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

Tathanen

Get Inside Her!
This is something I think would be an especially big issue in the coming years as people transition to 4k monitors.

I'm a big pixel guy--I've never built something where they don't get the job done perfectly, and I build a lot of responsive sites. 4k will only matter if the display size doesn't increase along with it, and even then, only matter if there's no inate UI scaling going on, which is highly unlikely. It's like developing for a retina display, your 14px font isn't going to be any smaller when the ppi is higher, it's just gonna be rendered the same size but with greater clarity.
 

Kjellson

Member
So I know absolutely nothing about web developing or programming and stuff, but I read a post on Reddit the other day that it's easy to learn the basics on some internet sites and I thought it could be a good idea since there seems to be a lot of jobs in that market right now.

My friend recommended http://www.codecademy.com/ to me and I'm just wondering if anyone know if it's a good site to learn the basics for a beginner.

Thanks in advance.
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
Meh, codecademy is a bit overrated to me. You'll go through the motions but nothing will really stick .

Sure, but it's better than not starting. The last thing a beginner needs is an argument about where to start since it really doesn't matter at all where.
 
Treehouse costs money, Codecademy is free.

Yet I took Codecademy's HTML and CSS route and remember nothing. Coming out of their course I couldn't do anything useful. I'm watching my roommate struggle to learn stuff on his own so I'd say it's better to spend money if it'll teach you right rather than flounder around free website getting frustrated.
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Codeacademy didn't teach me shit, tbh. How the hell can you learn anything by :

"type background-color: red;"
"Congratulations, you win!"

I quit at the Javascript portion because it does a shit job of telling what it is that you're doing. I mean, I know how to find the $ key on my keyboard, thanks, but that that doesn't explain what "calling a function" means.

What you can learn from CA, you can learn by just staring at some CSS. It was a complete waste of time for me. YMMV, of course. But I got somewhat pissed off at the "lessons."

Too bad some of y'all don't teach lessons for cash. I'd gladly pay for the specific knowledge I'm looking for.
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
Might be better to start somewhere else then if it doesn't work.

I was under the thought process that Codecademy is a quick and easy place to start, even though it's not terribly great, and hopefully would spark enough interest to continue with better places to learn.

Meh.

Too bad some of y'all don't teach lessons for cash. I'd gladly pay for the specific knowledge I'm looking for.

This is actually the idea behind my friend and I's startup, but it was targeted towards classmates and hasn't taken off.
 

EloKa

Member
I'm working as a webdev since 7 years and got 2 new trainees last week who were already studying c#/java since 2 and 4 years and switched to php.

codeacademy was a nice way to give them something to look at, seeing some different syntax or starting to work with basic css elements is really helpful imho
 

Mr.Mike

Member
Codeacademy doesn't really do a great job explaining concepts, although it does seem like it might be okay for people who already know the concepts to pick up the syntax of a language ( but even them they would probably be better off looking at some code and reading the documentation.)

I highly recommend Duckett's HTML&CSS ( it was only like 20 bucks too). He also has a Java script book but I haven't read that yet.
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
This is actually the idea behind my friend and I's startup, but it was targeted towards classmates and hasn't taken off.

If you're willing to give specific instructions, PM me. I don't need "this is JavaScript." I need somebody who can answer "Hey, I need to do this, here is where I am at, but it's doing X. Halp."
 

Pixeluh

Member
So I know absolutely nothing about web developing or programming and stuff, but I read a post on Reddit the other day that it's easy to learn the basics on some internet sites and I thought it could be a good idea since there seems to be a lot of jobs in that market right now.

My friend recommended http://www.codecademy.com/ to me and I'm just wondering if anyone know if it's a good site to learn the basics for a beginner.

Thanks in advance.

You can go through it but you won't actually remember anything. (Unless you try and make a small website right after, which is what I did. It stuck more that way + google than with the course.. lol. )

I'm gonna sign up for the treehouse trial today too. Gonna use it for JS and hope I can understand it a bit more. (I'm still struggling with it and have been going through https://dash.generalassemb.ly/projects for fun. I like using JS when it has a purpose, but in books when you are learning what things are, it's very dull imo.)
 
