to a previous field and starts entering numbers to replace the numbers in the field. It requires you to hit backspace or delete before you can re-enter numbers in a field.

function AccountNumberEntry(currentSection, maxLength, nextSection) {

if (window.document.getElementById(currentSection).value.length == maxLength) {
window.document.getElementById(nextSection).focus();
}
}

Just to be clear, what 'doesn't work' when you tab back to a previous field?

From what I understand, when the CC field is validated (on key press), you want to jump to the next field automatically - but something doesn't work when a user 'tabs back to a previous field'. When you say previous field to mean tabs back to the credit card field, or tabs back to a field BEFORE the credit card field? And when you say 'it doesn't work' do you mean that if you go back to the CC input, this function no longer fires? Would it be possible for you to show some more code?
 

JeTmAn81

Member
Just to be clear, what 'doesn't work' when you tab back to a previous field?

From what I understand, when the CC field is validated (on key press), you want to jump to the next field automatically - but something doesn't work when a user 'tabs back to a previous field'. When you say previous field to mean tabs back to the credit card field, or tabs back to a field BEFORE the credit card field? And when you say 'it doesn't work' do you mean that if you go back to the CC input, this function no longer fires? Would it be possible for you to show some more code?

Sorry I wasn't more clear. I'm talking about four fields, used for entering an account number in sections. As you fill out the numbers required for each section, it correctly skips to the next field and focuses on that for the next part of the entry. But if you get to the last field and decide you'd like to shift-tab back to one of the first three fields to change the numbers you entered there, it requires you to hit the delete or the back button before you can do that, despite the fact that the numbers are automatically highlighted when you shift-tab into that field.

As a user, I expect to be able to just start entering new input to replace the highlighted value, but the script interrupts that and, seeing that the max input for that field has been reached, automatically jumps to the next field instead of letting me replace the value.

The only other markup that's really relevant to the issue is the actual controls. These are .NET controls BTW:

<asp:textbox id="txtAccountNumber1" name="txtAccountNumber1" onkeypress="javascript:AccountNumberEntry('txtAccountNumber1',2,'txtAccountNumber2');" runat="server" cssclass="SlText" columns="2" maxlength="2" />&nbsp;-&nbsp;

<asp:textbox id="txtAccountNumber2" onkeypress="javascript:AccountNumberEntry('txtAccountNumber2',4,'txtAccountNumber3');" runat="server" cssclass="SlText" columns="4" maxlength="4" />&nbsp;-&nbsp;

<asp:textbox id="txtAccountNumber3" onkeypress="javascript:AccountNumberEntry('txtAccountNumber3',5,'txtAccountNumber4');" runat="server" cssclass="SlText" columns="5" maxlength="5" />&nbsp;-&nbsp;

<asp:textbox id="txtAccountNumber4" runat="server" cssclass="SlText" columns="1" maxlength="1" />


The AccountNumberEntry function does the rest.
 

Prelithe

Member
Anyone know the best way to handle automatically skipping to the next field on form entry for something like a credit card number? I should probably just make them hit the tab key or just use a single field but I thought it would be nice to have it do it automatically.

Why not use a textbox mask? You get the added benefit of having a custom pattern plus a single string returned.

Something like this:

http://firstopinion.github.io/formatter.js/demos.html
 
Anyone know the best way to handle automatically skipping to the next field on form entry for something like a credit card number? I should probably just make them hit the tab key or just use a single field but I thought it would be nice to have it do it automatically.

I've got it working with the following Javascript function which is called on key press, but it doesn't work for the case when the user tabs back to a previous field and starts entering numbers to replace the numbers in the field. It requires you to hit backspace or delete before you can re-enter numbers in a field.

function AccountNumberEntry(currentSection, maxLength, nextSection) {

if (window.document.getElementById(currentSection).value.length == maxLength) {
window.document.getElementById(nextSection).focus();
}
}
I would maybe check to see if the field is valid and if it is, move to the next field with the next function along with focus function. You also need to specify what to do if there are no more inputs to 'skip' to.
 

reilo

learning some important life lessons from magical Negroes
I wish JSFiddle would let you embed multiple frameworks.

Kinda annoying selecting CreateJS and then having to embed TweenLite or something in the body. Those can go hand-in-hand.
 

GeMiNii

Member
Kind of a shot in the dark, but this is making me crazy.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21453972/storing-php-variable-from-html-text-input-field

Been trying to get this working for almost a day and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Basically, I'm trying to assign the value of <input type="text... to a PHP Variable, and using that later on to append to a URL as part of an API call (Stupid cross domain issues).

