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

Is anyone working on any small scale/fun/what have you open source projects that wouldn't mind someone helping out?

I want to increase my open source footprint for job seeking purposes, and I want to learn more! Lots more to learn, always and I so rarely get to collaborate :(

Monkeybot is a simple NeoGAF Greasemonkey helper that makes it a bit easier to give away games. There's couple of open issues that range from easy to bit harder and are open for anyone to grab

https://github.com/petetnt/neogaf-monkeybot/issues
 

kadotsu

Banned
I have encountered a roadblock when I try to implement a MdSnackBar into my Angular 2 project. Whenever I put a MdSnackBar object into my constructor the whole app shits the bed because I get an unresolved promise error because the snackbar has no provider.
 

Lister

Banned
Monkeybot is a simple NeoGAF Greasemonkey helper that makes it a bit easier to give away games. There's couple of open issues that range from easy to bit harder and are open for anyone to grab

https://github.com/petetnt/neogaf-monkeybot/issues

Ooooh, nice. I'll take a look, thanks!

I have encountered a roadblock when I try to implement a MdSnackBar into my Angular 2 project. Whenever I put a MdSnackBar object into my constructor the whole app shits the bed because I get an unresolved promise error because the snackbar has no provider.

What version of angular Material are you running? Latest (beta 8) requires you to import the MdSnackBarModule. It should provide the snack-bar service.

I've taken to creating a Material Module under my Shared Module where I import all the Material modules I need. Shared then gets imported into any other module that requires it.
 

8byte

Banned
Figure this is a good place to ask: Does anyone have any recommendations for hosting? My domains are up and I wasn't happy with my previous provider.

Was previously with Globat, but pricing was ~$200 per year and it was exceptionally slow.
 

Lister

Banned
Figure this is a good place to ask: Does anyone have any recommendations for hosting? My domains are up and I wasn't happy with my previous provider.

Was previously with Globat, but pricing was ~$200 per year and it was exceptionally slow.

What are your requirements? What are your backend needs?
 
For small client sites and temporary development/stage environments, I've been very happy with Webfaction for years now.

https://www.webfaction.com/

Pretty standard hosting, but they're no nonsense and they don't try to fuck you. I got so tired of every other host just trying to fuck you over and over again or get you to sign up for stupid deals, or doing co-sponsored apps and all of this other garbage. As they put it, Webfaction is "hosting for developers." Their backend UI is good, they don't put a lot of control on your account, they have 1-click installs of things but also just give you the tools to install however you want.

Plus, fast, good uptime, and good support.

I use the $10/mo base plan.

I could probably do without hosting TBH, and just put my freelance site up on github. I have 2 legacy clients I'm still managing their hosting for, but both are super old sites and I'd like to close up shop on em. They haven't paid me in.. 5 years probably, but both are small old clients of mine that require basically no work.

For all of my other clients, I usually do an AWS and bolt on the features they need piece-meal.
 

8byte

Banned
What are your requirements? What are your backend needs?

Nothing fancy. Just going to build the side in Dreamweaver / Muse, don't even need that much storage honestly. Just simple sites, one for my work / comedy, and another for a small production effort I lead.
 
Nothing fancy. Just going to build the side in Dreamweaver / Muse, don't even need that much storage honestly. Just simple sites, one for my work / comedy, and another for a small production effort I lead.

Depending on your sites you might be able to even go with the free plan at https://zeit.co/now (if none of your assets are bigger than 1MB) . Otherwise it's 15 bucks a month for unlimited deployments and 10 concurrent instances, all served with a simple "now" command.
 

-COOLIO-

The Everyman
Anyone know where I can find some cool plug and play canvas backgrounds like this one?

http://evanyou.me

I'm just looking for something neat that I can use on my girlfriends website. I would steal that exact one if i could, in fact.

merci.
 

GHG

Gold Member
Call me crazy but I'm thinking about building my own front-end framework. I've come up with a visual design while working on something for a client that I'd like expand upon further and make into something bigger. Once I have the foundations and some UI principles/rules established then I plan to make it open source rather than monetise it.

Is this a bad idea in anyway?

Fuck it, I'm gonna do it anyway regardless, the only problem I have is that time is my biggest enemy. So what I'd actually be interested in reading about are people's bug bears with the current frameworks in existence to make sure whatever I create doesn't fall into the same pitfalls.
 