I have done the Python and Ruby lessons and I thought they were pretty great, but I do understand the high concepts and was only learning the syntax on Code Academy
 

jokkir

Member
I find YouTube tutorials much better like the Derek Banas channel. Although, I do have a background in programming so I understood some concepts. Wouldn't hurt to check them out though and he provides the source for a lot of them to follow along
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
Codeacademy doesn't really do a great job explaining concepts, although it does seem like it might be okay for people who already know the concepts to pick up the syntax of a language ( but even them they would probably be better off looking at some code and reading the documentation.)

I highly recommend Duckett's HTML&CSS ( it was only like 20 bucks too). He also has a Java script book but I haven't read that yet.

I would have to recommend these as well. They are fantastic books, both of them.

If you're willing to give specific instructions, PM me. I don't need "this is JavaScript." I need somebody who can answer "Hey, I need to do this, here is where I am at, but it's doing X. Halp."

Sure! Do you mind going through our site? Just click a tutor picture, (any of them at this point), and then you can fill in the form.
We have a shared code editor we use that I'm hoping would be more useful than a PM on here. Plus it'll let us test out the whole idea of it a little more.
Also it'll get my friend, also a student, in on the convo so if can't answer your question he may well be able to.
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Alright, did it. I clicked on the first guy and filled it in.

EDIT: As a friendly note, your response emails are auto sorted by GMail into "promotions," aka "almost spam folder."
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
Alright, did it. I clicked on the first guy and filled it in.

EDIT: As a friendly note, your response emails are auto sorted by GMail into "promotions," aka "almost spam folder."

Yuck! Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to look into why that's happening.

I just woke up, so I'm getting to your request now.
 
Does anyone else feel super sensitive about the quality of their work? Because right now I just feel like what I want to do has hit some sort of creative block.
 
So I know absolutely nothing about web developing or programming and stuff, but I read a post on Reddit the other day that it's easy to learn the basics on some internet sites and I thought it could be a good idea since there seems to be a lot of jobs in that market right now.

My friend recommended http://www.codecademy.com/ to me and I'm just wondering if anyone know if it's a good site to learn the basics for a beginner.

Thanks in advance.

This free open online course in Python is starting in a few days and I highly recommend it. I took it a few years ago when I was starting out and found it to be an excellent and fun introduction to the concepts involved.

Based on what I've seen, CodeAcademy is good for learning the syntax of a language but not very good at explaining the underlying concepts and teaching you how to break down a problem so that you can write a method yourself, which is really what programming is.
 
You haven't witnessed modern crossbrowser horror until you have tried to cross-browser style an input range element.

I was already not looking forward to doing that sort of thing so I suggested using some implementation of material design for an upcoming project in my company. My reasoning being that in the worst case scenario, if the implementation doesn't work at all I haven't wasted any time yet.
 

D4Danger

Unconfirmed Member
some good videos came out of the IE Edge summit thing last week

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/WebPlatformSummit/2015


This was interesting talk by Christian Heilmann. It touches on polyfills etc and why they might not always be needed

tl;dw basically people are filling in the gaps for older browsers without considering the performance implications

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/We...Advancing-JavaScript-without-breaking-the-web

One of the things Microsoft Edge is leading at is ES6 support. This is a very important part for JavaScript as a language but it also means that we're running the danger of breaking backwards compatibility of our products. In this talk Chris Heilmann shows the pros and cons of new JS features and workarounds how to innovate the web and still keep it in a working condition.


This is mentioned in the video which I'd never seen before.

https://justmarkup.com/log/2015/02/26/cut-the-mustard-revisited/

It's a technique the BBC use called "Cutting the mustard" that basically checks for a few supported features before it loads their js so older browsers don't get it.

Code:
if (!('visibilityState' in document)) return;
A nice way to prevent your JS running in IE<10 and Android WebKit

So, can or should I also use this CTM check? Often, well probably most of the time, it depends! It depends on your audience (study your statistics), it depends on the functionality used on your website or application &#8211; it depends on many things. However, using Cut the Mustard (in this way or another) is a perfect example of Progressive Enhancement. Web sites doesn&#8217;t need to look exactly the same in every browser and old browsers don&#8217;t need all the functionality modern browsers offer as long as the same content is available for all. Don&#8217;t bloat old browsers with tons of polyfills to get modern JavaScript features working there and make your life as a web developer unnecessary hard by trying to learn an old car flying.
 
