February 28, 2013 in Learn
Creating Vanity URLs in PHP and MySQL: Query String Variables
Vanity URLs can be extremely useful, especially in offline marketing materials. I covered two techniques for creating vanity URLs in PHP in earlier posts: using a subfolder with a header redirect and using rewrite rules in Apache. After publishing those two posts, someone…
February 27, 2013 in Learn
Tame WordPress from the Command Line with wp-cli
Some people fear the command line. They view it as the deep, dark underbelly of their computer, far from the familiar comforts of the GUI. A place of great mystery where even the angels fear to tread. But then there…
February 21, 2013 in Learn
Adding Motion into Web Design with Animate.css
Lots of frontend web developers have been getting interested in dynamic interfaces using motion effects. This is all too common with many advancements within popular JavaScript libraries. But there has also been a lot of interest in CSS3 animated effects….
February 13, 2013 in Learn
SVG Path Animation with jQuery and Illustrator
As technology in the web moves forward we are offered new tools to build amazing web applications. Scalable Vector Graphics or SVG’s have been gaining traction in the past year or so as most browsers handle the image file extension…
January 18, 2013 in Learn
Getting Started With The Canvas API
The Canvas API provides a way for developers to create graphics on-the-fly from directly within the web browser. This has a number of benefits. First it can help to reduce the number of HTTP requests that are needed to load…
January 18, 2013 in Learn
I Have an Idea for a Killer App, but Where Do I Start?
You know the signs: you can’t stop thinking about it as you fall asleep at night. Your mind wanders back to it when you know you should be concentrating on your work that currently pays the bills. You’re even a…
January 15, 2013 in Learn
Using Web Workers to Speed-Up Your JavaScript Applications
The performance of JavaScript applications running in the browser has increased considerably over the past few years. This is mainly due to continued work on the underlying JavaScript engines (such as V8) that actually execute the code. But as these JavaScript engines get…
January 14, 2013 in Learn
Creating Responsive Websites with Photo Backgrounds
The trend of large photographic backgrounds has become very popular in recent years. The improvement of Internet connections has allowed more data transfer per second, which means images can load a lot quicker in real-time. There are also plenty of…
January 14, 2013 in Learn
Using jQuery to Detect When CSS3 Animations and Transitions End
It seems like only a couple of years ago that almost every animation on a web page was done either by means of Flash or a JavaScript library like jQuery. CSS3 has put that to rest. Simple, elegant animations are…
January 7, 2013 in Learn
Using Microdata to Markup Structured Data in Your Web Pages
The websites that we build are full of data about people, places, products and more. As designers we work very hard to present data to our users in an easily comprehensible and aesthetically pleasing way. However what we often don’t…
January 3, 2013 in Learn
Java Basics for Android Development – Part 2
Being a good Android developer means being good with Java, though not necessarily a good Java developer. That might sound weird, but it’s true. The architecture of Java apps is very different from Android apps, but the language is the…
December 19, 2012 in Learn
Adding Desktop Notifications to Your Web Applications
The new Notifications API gives you the ability to launch desktop notifications directly from your web applications. This can be very useful for updating user’s with key information, particularly in AJAX applications where you may have HTTP requests taking place…