Cptkrush

Member
Call me crazy but I'm thinking about building my own front-end framework. I've come up with a visual design while working on something for a client that I'd like expand upon further and make into something bigger. Once I have the foundations and some UI principles/rules established then I plan to make it open source rather than monetise it.

Is this a bad idea in anyway?

Fuck it, I'm gonna do it anyway regardless, the only problem I have is that time is my biggest enemy. So what I'd actually be interested in reading about are people's bug bears with the current frameworks in existence to make sure whatever I create doesn't fall into the same pitfalls.

I mean, I wouldn't bank on it becoming a new standard, or even becoming remotely popular. But it would be a hell of a learning experience and a sick portfolio piece. I say go for it.
 

Kieli

Member
I'm trying to use the MEAN stack. I've installed the M and the N. For the E, do I need to install it locally for every project, or can I install it just once globally (having it available for every project whether or not I use it).

Is there a recommendation as to which to lean towards?
 

GHG

Gold Member
I mean, I wouldn't bank on it becoming a new standard, or even becoming remotely popular. But it would be a hell of a learning experience and a sick portfolio piece. I say go for it.

Oh I know it won't become anything big or anything. It's also more to be able to have something of my own to make building projects for clients a lot quicker/easier for myself. It'll be a test of my ability, that's for sure.
 

Copons

Member
I'm trying to use the MEAN stack. I've installed the M and the N. For the E, do I need to install it locally for every project, or can I install it just once globally (having it available for every project whether or not I use it).

Is there a recommendation as to which to lean towards?

I'd say go with Express until you're comfy with the whole server side, then start exploring its alternatives based on what you actually need (hint: you may actually not need an alternative - which is also true for anything really, especially in the cluttered JS ecosystem :) ).

As far as installing node modules globally or locally: go local, always.
This way you can control the version you're using on a per-project basis.
 
I'm trying to use the MEAN stack. I've installed the M and the N. For the E, do I need to install it locally for every project, or can I install it just once globally (having it available for every project whether or not I use it).

Is there a recommendation as to which to lean towards?

Local to the application. Modern application architectures aren't like previous architectures (say, like a PHP driven site) where you'd install Apache as a service on your operating system and then set up your application/site to work within or work with that service. With many common modern architectures you're setting your http service (in this case, Express) as part of the application.

There's plenty of benefits like being able to run specific versions of Express and also not having to install something globally that you might only use for a few projects, but also, most deployment systems (say, like Heroku or the many alternatives), expect that you'll have a local http service.
 

RSTEIN

Comics, serious business!
I'm very new to jquery, don't really know what I'm doing. I found a search box example that works great on desktop but it doesn't work on mobile.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="//code.jquery.com/ui/1.10.4/themes/smoothness/jquery-ui.css">
<script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.1.js"></script>
<script src="//code.jquery.com/ui/1.10.4/jquery-ui.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/resources/demos/style.css">
<script>
$(function() {
var availableTags = [{label:"Example1", the_link:"http://www.google.com"},
{label:"Example2", the_link:"http://www.microsoft.com"}];
$( "#tags" ).autocomplete({
source: availableTags,
select:function(e,ui) {
// location.href = ui.item.the_link; // Comment this out
the_url = ui.item.the_link; // Give it a name of the_url, where to navigate to.
window.open(the_url, "_self"); // Open the url ( the_url )in a new window
// console.log(ui.item.the_link);
}
});
});
</script>


<div class="ui-widget">
<label for="tags">Search: </label><input id="tags">
</div>

On mobile you can type in the search box but nothing happens. Any ideas?
 

Cptkrush

Member
I'm currently building my first React based project, it's a movie database search app. I realize that making API calls on the client side code is a big no no, so what are my options in terms of making the call on the backend and shooting the response back to react? I know literally squat about back end development, but I also don't want a portfolio piece that shows I'm making client side calls with a key that should be obfuscated.
 
Thanks for looking at it! Very strange, it's not working on iOS for me. Works great on desktop.

Oh I tried it on Android in the Chrome browser so perhaps it's an issue with iOS. The form is using jquery-UI, a popular though sort of old framework for building common UI components with JavaScript. I'd consider googling "jquery UI iOS dropdown bug" or something and see if anything comes up.