Not sure if this goes more here or in the Programming OT, but since its for iOS/Android hybrid App, I'm guessing all the underlying implementation will be web based.

I'm trying to scope out how feasible it is to add some amount of cross platform, mobile to mobile screen sharing. The request goes like this:
... Needs to be accessible both online as well as offline for those in remote areas without internet connectivity. In addition would need to use apple technology using conference pad where agent could control tool using iphone. Would like to have the ability to capture the data of the consumer for future use or transfer to applications.

I'm not sure they actually want Conference Pad since all that does is share PDFs. The feeling I've gotten is they pretty much want their own version of Google Docs live editing, but more for forms. The disconnected stuff can also most likely be ignored, because, the use case is tiny. I'm pretty sure its just one really loud agent. I know there are games that are at least aware of what is happening on another device, I just have no idea where to start looking for this one. All the mirroring-type apps I've seen are mostly sending something to a host desktop and sending it back out to everyone else in the room.

The idea is both the agent and customer can pull up the app on the phone, the agent can run though various scenarios on their device and the customer can watch on theirs. Then, when they find one that works, its saved on both devices.
 

Kalnos

Banned
I may not be understanding at all but is it screensharing you want or just realtime updating? e.g. you can build something using socket.io, firebase, etc and when the editor changes something the watchers will see those changes reflected in realtime.

I think it's definitely possible.
 

Somnid

Member
Not sure if this goes more here or in the Programming OT, but since its for iOS/Android hybrid App, I'm guessing all the underlying implementation will be web based.

I'm trying to scope out how feasible it is to add some amount of cross platform, mobile to mobile screen sharing. The request goes like this:


I'm not sure they actually want Conference Pad since all that does is share PDFs. The feeling I've gotten is they pretty much want their own version of Google Docs live editing, but more for forms. The disconnected stuff can also most likely be ignored, because, the use case is tiny. I'm pretty sure its just one really loud agent. I know there are games that are at least aware of what is happening on another device, I just have no idea where to start looking for this one. All the mirroring-type apps I've seen are mostly sending something to a host desktop and sending it back out to everyone else in the room.

The idea is both the agent and customer can pull up the app on the phone, the agent can run though various scenarios on their device and the customer can watch on theirs. Then, when they find one that works, its saved on both devices.

I wouldn't do that with screen sharing, rather I would just sync the actions to the same UI (perhaps readonly if desired).

For example:

1) On UI value change send an event (via websocket)
2) Server adds to event queue
3) Server process picks up last unprocessed event from event queue
4) Send event to interested clients (via websocket)
5) Update client UI with event data

You won't be able to get it working offline without some native extension though and Safari doesn't support WebRTC so you need a server.
 
I wouldn't do that with screen sharing, rather I would just sync the actions to the same UI (perhaps readonly if desired).

For example:

1) On UI value change send an event (via websocket)
2) Server adds to event queue
3) Server process picks up last unprocessed event from event queue
4) Send event to interested clients (via websocket)
5) Update client UI with event data

You won't be able to get it working offline without some native extension though and Safari doesn't support WebRTC so you need a server.

Thanks, this is more the direction I was going for, just didn't know what it was.
 

theecakee

Member
Based on what I've seen, CodeAcademy is good for learning the syntax of a language but not very good at explaining the underlying concepts and teaching you how to break down a problem so that you can write a method yourself, which is really what programming is.

I agree, if you already know a language or took some CS courses, Code Academy is pretty good to learn basic syntax. Because as someone else said, they don't explain concepts like passing into a function very well but if you already took CS1 or w/e you should know that prior.

I've been using CodeAcademy as a primer for learning HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery and its been a pretty good intro before I jump into books that go deeper.
 

Pixeluh

Member
Hello again guys. JS still frustrates me, bleh.

I'm trying to go through the Odin Project ( which I'm not really liking ..) and I'm trying to solve https://projecteuler.net/problem=1 .

I feel really dumb, I have no idea what to do. Maybe I should learn a lot more before attempting this. I got my basic html down so far ( I have no idea how to put different JS sections on different parts of the page yet, ect, but we'll work on that.. )

I've been looking at other answers on github and I get the gist of it, but don't quite understand what people are saying.