I just can't seem to assign anything to the variable when using bootstrap at all.
 

Cyport

Member
I've been doing some web development for the past few months. I have been fortunate to find some small businesses who need their websites updated.

I currently use Wordpress as my CMS and so far I code in HTML and CSS as well as some PHP. I would like to learn more but I don't know where to begin. I've been learning JQuery with codecademy but what do you suggest I should learn and for what reason? I am only designing "informative" websites not e-commerce yet although I may do soon.
 

GeMiNii

Member
There's smarter/more experienced people than me in this thread, but you actually have the toolset you need to do just about anything with HTML, CSS, & PHP. JavaScript is of course useful because there are so many incredible frameworks built with it, and once ECMA gets some type of real thread handling in JavaScript it's going to completely devour most of the other languages/platforms out there (including Java).

Ruby & RAILS are incredible popular with the new school, but I've only dabbled with them to be honest.

My advice is to focus on marketing yourself, if you get a project that's outside your scope, you can always outsource it pretty cheaply and still generate decent revenue.
 

GeMiNii

Member
Anyone else have a chance to play with Sencha Architect yet?

http://www.sencha.com/products/architect/

I went to a workshop last week with it and was pretty impressed! I'm not too big on Dreamweaver type IDEs, but this was super slick. During the workshop we actually built up a mobile responsive site using their framework from scratch in less than an hour.

My biggest concern is the pricing, it's $1000 to get in the door then there's an extra charge for modules (like packaging out to Android, iOS, etc).

Can anyone recommend something similar?
 

koene

Member
Anyone else have a chance to play with Sencha Architect yet?

http://www.sencha.com/products/architect/

I went to a workshop last week with it and was pretty impressed! I'm not too big on Dreamweaver type IDEs, but this was super slick. During the workshop we actually built up a mobile responsive site using their framework from scratch in less than an hour.

My biggest concern is the pricing, it's $1000 to get in the door then there's an extra charge for modules (like packaging out to Android, iOS, etc).

Can anyone recommend something similar?

I understand it's impressive. But you know what's even more impressive? Building this from scratch. Just use a frontend framework that fits your project and start from there. It's going to be hard at the start, but keep going at it. I hate IDEs and GUIs and just love to code. That way, you are in full control and can code much cleaner.

Personally, I have most fun in figuring things out, solving that anoying problem that's been bugging me for weeks. I'm not the best at what I do, but I sure love what I do.
 

D4Danger

Unconfirmed Member
http://allinthehead.com/retro/367/why-is-progressive-enhancement-so-unpopular

Why is Progressive Enhancement so unpopular?

The internet, as a network, is designed to be tolerant of faults. If parts of the network fail, the damage gets routed around and things keep working. HTML is designed to be tolerant of faults. If a document has unrecognised tags, or only partially downloads or is structured weirdly, the browser will do its best to keep displaying as much of that page as it can without throwing errors. CSS is designed to be tolerant of faults. If a selector doesn&#8217;t match or a property is not supported, or a value is unrecognised, the browser steps over the damage and keeps going.

JavaScript is brittle and intolerant of faults. If a dependancy is missing, it stops. If it hits unrecognised syntax, it stops. If the code throws an error, in some cases it stops there too. If part of the script is missing, it likely won&#8217;t even start. As careful as we are to code defensively within our JavaScript, it counts for nothing if the code doesn&#8217;t run.

[...]

It used to be that progressive enhancement was the accepted &#8216;best practise&#8217; (ugh) way to do things. If you&#8217;re building a site today you&#8217;d generally make it responsive. Any new site that isn&#8217;t responsive when it could be is considered a bit old-hat and a missed opportunity. So it used to be with progressive enhancement. If you built a site that depended on JavaScript, chances are you were a cowboy and didn&#8217;t really know what you were doing &#8211; a skilled developer wouldn&#8217;t do it that way, because they know JavaScript can break.

Somewhere along the line that all got lost. I&#8217;m not sure where &#8211; it was still alive and well when jQuery launched with it&#8217;s find something, do something approach (that&#8217;s progressive enhancement). It was lost by the time AngularJS was ever considered an approach of any merit whatsoever.

When did the industry stop caring about this stuff, and why? We spend hours in test labs working on the best user experience we can deliver, and then don&#8217;t care if we deliver nothing. Is it because we half expect what we&#8217;re building will never launch anyway, or will be replaced in 6 months?