Another thing to look into is that you could be using "mixed content." Your URLs are being loaded via JavaScript when you tap on "Example 1" or "Example 2," and browsers have a built in security feature that does not allow "mixed secure and insecure content" over JavaScript... In this case, if the page is hosted on an https:// domain (look at the domain and see if it's https://, many sites like JSFIddle, etc, use https://) then those URLs in your JS should also be https://, or you should just use ://www.google.com as the URL in the JS, which will take whatever protocol (http, https) the site is running automatically.

If that's the case, Safari on iOS might be more strict on mixed content than your desktop Chrome (etc) browser, where perhaps you turned that off throughout the years.

You can debug using iOS + Safari on Mac and the Safari developer tools, which you can see the console errors on external devices.
 
I'm currently building my first React based project, it's a movie database search app. I realize that making API calls on the client side code is a big no no, so what are my options in terms of making the call on the backend and shooting the response back to react? I know literally squat about back end development, but I also don't want a portfolio piece that shows I'm making client side calls with a key that should be obfuscated.

You shouldn't have too much problem making a proxy API in Node, as you can practically copy-paste the code you've already written.

There's plenty of resources out there, but if you're new to Node (and backend development in general), and want a gentle (yet thorough) introduction, I can highly recommend Andrew Mead's course on Udemy. It's all good stuff, but you should know enough to solve your problem after you've gone through the first two projects.
 
I'm currently building my first React based project, it's a movie database search app. I realize that making API calls on the client side code is a big no no, so what are my options in terms of making the call on the backend and shooting the response back to react? I know literally squat about back end development, but I also don't want a portfolio piece that shows I'm making client side calls with a key that should be obfuscated.

If you're using Express, you can create a route in express, say, /api/movies/ and set it so that when that route is hit with a GET, your API request is made by the server.

I'll send more details in a PM w/ a side project I had worked on.
 

RSTEIN

Comics, serious business!
Oh I tried it on Android in the Chrome browser so perhaps it's an issue with iOS. The form is using jquery-UI, a popular though sort of old framework for building common UI components with JavaScript. I'd consider googling "jquery UI iOS dropdown bug" or something and see if anything comes up.

Another thing to look into is that you could be using "mixed content." Your URLs are being loaded via JavaScript when you tap on "Example 1" or "Example 2," and browsers have a built in security feature that does not allow "mixed secure and insecure content" over JavaScript... In this case, if the page is hosted on an https:// domain (look at the domain and see if it's https://, many sites like JSFIddle, etc, use https://) then those URLs in your JS should also be https://, or you should just use ://www.google.com as the URL in the JS, which will take whatever protocol (http, https) the site is running automatically.

If that's the case, Safari on iOS might be more strict on mixed content than your desktop Chrome (etc) browser, where perhaps you turned that off throughout the years.

You can debug using iOS + Safari on Mac and the Safari developer tools, which you can see the console errors on external devices.

Wow, thank you for the thorough response. I didn't think about the security angle. I'll keep investigating.
 

Cptkrush

Member
You shouldn't have too much problem making a proxy API in Node, as you can practically copy-paste the code you've already written.

There's plenty of resources out there, but if you're new to Node (and backend development in general), and want a gentle (yet thorough) introduction, I can highly recommend Andrew Mead's course on Udemy. It's all good stuff, but you should know enough to solve your problem after you've gone through the first two projects.

If you're using Express, you can create a route in express, say, /api/movies/ and set it so that when that route is hit with a GET, your API request is made by the server.

I'll send more details in a PM w/ a side project I had worked on.

Awesome, thanks guys!
 

maxxpower

Member
Should I ditch Rails for a different framework? I'm learning it now and I really like it but it seems like the community is declining. What's a robust framework that I can learn that will definitely still be around in the coming years?
 
Should I ditch Rails for a different framework? I'm learning it now and I really like it but it seems like the community is declining. What's a robust framework that I can learn that will definitely still be around in the coming years?

I think it depends on what programming languages you already know, most frameworks are built with a language/language in mind so they assume at least basic proficiency in the language the framework is written.

To be honest I think you will be safe with Rails for years to come if you are happy with it I would stick with it and become good at it, then if for some reason you need to switch to a different framework you already have all of the basic principles down so you can pick up another framework really quickly.

This is a great thread and really useful but most posters here are mainly converned with frontend development and probably lean heavily towards Javascript, so you will likely get a lot of suggestions for front end frameworks such as React or Angular, or backend frameworks in Javascript built on top of Node.js

I would say it depends on where you want to go, front end? back end? fullstack?