Code:
var solution1 = function(x) {
	var sum = 0;
	
	for(var i = 1; i < x; i++) {
		if(i % 3 === 0 || i % 5 === 0) {
			sum += i;
		}
	}
	console.log(sum);
};

solution1(1000)

So we have a variable called solution1, and we're having it become a function. Then we have a variable called sum, and it's equaled to 0. Moving on we have a for statement ( I haven't been able to understand much about loops yet, ) where variable i could equal 1, be less than x, or could have an increment on it. Then we have an if statement with %. I recently learned about this, where you divide x by y and then take the decimal and mulitple it by y again to get your answer?

Ex : 5 % 2 = 2.5
.5 * 2 = 1

So if i % 3 equals 0 or i % 5 equals 0, then the sum will be ??? I don't know how to understand the

Code:
sum +=i;
line. Then we have a console statement saying the sum. I don't understand why we have
Code:
solution1(1000)
at the bottom either.

Sorry about the long post, like I've said, I've been reading other answers to this problem and nobody really explains what's happening? I don't even understand how people can think of this, it's so difficult. I don't want to be the annoying beginner in this thread, but I'm not sure where else I could post this, lol. Maybe I'll just go back and try to finish " Beginning JavaScript " .
 

Tathanen

Get Inside Her!
The modulo operator (%) is kind of crux to understanding this. Think of it as the "remainder" operator. 5 % 3 = 2. How many times does three go into five? One, with a remainder of two. Grade-school math right there.

A multiple of 3 or 5 is a number that is evenly divisible by 3 or 5. Namely, it has no remainder. So you can use the modulo to check that. If the result is 0, there's no remainder, and it's a multiple. And since the problem is asking for the sum of all those multiples, you add them to your running total ("sum", in that example).

"i" is being iterated in the for loop, it starts at 1 and stops at 1000. It's the number being looked at each time you loop, and the if statement is saying "is this a multiple of 3 or 5?" using the aforementioned modulo logic. If the answer is yes, i is added to sum. (The += operator is a shorthand, "sum += i" is the same as "sum = sum + i".) As you loop, sum grows as you continually add new values of i to it that are determined to be multiples.

The last line, solution1(1000), is just calling the function and passing in the value for x. It's set as the upper bound of the for loop. It's really quite unnecessary, they coulda just not made it a function, and hard-coded 1000 in place of x.
 

Somnid

Member
"solution1" is a function, in javascript functions can be set into variables to hold on to. We aren't actually invoking the function right then, just setting it aside by assigning it to the variable solution1. The final line is where it's actually invoked by using the variable with parens in substitution of an actual function name.

"sum += i" means "take the value of sum and add i, then store the value back into sum." It's shorthand for "sum = sum + i"

the loop "for(var i = 1; i < x; i++)" reads:

"initially, set i to 1" (var i = 1),
then keep repeating the thing in brackets until i < x,
each time you finish increment the value of i by one (i++)"
 

jesalr

Member
Hello again guys. JS still frustrates me, bleh.

I'm trying to go through the Odin Project ( which I'm not really liking ..) and I'm trying to solve https://projecteuler.net/problem=1 .

I feel really dumb, I have no idea what to do. Maybe I should learn a lot more before attempting this. I got my basic html down so far ( I have no idea how to put different JS sections on different parts of the page yet, ect, but we'll work on that.. )

I've been looking at other answers on github and I get the gist of it, but don't quite understand what people are saying.

Code:
var solution1 = function(x) {
	var sum = 0;
	
	for(var i = 1; i < x; i++) {
		if(i % 3 === 0 || i % 5 === 0) {
			sum += i;
		}
	}
	console.log(sum);
};

solution1(1000)

So we have a variable called solution1, and we're having it become a function. Then we have a variable called sum, and it's equaled to 0. Moving on we have a for statement ( I haven't been able to understand much about loops yet, ) where variable i could equal 1, be less than x, or could have an increment on it. Then we have an if statement with %. I recently learned about this, where you divide x by y and then take the decimal and mulitple it by y again to get your answer?

Ex : 5 % 2 = 2.5
.5 * 2 = 1

So if i % 3 equals 0 or i % 5 equals 0, then the sum will be ??? I don't know how to understand the

Code:
sum +=i;
line. Then we have a console statement saying the sum. I don't understand why we have
Code:
solution1(1000)
at the bottom either.

