Programming Books on the iPad
Mar 09, 2010On the cusp of iPad pre-ordering I have a thought of one killer feature for developers. Anyone that knows how to program can relate to juggling a book and your computer. It can be a real pain going through programming books while doing the exercises that the book has. Read a little bit of the book, set it aside, do some of the programming, and repeat.
Here is where the iPad and the addition on iBooks can make this is an awesome user experience. Given the fact that iBooks can have additional media inside of them. I can picture myself reading a portion of an iBook, turning the page and typing in the programming code and testing it out. Right inside of the same application. Of course there are some variables involved, but that would be a killer feature. Maybe even one that I may look into developing.
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The Most Important Web Designer Qualities
Dec 03, 2009I have been thinking lately. While I have had the privilege to be involved in a web design program at a local college I start to question what the most important aspects of web design are. I decided to ask my network. Here is what I ask of you. Ask yourself "If I was to hire a web designer out of college, what would they have to know, and what would be a plus?", and leave it in the comments. Thank you for taking the time to contribute!
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My Development Work Process
Nov 07, 2009Programming in its simplest form is a series and true/false responses. You perform a test. If it's true you perform one task, if it's false you perform another. If you are fairly new to programming this might seem a little too simple, but it's true. Look at flowcharts. Flowcharts are a graphical representation of what happens when something is true, and what happens when something is false. I was interested in how other developers approached programming, so it only makes sense to share my process.
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I Went To Sleep And The Web Fell Back 10 Years
Oct 25, 2009Nearly every morning I fire up my computer, check emails, and read my RSS feeds. I do it for a few reasons. One, it catches me up on what I may have missed from the day before. Two, it's relaxing and sometimes inspires me to do something. This morning it inspired me, but not necessarily in a good way. It felt as if the web fell back 10 years over night, and I was inspired to toss in my two cents.
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Time For a Change
Oct 23, 2009Nothing puts a person to action more than the feeling of desperation. Unfortunately, I think I may be there. A little background of how I got to where I am at now. I have been a Union Ironworker with Ironworkers Local 55 for 13 years. It's a great paying job! Although, it does have it downsides. There is a lot of travel, no real seniority, insecure employment, and it is very hard on the body. During one of my layoff stretches, I started to play with websites. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I was back in college learning everything I could about web design and development, you know, "just in case". Well, just as I knew it would, the day came when my web development skills were needed. All construction work dried up earlier this year. Long, long layoffs were ahead. Time to put those coding skills to use. I started freelancing, and was having the time of life. It was great, all except for one thing, it wasn't exactly making me rich. In fact, the payments were very, very far apart. So I needed unemployment to help bridge the gap.
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RSS is not dead
Sep 08, 2009Just the other day, my Twitter feed started to get littered with "RSS is dead" tweets again. I decided that maybe it's time for my two cents. I wanted to explain why I think RSS is alive and kicking, where it is failing, and how the quality is suffering.
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Three Additions that would make Adobe’s BrowserLab Incredible
Sep 03, 2009Just as I was finishing a site today, I needed to do the task I dread the most, fire up Internet Explorer. As you may or may not know I have recently jumped the PC ship for a Mac. Huge improvement, but that's for another post.
I have always struggled with finding a way to test in all browsers. Additionally, I never have been a big fan of setting up virtual environments just for browser testing.
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CurdBee: A Class Act in Cloud Based Invoicing
Aug 30, 2009I felt compelled to write about CurdBee. I have been using CurdBee for my invoicing needs due to their price and simplicity for awhile now. I came to Curdbee from the ultra-popular Freshbooks. As my business grew, I found I needed a more feature rich invoicing app. Unfortunately, I felt Curdbee didn't fit my needs anymore. The great thing about web apps is when you find that a certain application doesn't fit your work flow anymore, just move on to a new app. It's a wonderful thing.
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JavaScript: Back to Basics
Aug 25, 2009I am a firm believer in understanding what you're working with. In today's age of rapid development and countless libraries/frameworks, it's easy to grab a library, some open source implementation of a common task, and slap it on your website. I am guilty of doing that very thing. The problem that I see with this is that many of the people that are grabbing these easy to use implementations of a common task, do not understand what lies beneath.
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Life on a Mac
Jul 25, 2009Today I am posting from a Mac and it has been interesting to say the least. I decided to finally make the switch when I started to get interested in Ruby on Rails. Rails support in Windows sucks royally. I had to jump through so many hoops just to get it up and running, I started to wonder if Rails was all it was cracked up to be. This is supposed to be "Rapid Web Development", yeah right. From there I moved to Git and Subversion. The end result was yelling with my hands in the air. That sealed the deal.
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