July 15, 2014 in Learn
What Are Affordances in Web Design?
(Photograph by Flickr user Banzai Hiroaki) Affordances are clues about how an object should be used, typically provided by the object itself or its context. For example, even if you’ve never seen a coffee mug before, its use is fairly natural. The…
June 18, 2014 in Learn
Get Started Working with APIs
The web makes finding and sharing information easy. In fact, the web’s success is largely due to how easy it is to find things. Instructions for repairing a car, the weather in a city you’re going to visit tomorrow, and…
June 6, 2014 in Learn
How to Land your First Development Job
Andrew Chalkley, our jQuery course teacher, talks candidly about how his lack of college education made him feel unworthy until he realised that his ‘real world’ experience was worth more than he thought. I’m a self-taught programmer with no degree….
June 2, 2014 in Learn
The 2014 Guide to Responsive Web Design
(Image from Flickr user Davidd) Responsive web design has changed a lot over the last few years. Front end development teacher, Nick Pettit updates you on all that’s changed when it comes to making websites work on mobile devices. Responsive…
May 12, 2014 in Learn
Beginner’s Guide to a Freelance Web Career
Freelancing as a Web Designer or Developer Means Finding Your First Client. No-Duh, Right? It’s Possibly Harder than It Sounds. If you’ve spent any amount of time online over the last couple years, you’ve probably encountered advertisements or comment spam…
May 5, 2014 in Learn
5 Tips for Creating the Perfect Web Design Portfolio
If you’re a freelance designer or if you’re looking for your next design job, a portfolio of work is essential. Clients and employers want to see your capabilities and form a quick impression. If you don’t have a portfolio yet,…
April 21, 2014 in Learn
How to Calculate Hourly Freelance Rates for Web Design, Development Work
(Figure out how to fill up the freelance pig. Photo by Mike Tungate / Flickr) If there’s one question I’m asked by web designers and developers more than any other, it’s how to figure out what to charge for a…
April 15, 2014 in Learn
Moonlighting as a Designer or Developer: Money, Flexibility — and Some Caution
(The moon. Flickr photo by Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel) When Neil Tortorella started his web design business, he already had a full-time job. “I was working for a newspaper doing ad stuff for them and freelancing nights and weekends,” says Tortorella,…
April 14, 2014 in Learn
The Beginner’s Guide to Ratchet: a Mobile Web App Framework
Ratchet is a front-end framework for building mobile web apps in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Ratchet 2.0 was recently released, so it’s a good time to start learning how to build Ratchet apps. If you just want to see Ratchet in…
April 10, 2014 in Learn
How to Create Smoother Animations and Transitions in the Browser
In order to achieve smooth transitions and animations, a browser needs to avoid doing extra work on its main thread, the part that’s in charge of handling tasks like JavaScript, style calculations, layout, painting and compositing (more on these later)….
April 8, 2014 in Learn
How I Rapidly Prototype Websites
(Photo by Andrés Nieto Porras/Flickr) Treehouse students will often ask me which mockup tool I use to prototype websites, and my response is almost always the same: pencil and paper. I feel like when I give this answer, there’s a small…
March 27, 2014 in Learn
How Data URIs Speed Improve Website Speed
As our websites grow more complex, web performance is becoming an increasingly important topic. There are many different strategies that you can employ to improve the performance of your websites. These include optimising images, combining multiple CSS files, or setting…