That will help determine the direction you take, but I would just say not to stop learning a relevant technology now because you are afraid 10 years from now there might be less jobs in that framework. As I said Rails isn't going anywhere for a good while and still has a very lucrative employment market, even if 7 or 10 years from now Rails vanishes you will still have a solid foundation that you can take with you to any similar framework. (And there are a lot of them).

I would also recommend after you get comfortable with Rails to experiment with other frameworks too to get a feel for them and you will see a lot of the same concepts, ideas and patterns that you have learned in Rails. That's my 2 cents anyway.
 
Apologies if I have as have discussed this one here before, I have been sidetracked by a lot of other work. But I have an idea for a website I want to make, but I don't really have any idea where to begin with it.

For a bit of context, I have taught myself a lot of basic front end skills, namely HTML, CSS, jQuery and Javascript, as well as introducing myself to PHP, MySQL, React, APIs, Angular and WordPress. However I am still pretty inexperienced with the latter skills.

Anyway I have a lot of confidence in the idea, and having looked around online I can't seem to see anything else quite like what I have in mind, so I would love to try and build it. Basically a lot of the functionality would overlap with websites like Twitter, Reddit and also online forums, but the key functionality would be:


  • User logins.
  • Ability to make threads and posts. (In terms of functionality, not so much from a semantic sense)
  • A way to categorise and display threads.
  • Also a way to "up vote" posts.
So really I am a little lost as to where to start. I have dabbled in React and Rails, but really this is all new to me so I have no idea. Any advice on which technologies to investigate would be really appreciated. Also, I haven't ruled out collaborating with others to make this thing, so if anyone is interested let me know.

Also I imagine this might seem like a reddit clone from the functionality I have mentioned, but the purpose and function of the website would be pretty different.
 

Daffy Duck

Member
Apologies if I have as have discussed this one here before, I have been sidetracked by a lot of other work. But I have an idea for a website I want to make, but I don't really have any idea where to begin with it.

For a bit of context, I have taught myself a lot of basic front end skills, namely HTML, CSS, jQuery and Javascript, as well as introducing myself to PHP, MySQL, React, APIs, Angular and WordPress. However I am still pretty inexperienced with the latter skills.

Anyway I have a lot of confidence in the idea, and having looked around online I can't seem to see anything else quite like what I have in mind, so I would love to try and build it. Basically a lot of the functionality would overlap with websites like Twitter, Reddit and also online forums, but the key functionality would be:


  • User logins.
  • Ability to make threads and posts. (In terms of functionality, not so much from a semantic sense)
  • A way to categorise and display threads.
  • Also a way to "up vote" posts.
So really I am a little lost as to where to start. I have dabbled in React and Rails, but really this is all new to me so I have no idea. Any advice on which technologies to investigate would be really appreciated. Also, I haven't ruled out collaborating with others to make this thing, so if anyone is interested let me know.

Also I imagine this might seem like a reddit clone from the functionality I have mentioned, but the purpose and function of the website would be pretty different.

Sounds interesting. I'd be interested in collaborating with you if my skills can be used/improved via the project.

My day to day job is HTML/CSS/jQuery/PHP/MySQL.
 
Certainly open to it :) I haven't dealt with .NET before though, so I'm not sure how it fits into things. But Angular is definitely something that could be useful.

Is there such a thing as too many people? If not, I would like to partake in this project too, seems like it could be a fun time with GAF.

I mostly work in non-web development work but lately I've been taking part in a new web project at work where we use Python with Django framework for the backend and AngularJS 1 for the front.
 
Let me know if you guys are going to set up a discord or slack chat what have you.

I have some project experience with HTML/CSS and jQuery. Would like to help out where I can and learn new skills as well.

Is there such a thing as too many people? If not, I would like to partake in this project too, seems like it could be a fun time with GAF.

I mostly work in non-web development work but lately I've been taking part in a new web project at work where we use Python with Django framework for the backend and AngularJS 1 for the front.

Thanks for the interest :)

I have set up a Slack page and PM'd invites to each of you. At this stage I am not 100% on how many people will be needed. I haven't made anything near this scale before, so I don't know exactly which skills we will need. If you are interested, join the Slack channel and we can all kinda introduce ourselves a bit more. I can also discuss the website requirements in a bit more detail.
 

