Freyjadour
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Ftfy
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Web Design and Development |OT| Pixel perfect is dead, long live responsive design
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Testicular Sound Express
Member
any advice from fellow freelancers here on getting work. I've gotten a few things here and there from friends, but I want to branch out more.
Syphon Filter
Member
When you guys are making websites for your portfolio to show off do you need to worry about copyright for certain things? For ex: i want to make a site for my portfolio about Milton Glaser,is that ok? Anything i need to worry about?
runningjoke
Member
If you guys could upload html and css files to a cms, and this cms generates form code and places it in your html, is there any kind of framework you would prefer? The current forms are very old, ugly and not responsive. I'm thinking about moving to Bootstrap or is that already out of fashion?
Quick q's: can you access and attach a js event to the markup loaded with the object tag (I know we can with iframes)? How about the canvas element within an iframe?
Just pick apart the styles you'd use from bootstrap instead of using the whole framework.
Just pick apart the styles you'd use from bootstrap instead of using the whole framework.
Wolf Akela
Member
PHP/MySQL guy here. I want to learn more, because it's clear I will never learn anything new at my current job. It's fun, pay is good, but it feels like a deadend. We just use PHP as a backend and not really for web development. Like... there'a really no way for users to interact with the scripts via browser. We just use PHP because it's... easy. I even rewrote one of my applications in Python just to learn something NEW.
What do I study first? More of a backend person since I dislike worrying about how something looks on every browser. I'm looking at JS/jQuery since they pop up most often on job searches but I don't know. I can read HTML/CSS alright. I don't know any PHP framework or CMS. Might look up something. I really don't know. I have zero experience with any framework.
What do I study first? More of a backend person since I dislike worrying about how something looks on every browser. I'm looking at JS/jQuery since they pop up most often on job searches but I don't know. I can read HTML/CSS alright. I don't know any PHP framework or CMS. Might look up something. I really don't know. I have zero experience with any framework.
runningjoke
Member
In this case I'm the one rebuilding the form generator, my customers can upload the templates. Just wondering if Bootstrap support is something they might like.
Mighty Chin
Banned
Hey GAF I got an issue I need solving. I have a client that has an English site but he wants to have it translated into Mandarin, he has an actual word for word translation done up and would like that to show up.
I think I can convince him to just use the qtranslate option but here is the thing. I installed the plugin but I have no clue if its working. I click on the tiny Chinese Flag but my text doesn't change.
I have never had to translate a site before in 14 years of doing this so I am just reading up on it now.
Question: Do I have to wrap all the text I want translated in PHP for the qtranslate plugin to recognize the text I want Translated?
Edit: I think I figured it out. qtranslate give you the option on each page/post to dump in the alternate language copy/text. Here I was under the impression the plugin just translated the entire for you.
I think I can convince him to just use the qtranslate option but here is the thing. I installed the plugin but I have no clue if its working. I click on the tiny Chinese Flag but my text doesn't change.
I have never had to translate a site before in 14 years of doing this so I am just reading up on it now.
Question: Do I have to wrap all the text I want translated in PHP for the qtranslate plugin to recognize the text I want Translated?
Edit: I think I figured it out. qtranslate give you the option on each page/post to dump in the alternate language copy/text. Here I was under the impression the plugin just translated the entire for you.
Syphon Filter
Member
Can you link me to your portfolio or PM it? Also usually the portfolio itself doesn't matter,it's the work in that portfolio what matters.
I've got an interview for a job on Tuesday, sort of a dream job. I've been told the interview will take around 2 hours and I'll be doing paired programming. I've never done paired programming before, but it seems like I great way to learn so I'm intrigued.
Anyone had any experience like this in an interview setting? I'm not sure how best to make a good impression, but hopefully I'm knowledgeable enough to do so.
Edit: This will be in PHP/JavaScript,HTML,CSS,etc
Anyone had any experience like this in an interview setting? I'm not sure how best to make a good impression, but hopefully I'm knowledgeable enough to do so.
