July 8, 2014 in Learn
What is Python used for?
Learn in-demand programming skills and become a certified Python Developer with the Treehouse Techdegree Program. Learn more and enroll today. When I need to build a web app, I reach for the Python programming language. When I need to automate some small task…
July 7, 2014 in Community
Interview: Game Designer – Jake Fleming
I recently sat down with Jake Fleming, the game designer behind Grilly the Cheese, Hot Shot Santa and Don’t Eat People. Jake was kind enough to give us a glimpse into his process and show us a bit of his work….
June 19, 2014 in Learn
Using Laravel Homestead as Your Development Environment
There are many ways to setup a local PHP development environment available to us. Traditionally there are some very common issues with each of them preventing a good generic base to teach from. Some methods are cross platform methods where…
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 17, 2014 in Learn
Understanding Optionals in Swift
When Apple introduced Swift they talked about three main things they set out to achieve: safe, modern and powerful. One such power feature is called optional. Most language features exist to solve a problem and naturally optional was created to…
June 11, 2014 in Learn
Box-Sizing: The Secret to Simple CSS Layouts
(Photograph from Flickr user Rachel Kramer) Box-sizing is a CSS property that makes CSS layouts work intuitively. If you’ve been working with CSS for any period of time, you know that using properties like width, padding, and border can be confusing….
June 9, 2014 in Learn
An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Swift
Update: We’re excited to announce that Treehouse has launched its Learn Swift courses! Learn Swift basics, Swift functions, and build two real apps with Swift. Learn more about our Swift courses. Why Swift? In case you haven’t heard, Apple just…
May 12, 2014 in Learn
3 Quick Tips for Less Repetition in Stylesheets
When you hear the word “Sass,” what comes to mind? For a lot of people it’s the most popular CSS precompiler to date. Sass takes vanilla CSS and adds variables, nesting, functions, math and more to your stylesheets. With Sass,…
April 23, 2014 in Learn
An Introduction to Perceived Performance
(Illustration by Mat Helme, Treehouse) Perceived Performance Is a Measure of How Quick a User Thinks Your Site Is, and That’s Often More Important Than Its True Speed Performance is important. It can mean the difference between making a sale,…
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 3, 2014 in Learn
How to Evaluate Front-End Code for Inefficiencies
There’s more to writing good front-end code than knowing every HTML tag, CSS selector, or the latest front-end features and techniques. And as I mentioned in a recent blog post, writing good code takes a lot of patience and practice….
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…