GHG

Gold Member
Thanks for the interest :)

I have set up a Slack page and PM'd invites to each of you. At this stage I am not 100% on how many people will be needed. I haven't made anything near this scale before, so I don't know exactly which skills we will need. If you are interested, join the Slack channel and we can all kinda introduce ourselves a bit more. I can also discuss the website requirements in a bit more detail.

I'd be down for getting involved in this. HTML/CSS/JS is what I can contribute with a bit of PHP (I'm still learning that).

PM me the details if you're happy for another person to get involved.
 
Thanks for all of the interest, I didn't expect so many people would be up for it haha. For anyone else who might be interested, please feel free to PM me, particularly if you feel you can bring any skills that have not previously been mentioned. I don't want to put a number on how many people will be needed, but as the project progresses, more people might be needed.
 

Cptkrush

Member
Thanks for all of the interest, I didn't expect so many people would be up for it haha. For anyone else who might be interested, please feel free to PM me, particularly if you feel you can bring any skills that have not previously been mentioned. I don't want to put a number on how many people will be needed, but as the project progresses, more people might be needed.
Excellent idea, PM sent!
 

Kieli

Member
I'd say go with Express until you're comfy with the whole server side, then start exploring its alternatives based on what you actually need (hint: you may actually not need an alternative - which is also true for anything really, especially in the cluttered JS ecosystem :) ).

As far as installing node modules globally or locally: go local, always.
This way you can control the version you're using on a per-project basis.

Local to the application. Modern application architectures aren't like previous architectures (say, like a PHP driven site) where you'd install Apache as a service on your operating system and then set up your application/site to work within or work with that service. With many common modern architectures you're setting your http service (in this case, Express) as part of the application.

There's plenty of benefits like being able to run specific versions of Express and also not having to install something globally that you might only use for a few projects, but also, most deployment systems (say, like Heroku or the many alternatives), expect that you'll have a local http service.

Thanks for your advice! I'm more comfortable with requiring packages in Node.js, so I'm sticking to local installs.

As an aside, does anyone know of a good & cheap service for hosting a personal website. The website will have some minor backend components to store comments and blog posts. I may also throw interactive personal projects on the site as well, so I need to have (very modest) amount of storage in addition to a domain name.

I know you can purchase domain names. For the hostly, I'm hopefully looking at sub-$10. $5/mo would be awesome, but I don't know if that's possible.
 

Farside

Unconfirmed Member
This is probably asked quite often here, but how realistic is it for a 43 year old to learn on his own and get a decent job in web development? Kinda exploring options for career-change and I have been learning HTML/CSS... am I just wasting my time in the career-sense?

It has been interesting in its own right, though, as I can now right-click inspect element on pages and kinda grasp what is going on in the code now. Which is SO COOL.

Thanks for the time.
 

kgtrep

Member
This is probably asked quite often here, but how realistic is it for a 43 year old to learn on his own and get a decent job in web development? Kinda exploring options for career-change and I have been learning HTML/CSS... am I just wasting my time in the career-sense?

It has been interesting in its own right, though, as I can now right-click inspect element on pages and kinda grasp what is going on in the code now. Which is SO COOL.

Thanks for the time.


Hey, there. I'm currently in a boot camp where a few are in their 40s. (We just started so no comments on successful job landing.) I say pursue your dreams!
 

Farside

Unconfirmed Member
Hey, there. I'm currently in a boot camp where a few are in their 40s. (We just started so no comments on successful job landing.) I say pursue your dreams!

Thanks! Boot camps were recommended by another person I talked to.

I appreciate the post.
 
Are there any decent guides that would work as a good stepping stone to using the Bungie API? I'm coming to the end of a web development course which features a brief section about API's (using JSON/making requests with node) and I've found a guide to the bungie API but i'm having trouble connecting the dots between that and what i've learned so far.

All I'd like to do at the moment is show something simple like number of kills in a previous game to begin with, then build on that when I have an idea of what the basic code looks like.
 
Bootstrap 4 officially entered beta this week.

https://blog.getbootstrap.com/2017/08/10/bootstrap-4-beta/

Anybody do a migration from 3.x to the 4 alpha or beta? My company's site has a huge CSS codebase that's all BS3.4.x, and we're going to try to move over to it when it's official but... It's gonna be hairy.

We have been using v4 in production since the v4-dev branch came out like year and a half ago and it's been very stable for the whole time. The migration isn't too bad either and there's a migration guide too https://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/migration/.
 
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