Edit: This will be in PHP/JavaScript,HTML,CSS,etc
Good luck! I've got the same kind of thing tomorrow with a "big" internet company, and it's scaring the crap out of me. It's actually online, because I'm in a different part of the country, so two developers/managers will be quizzing me, watching me type in an unfamiliar editor, and talking to me as I program. Plus, I have no idea what they'll be asking, just that it's mostly front-end development.
It just seems weird, because it's so different from how I normally develop: sit and think for a while, wire up a crappy prototype, then write and test (and rewrite and re-test) a real version, doing plenty of online/book research to help make sure I'm getting things right. I'm very methodical. Not slow, necessarily, but to an observer, it would sure seem so. I don't write things on-demand, in a time crunch, from scratch. I don't know if I can.
It seems like an okay way to test rote knowledge (assuming the interviewee isn't too nervous to come up with the answers), but I would've preferred an overnight "homework" test, which they then quiz me about thoroughly, to make sure I understand what I wrote, and why. That I could ace.
I've got plenty of references and lots of delivered code over my career to show that I know how to develop. But I'm just afraid that I won't be able to make them believe it in this setting.
I'm absolutely petrified. Not of how I'll perform, since at this point, it depends more on their questions than on me learning anything in the next 24 hours. But I'm afraid of how I'll feel about myself if I fail.
I wouldn't feel too bad if you fail, because even if you have talent, you'd better hope they have the talent to spot talent. The biggest difference they should spot between a junior developer and a senior developer is that the senior developer takes more time to think. The reason I got my current job is because I was honest and didn't try to pretend I had the infinite knowledge of the universe behind me. I don't have much experience with these things though.
I did an overnight test for this job, a code kata, it was pretty simple, but it seems to have landed me an interview at least so hopefully I did a good job. I'll leave it up to the fates on this one, I have no idea how many people are applying. I'll go in with enthusiasm and hopefully I can prove myself in 2 hours. But it still feels like random luck!
Cool stuff, good luck and let your GAF fam know how it went.
Syphon Filter
Member
Good luck, even if things don't work out there are many people looking for developers every day. Did they ask for your portfolio?
Thanks for the encouragement, and best of luck with your own interview!
TOP SHOTTA
Member
What do you guys do about the scenario where a client (or coworker) of yours gets sick of looking at their redesign before it even goes live?
I have seen this a lot in the duration of my career, where you'll work up a redesign of site or application, and after x-amount of design review sessions, and x-amount of code reviews and project meetings - and sometimes even team members will get tired of their new design before it ever sees the light of day.
How do you "manage up" to internal or external clients, higher ups or PM's - to get them to see the forest through the trees. It kills me to see the initial WOW of a redesign loose its impact while the development team is in hardcore heads down code mode. It's so demotivating, and I have battled this kind of thing for a long time.
I saw it just yesterday. A new design that everyone freaking loved and suddenly yesterday a woman called a meeting to "Touch Base" and tried to reset the whole thing - where only a week ago she was raaaaaaaving about it. She's a particularly ignorant and uninformed client but weilds the Cudule of Xanthor at my company. Her comments were heard but not acted upon. It still took the wind out of my team's sails.
How do you guys in this field negotiate those treacherous waters?
I have seen this a lot in the duration of my career, where you'll work up a redesign of site or application, and after x-amount of design review sessions, and x-amount of code reviews and project meetings - and sometimes even team members will get tired of their new design before it ever sees the light of day.
How do you "manage up" to internal or external clients, higher ups or PM's - to get them to see the forest through the trees. It kills me to see the initial WOW of a redesign loose its impact while the development team is in hardcore heads down code mode. It's so demotivating, and I have battled this kind of thing for a long time.