Perhaps I&#8217;m old fashioned and I should stop worrying about this stuff. Is it ok to rely on JavaScript, and to hell if it breaks? Perhaps so.

something to think about. I still believe progressive enhancements is the way the web should work. Unless you're doing something that specifically requires one of these technologies (say, a game using WebGL) then the information you put online should be accessible in some form and you should plan accordingly.

bonus -> http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
 

Hop

That girl in the bunny hat
Anyone else have a chance to play with Sencha Architect yet?

http://www.sencha.com/products/architect/

I went to a workshop last week with it and was pretty impressed! I'm not too big on Dreamweaver type IDEs, but this was super slick. During the workshop we actually built up a mobile responsive site using their framework from scratch in less than an hour.

My biggest concern is the pricing, it's $1000 to get in the door then there's an extra charge for modules (like packaging out to Android, iOS, etc).

Can anyone recommend something similar?

Codiqa and/or Jetstrap, depending on whether you're doing HTML5 mobile apps or responsive websites. Both are subscription-based, but a year of either comes to less than 1/5th that of Sencha.

(I'm also very much in favor of write-from-scratch, but if you're in some situation where that's not an option, those may be an option.)
 

Tathanen

Get Inside Her!
something to think about. I still believe progressive enhancements is the way the web should work. Unless you're doing something that specifically requires one of these technologies (say, a game using WebGL) then the information you put online should be accessible in some form and you should plan accordingly.

I used to be all about progressive enhancement, but there comes a point of diminishing returns. As time passes, fewer and fewer people will be using devices that don't have JS enabled. It's becoming more and more of a mandatory part of the web. Vast amounts of websites, and web apps in particular, literally just could not function without Javascript. Not because they're poorly made, but because the functionality offered by the JS is vital to the business goals of the project. The effort to build your app in a fundamentally different way for the miniscule audience that will not be using Javascript just isn't worth it most of the time, and is often literally impossible. The internet of today has different expectations for what sites can do.

Now if you're just running a blog or something, that's a different case. If you're really just using JS for some niceties, sure, the site should still work without it. But an AJAX web app? Clearly that's not going to be built with progressive enhancement in mind.

I do think, though, that JS sites should at the very least be built to not break things like middle clicks (open link in new tab). Use JS where it has to be used, but still feature fallbacks for people who have JS enabled, but interact with the site/app in a fashion where that JS wouldn't naturally trigger.
 

gutshot

Member
http://allinthehead.com/retro/367/why-is-progressive-enhancement-so-unpopular

Why is Progressive Enhancement so unpopular?



something to think about. I still believe progressive enhancements is the way the web should work. Unless you're doing something that specifically requires one of these technologies (say, a game using WebGL) then the information you put online should be accessible in some form and you should plan accordingly.

bonus -> http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

A good read and something to think about, especially as us developers become more and more dependent on JS libraries to get things done. Love the MFW too.
 

Kinitari

Black Canada Mafia
http://allinthehead.com/retro/367/why-is-progressive-enhancement-so-unpopular

Why is Progressive Enhancement so unpopular?



something to think about. I still believe progressive enhancements is the way the web should work. Unless you're doing something that specifically requires one of these technologies (say, a game using WebGL) then the information you put online should be accessible in some form and you should plan accordingly.

bonus -> http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

I work in a shop that almost exclusively uses angular in the front end.

Let me tell you, we don't ever consider progressive enhancement, and it hasn't hurt us one bit.

Clients want their sites to do all the fancy stuff JavaScript let's them do, they sometimes even specifically ask for all or nothing.

I sort of feel like building sites for people who don't have JavaScript is like building sites for people who use ie7 and below. Unless you HAVE to, don't bother - save yourself the effort, give yourself that creative freedom, and enjoy development more.
 

Prax

Member
I am so behind in the times.

I only know parts of html, css, and php and javascript out of necessity when I was still using Front Page and Dreamweaver to make my websites just to display art work. XD (pretty much googling for snippets of code and pasting where necessary).

I feel like I don't really have motivation to learn and catch up unless I pay and start going to classes for it though.. which sucks. :l I really want to be able to make a pretty and easy-to-use site as a portfolio for my stuff or to display webcomics.

I also tend to really dislike fanciness to sites since I want it to be able to display and not break or take up resources/require plugins. So does that mean I don't need to learn too much and can stick to html/css? XD
What's html5 even? lol So behind..
 
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