August 7, 2013 in Learn
CSS Sprites with Background Positioning
There’s nothing more common than hover states to give your website some life. The user comes to your site, scrolls over an image with their mouse cursor, and the image changes. That’s it. While I spent most of 2012 learning…
July 16, 2013 in Learn
Building Your Ecommerce and Design Business with Shopify
Let’s be honest, you are probably reading this blog because you are a user of Treehouse or thinking about becoming one. You have a thirst for web knowledge and a desire to become better at what you do – right?…
July 5, 2013 in Learn
Build a Gmail-Style Expanding CSS3 Navigation Menu
Users of GMail should be familiar with sliding effects of the inbox side navigation. In the most recent design you will find the GChat/Hangouts box along with other various email tags(inbox, trash, etc.). When you have a large number of…
June 25, 2013 in Learn
Creating Something Out of Nothing
The reason I got into programming in the first place was to be able to build my own things. I had an itch to scratch and I went from there. I created something out of nothing with nothing more than…
June 5, 2013 in Learn
Mini-Icon Settings Menu with the jQuery Toolbar Plugin
Some dynamic user profile layouts have been implementing more complicated JavaScript features. Notably the dropdown settings menu has been a staple of social networking websites. This is a great method for allowing easy access to updating the user profile, or…
May 22, 2013 in Learn
Developing over the YouTube API with JSON
The process to understand API development is generally complicated but should become easier with practice. Social networks like Twitter and YouTube offer XML/RSS/JSON feeds without the requirement of an API key. However, other smaller networking websites like Instagram and Etsy…
May 21, 2013 in Learn
Creating Vanity URLs in Rails
A vanity URL is a search engine optimized (SEO) URL. Instead of having a meaningless URL like http://storeofthefuture.com/products/2015 wouldn’t http://storeofthefuture.com/products/hoverboard be better and more meaningful? It’s fairly straightforward to make URLs nicer in Rails. I’ll walk you through the process….
April 11, 2013 in Learn
How to Use the “each” Method in Ruby on Rails | Treehouse Quick Tip
The “each” method in Ruby on Rails allows you to iterate over different objects inside an array-like structure. It’s an important part of development in Ruby, and Treehouse’s Ruby teacher, Jason, explains how to use it effectively in this Treehouse…
March 26, 2013 in Learn
Dynamic jQuery Image Avatar Cropping Effect
I can still remember the old digg.com user profiles with dynamic avatar cropping via JavaScript. Their user interface was clean, easy to use, displayed a sample before you cropped, and would auto-update as you changed the selection box. I have…
March 18, 2013 in Learn
Writing Your Own jQuery Plugins
jQuery is great. It’s cross-browser, easy to learn, and makes adding interactivity to your website a breeze. It also comes with plenty of plugins to do almost whatever you need it to do. But what if you can’t find just…
March 12, 2013 in Learn
10 Things to Know Before Designing for the Web
The world of web design is one of the most beautiful and rewarding spaces you could possibly enter into. With so many options and such a great community, your path as a web designer is uncharted and wide open. With…
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…