I saw it just yesterday. A new design that everyone freaking loved and suddenly yesterday a woman called a meeting to "Touch Base" and tried to reset the whole thing - where only a week ago she was raaaaaaaving about it. She's a particularly ignorant and uninformed client but weilds the Cudule of Xanthor at my company. Her comments were heard but not acted upon. It still took the wind out of my team's sails.
How do you guys in this field negotiate those treacherous waters?
When it's with a client, reduce the time they're exposed to the design. Things you look at too often and too much always become bland and such over-exposure is never representative of the casual use most people do of a consumer website.
When it's someone who is effectively designing it, sadly I don't think there's a fix for that. Anything you get over the moon for will eventually become less and less likeable as the project goes on because of a/ over-exposure, b/ It's always going to be tainted by the woes of the working place at some point, c/ You're a good professional and you keep looking at what other people are doing, you get inspired by it and you can't apply it to the on-going project which frustrates you and leads to fatigue towards said project.
The only cure to everything is to reduce exposure to projects. Which is hard to have when you're also going for quality / complexity.
megarockexe
Member
My specialty is not web design but I am still interested and work closely on some related projects.
The way I see it though, is it best to always use svg icons and CSS gradients and shadows on pages people will often visit? It's better performance right, and anything else is just old habit or for really old compatibility?
The way I see it though, is it best to always use svg icons and CSS gradients and shadows on pages people will often visit? It's better performance right, and anything else is just old habit or for really old compatibility?
Try to use as little images as possible. That will do wonders on load times.
In my experience, the best thing about SVG images and CSS gradients/shadows is that they scale well on displays with very different pixel densities or zoom levels. I try to use them whenever I get the chance.
PetriP-TNT
Member
I usually get bored of my (or our) designs before they go live. Then I improve improve improve until I actually get satisfied it. Then someone else comes into picture and says that some of the things I love aren't working at all. I try not to get depressed and just improve improve improve until 1) we run out of time 2) everyone is happy.
I guess the main thing is not to take it too personally.
And just whip a shitty alternative that fills the need of the reset'r and then fallback on the original design.
I've been using Ember and I am familiar with Angular and Knockout, but as I previously did Flex (AS3) apps bound to a hell of a MVC library so they are pretty much what-I-loved-without-what-I-hated without the paradigm shift for me.
Knockout was the most intuitive for me. My JS code is still readable and easy to comprehend quickly. And I like that my HTML stays in my HTML -- instead of being put between script tags, like some other templating libraries do. Makes it easier to see what the page/app will look like before I've even bound it to any data.
The only weirdness is putting some of the logic in HTML tag data attributes, but I don't mind it.
Edit: The other reason I liked Knockout was because the tutorials were so good. If you're trying it out, make sure you use them!
No, but most of what I do now is internal systems, so I can't share a lot of it unfortunately. I should do some open source stuff, but who knows what and there's always that fear of my code being not good enough to be open source.
My interview has come and gone and I've been rejected. I think my lack of experience with creating test cases got me in the end. At my current job we're understaffed and overworked and have no real direction, but I've definitely got some good direction on what to improve now.
They also said I lacked knowledge of HTML5/CSS which is odd since they asked only 1 question related to those... Generally I don't find those 2 present much of a challenge at all, there's probably a good few CSS techniques I could learn, but I happily pick them up as the challenges present themselves.
I still have my current job so that's something, but I'd really like to move to an environment where I can learn more soon.
Master Milk
Member
So if I wanted to build a website from scratch, I'd start with HTML, CSS, and PHP?
phillipgessert
Member
I'd think you'd start simply with HTML and CSS. Beyond that, it depends what sort of website you want to build.
Master Milk
Member
What's PHP for, then? It was looking like basic functionality when I was looking at the different languages in the OP.
victreeb3l
Member
I always wondered, why does Airbnb have a mobile site as well as a mobile app. Isnt the point of having an app so you dont need the mobile site? Theres also the additional marketing they get from the App Stores so why keep a mobile site at all? I guess so people using other cell phones besides iOS or Android can use their service? Similarly with does FB and Twitter also have mobile sites along with apps?
