October 7, 2012
The short review would be “what a brilliant book”.
I had tinkered with Node.js before but in a bit of an unstructured fashion. Reading the table of contents had me impressed then seeing the price for the Kindle version confirmed the deal. There is a lot of information here for very little money, around £7.50.
The book begins with an introduction to Node and setting it up. There are also some details about the difference between browser JavaScript and some APIs used by node.
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August 11, 2012
I recently discovered Shop Talk, a live web design and development podcast by Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert. So I’ve been listening to the old episodes and in episode 9 with Ethan Marcotte. Andy Howells from the UK asked a question ,which is 15:38 into the episode.
He asked about an eCommerce site that could have twenty four additional images of a product and rightly expressed concerns about page load speed on mobile devices over slow network connections.
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July 28, 2012
This year I’m lucky enough to be attending Future of Web Apps London 2012. I’ve been to Future of Web Design before and found it hugely inspirational so I have expectations for it’s more technical sibling.
I’m looking forward to # Jeffrey Zeldman – Obviously a major influence in the web world and I’ve heard he is an amazing speaker.
Bruce Lawson – I’ve seen Bruce speak at FOWD and he is very engaging as a speaker and I admire his honesty and openness on standards.
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January 10, 2012
A recently got to do a small bit of work with an old friend from university. We both did the Surf Science & Technology course at Plymouth Uni and have since independent got into the world of building websites.
Made By Richard had a client, Sugar Shoes, using Tradingeye e-commerce platform. I’d never used Tradingeye before and found the documentation a bit sparse .
I only had to implement functionality to change the text on the homepage as well as upload new images for an image slider on the homepage and with a bit of poking around I got my head around how the system work.
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December 28, 2011
Designing For Emotion by Aarron Walter and published by A Book Apart was a great read with some compelling case studies and examples and on how and when to use emotional design elements.
All release by A Book Apart and short, sharp and too the point. This release is no exception and once I began reading I was hooked and finished it off within a couple of days. The writing style is enjoyable and educational with a sprinkle of dry wit where appropriate.
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December 22, 2011
Do web developers really take holidays? Or are our breaks from the day job just an opportunity to catch up on some reading and tinker with some side projects? We haven’t even hit Christmas Day and I’ve managed to finish off two books I’ve had on the go, this one and PHP Master: Write Cutting-Edge Code from SitePoint.
On to business, I love the A Book Apart releases and this one is no different.
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December 22, 2011
SitePoint’s latest PHP book is aimed at taking your skills to the next level. Looking through the contents there was several tools and techniques I was already using but also lots of others that I would like to start using.
Each of the sections provides a general good introduction with some examples and links to similar tools or further reading. The book finishes by recommending that you implement the techniques / tools over a period of time, e.
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December 21, 2011
I recently found out about Arduino an open-source electronics prototyping platform – as described on the website.
It’s basically a circuit board which can have components connected to it and then “sketches” can be uploaded to the board to control how it operates. The basics, which I am working through this Christmas, are controlling LEDs but if you have a Google or YouTube there are some really impressive projects.
I’ve never really dabbled with electronics before but this looks a lot of fun.
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October 26, 2011
I recently redesigned and coded the website for the Marine Biological Association. I designed the site mobile first as I feel this makes sense to start with the linear nature of a webpage and it’s elements and then see where these elements can best be focused as the screen size increases.
The site also uses responsive design techniques with a fluid grid. I found Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte had some useful techniques in it and also the templates from the 978 Grid System to calculate layout widths.
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October 8, 2011
I recentley discovered a new CMS called Fuel. It is based on the PHP framework CodeIgniter and I feel it has huge potential.
Below is a post I added to the Fuel forums on why Fuel differs from other CMS systems.
When I start a project I tend to go for WordPress if a need a general blog / CMS and then if the project is a little more bespoke I will go for CodeIgniter.
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