Sorry about the long post, like I've said, I've been reading other answers to this problem and nobody really explains what's happening? I don't even understand how people can think of this, it's so difficult. I don't want to be the annoying beginner in this thread, but I'm not sure where else I could post this, lol. Maybe I'll just go back and try to finish " Beginning JavaScript " .

A for loop is defined using three statements. for(statement1; statement2; statement3){}
The first happens before the loop starts, the second is a condition that is checked before each iteration of the loop, and the last happens after each iteration of the loop.

So your loop will have i start at 1 and increase by 1 (i++) up until i is no longer less than x.

The % operator gives the remainder of a division. if the remainder is 0 then the first number is a multiple of the second. So that if statement is checking if i is a multiple of 3 OR (the || operator) 5.

sum += i says that sum will be increased by the value i. You can do sum -= i to decrement sum by i.

solution1(1000) will run the function defined above it, giving the variable x as 1000. The code above won't run without this line calling it to run.

Hope that helps.
 

Pixeluh

Member
Thank you guys for the replies. :) I'm going to have re-read them a couple of times though.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna start doing the javascript/jQuery areas on freecodecamp. (Just saw this posted on reddit today, actually.)

Edit : Gonna read through http://eloquentjavascript.net too.
 

Daffy Duck

Member
Q) how would you deal with a compromised WP site? Would you just remove the uploaded files and put the site back?

Or

Would you fix the site (remove the files), find out how they were able to upload the files then fix that? Then put it back online?

They used the site to get the server to send thousands of spam emails FWIW.
 
Q) how would you deal with a compromised WP site? Would you just remove the uploaded files and put the site back?

Or

Would you fix the site (remove the files), find out how they were able to upload the files then fix that? Then put it back online?

They used the site to get the server to send thousands of spam emails FWIW.
Best thing is to keep the site offline until you fixed the exploit and then put everything back online.

That's not always possible, so you can remove the infected files and then (quickly) figure out the the exploit and upload the fix.

But definitely fix the exploit, otherwise it will just happen again in a few days or weeks.
 

Onemic

Member
I've been struggling trying to get my header and nav menu items to all be on the same line. If anyone can help it would be very appreciated. (This is using Wordpress btw)

Code:
 snip



Code:
snip

EDIT: fixed
 

fixedpoint

Member
I've been struggling trying to get my header and nav menu items to all be on the same line. If anyone can help it would be very appreciated. (This is using Wordpress btw)

Both the <h1> and <nav> are currently full-width and in the document flow. You could try something like this -
Code:
 h1,nav{display:inline-block;}
or
Code:
h1{float:left;}
 

Onemic

Member
Both the <h1> and <nav> are currently full-width and in the document flow. You could do something like this -

Code:
 h1,nav{display:inline-block;}

or

Code:
h1{float:left;}

Yup, I was just about to edit my post saying that I fixed it. Doing:

Code:
.site-header h1 {
float: left;
margin: 0;
}

got me the result I wanted.
 

theecakee

Member
How do you all feel about Tuts+ Premium? Is it worth the money?

I did Code Academy and read HTML/CSS by John Duckrett and then did Code Academy for JavaScript and now am reading Eloquent JavaScript...but I'm not gonna lie reading programming books are pretty stale and its hard to focus after hours of doing it. I was thinking video tutorials may be a better route but $90 is a lot (have .edu email)
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
How do you all feel about Tuts+ Premium? Is it worth the money?

I did Code Academy and read HTML/CSS by John Duckrett and then did Code Academy for JavaScript and now am reading Eloquent JavaScript...but I'm not gonna lie reading programming books are pretty stale and its hard to focus after hours of doing it. I was thinking video tutorials may be a better route but $90 is a lot (have .edu email)

Have you tried actually building anything on your own? After those books you should have a pretty solid understanding of websites and how to build them. That's a lot of information ingested.
 
Watching/reading really isn't enough imho. You should make some stuff of your own for practice. You usually end up learning stuff skipped by the study material.

Pretty boring to just read to learn a language, unless you're studying theoretical material (data structures, design patterns, higher CS stuff, etc)
 
So I completed the HTML and CSS template for the website for my internship. Now the challenging part is trying to figure out how to integrate Wordpress into the website without completely destroying my design... Any tips?

Right now I'm downloading MAMP onto my Macbook so I can try establishing a local server to test everything I need to.
 
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