At the same time, their mobile site isnt responsive, its just a separate site. I feel like that was actually a better move as responsive sites work best for static / blog type sites and not so much for complex web apps.
At the same time, their mobile site isnt responsive, its just a separate site. I feel like that was actually a better move as responsive sites work best for static / blog type sites and not so much for complex web apps.
Syphon Filter
Member
PHP is backend stuff. HTML and CSS first and then Javascript after.
So speaking of responsive design... I'm having one hell of a time trying to get responsive images working in a test page I've thrown together. Tried "copying" several different guides, but nothing is happening for me in Chrome 
I'm doing something wrong but don't know what it is.
I'm doing something wrong but don't know what it is.So speaking of responsive design... I'm having one hell of a time trying to get responsive images working in a test page I've thrown together. Tried "copying" several different guides, but nothing is happening for me in Chrome
You mean HTML picture element? You'll need chrome canary.
Fuck me if that is the thing that was holding me back. I'll download it tomorrow at work and watch things work on the first try.
Angelus Errare
Banned
This. Honestly this is the best time to be learning HTML/CSS. It's easier than ever (it was already easy, but with the changes introduced with HTML5 and beyond it's become really simply and straight forward).
You should become decent at HTML/CSS within a few weeks/months. Then move on to Javascript. Don't do what many people do and start dumping 100+ lines of JS code that you don't understand and get overwhelmed. Learning JS is going to take time (much much longer than CSS/HTML); don't rush it you'll just get frustrated and end up quitting.
PflargBlarg
Member
And this is just me, but I really can't recommend php. I hate that damn language.
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
More than ever before, mastery of JavaScript is essential for any serious front-end developer. And not just basic DOM manipulation, animations, or plugins. Architectural stuff. More and more code that was formerly backend-exclusive is moving into the frontend, these days it's more web apps than web sites. Focus less on things like jQuery and Bootstrap, and more on things like AngularJS.
I can't tell ya how many applicants we've had for front-end positions at our company who are just severely lacking on the JS side. Get some experience working with APIs, hit some routes with AJAX, learn how to interact with JSON endpoints and HTTP. Manage data, manage application state. Learn how JS scope works, look into front-end automated testing.
Though really this is more just if you want to actually have a career in web dev, less if you just want to make some of your own projects. But still, JS! Lots of these languages are C derivatives anyway, once you know what you're doing in JS learning PHP if you want to throw a quick backend together won't be too hard. Might not help as much if you want to use Python or Ruby tho. The world is moving away from PHP, but it's still an alright language for a mainly-front-end guy who just wants to put something together without any hassle.
Master Milk
Member
Looking at the apparent differences between front end and back end, if I wanted to build a website from scratch, wouldn't I need to know the back end, too? I'm confused on why PHP or something like it isn't necessary.
JonathanEx
Member
It really depends what sort of website you want to build.
Well that fixed it right away. Went and looked at the various demo pages I was messing with yesterday and realized they had some javascript running to cause the picture element to behave in regular Chrome.
phillipgessert
Member
The long and short of it is: every website you build will require HTML and CSS. But not every website necessarily requires PHP. In other words, not every website requires a robust backend.
Master Milk
Member
Angelus Errare
Banned
You really don't need to know PHP as there are hundreds of CMS out their you can use if you really are in need of a backend. It's always good to know, but not necessary to know in order to create a website.
Master Milk
Member
Using a CMS isn't what I'd consider building a website from scratch.
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
Correct. Steer clear of the wordpresses and joomlas of the world, they will only serve as an impediment if you want to actually know what you're doing.
Zoe
Member
It is. There are few people who can be experts in all aspects of a web site. At a proper organization, front-end/back-end/DB/etc would all be separate roles.
All of my websites look terribly plain.