Thank you to everyone that came to my presentation in Lincoln last night. Your city is my adopted 2nd City. If I wasn’t a SD-lifer, I wouldn’t even look anywhere else. You guys are awesome. Without more delay, here they are! My presentation project files from the Lincoln .NET Users Group.
Let me know what you think. Ask questions in the comments. Discuss. Add. Build.
Hey you! Yeah, you! The guy in the Affliction Tee laughing at the couple jamming out to Bella Ruse and arguing about art. I’m judging you right now. Why? Here’s why…
This morning sucks. It’s cold out. It’s raining. I forgot my glasses at home so all the fonts on my monitors are 40px. There’s a FREAKING HURRICANE hitting New York City.
There’s nothing I can do about any of it, so I decided I needed some better music to listen to as I coded today. I popped open Spotify and grabbed a CD I don’t listen to as much as I should.
This is my normal progression when I find a new CD I like involves:
This one is different. I really, really like it. Going on my short list for album of the year.
I present to you, “The Peace of Wild Things” by Paper Route.
(You’ll need Spotify to get this to work. It’s free and awesome. Get it here. Don’t want Spotify? Check out the album playlist on YouTube.)
Let me know what you’re listening to in the comments below.
First off, I want to say thank you to everyone who attended my session, Rocking Responsive Web Development, today. It was the most interactive crowd I’ve ever had, and it was a pleasure being a part of such a great event. Here’s my slides from today:
Rocking Responsive Web Development (slides) – Up until the last few years, it was completely acceptable to design/develop a new website for one size of monitor. But with the release of the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices, we’ve witnessed the beginning of a mobile revolution. By the end of this year, over 50% of Americans will use their phone or tablet as their primary web browsing device. The question is, are the sites that you are creating ready? In this talk, I discuss reasons why responsive is the best way to develop new websites, as well as the best techniques I’ve discovered after a year of full time development of responsive websites.
And this is the demo code from the presentation.
They are very much like the other decks from TCCC and An Evening of Web Development, but they’ve been updated with new information.
Always remember that I am here to help if you have any questions or run into any issues. Also, please leave any feedback from the sessions in the comments. I do this for you, and I want to know how I can make it better.
Given at MJG International in Savage, MN
Thank you to everyone who came out to see Marc and I last Thursday night. I met a lot of really great people and learned so much. I’ve included my slide decks from my presentations below. Please, give me your honest feedback in the comments. I’m already scheduled to give these talks again multiple times, so I need your advice to improve them.
Embrace Your Inner Designer (slides) – Whether you want to admit it or not, the decisions that you make as a developer greatly influence the final design of your application’s user interface. It doesn’t matter if you’re working with a designer, or you’re a one-man A-Team, there are some very easy and powerful things that you can do to ensure that the final product is intuitive, usable and (gasp!) beautiful. Come embrace that designer inside of you that wants to get out (and wear hipster glasses).
Rocking Responsive Web Development (slides) – Up until the last few years, it was completely acceptable to design/develop a new website for one size of monitor. But with the release of the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices, we’ve witnessed the beginning of a mobile revolution. By the end of this year, over 50% of Americans will use their phone or tablet as their primary web browsing device. The question is, are the sites that you are creating ready? In this talk, I discuss reasons why responsive is the best way to develop new websites, as well as the best techniques I’ve discovered after a year of full time development of responsive websites.
And this is my responsive site demo I use in the presentation.
Recently, I discovered that the mobile menu solution that we use for our responsive designs (Matt Kersley’s Responsive Menu) is switching the menu to mobile earlier than anticipated in Firefox and IE10 (you can see the differences in the graphic above). After digging, I found it’s because the plugin is using the jQuery API’s .width() function to find $(window).width(). In Firefox and IE10, it follows the spec and includes the vertical scrollbar in that calculation. Webkit (Chrome and Safari) and IE8 don’t include the scrollbar width.The real problem is that no browser includes the scrollbar width when calculating width for use in media queries such as
@media only screen and (min-width:768px) {}The repercussion of that is the JavaScript spec and the CSS spec calculate width differently. Yikes. Even worse, the different browsers calculate $(window).width() differently. Luckily there’s a solution for that very problem. Read More…
A huge thank you goes out from me to everyone that attended my sessions this weekend at Twin Cities Code Camp 13. The questions and conversation was great… exactly what I expect from a code camp crowd. Here are my sessions. I use reveal.js to do my slides, so they are all HTML. Read More…
Windows 8 is fantastic. The user interface is beautiful, it’s ridiculously fast, and it’s very stable. But if you don’t know your way around, things can get frustrating. They changed Windows 8 just enough to confuse their users. After I installed the RTM last week, I went to set up streaming video between my XBOX 360 and my Windows 8 desktop.
Since Windows Media Center is no longer an option for many users (not included and a separate download for Pro users only), the best way to stream between an XBOX and Windows 8 is to allow streaming through the Video Player app on the XBOX 360. This app uses your media library to directly stream many types of video from your Videos Library on your Windows 8 PC. Read More…
Disclaimer: I am not trying to argue in this post that being gay is a sin. I don’t believe that at all. I am playing devils advocate and asking the hard questions from the point of view of a Christian who does believe its a sin. Don’t misunderstand what I’m writing. I support equal rights and gay marriage.
Last night, I watched as the news reported (some with joy, some with sadness) that North Carolina had passed it’s constitutional ban on gay marriage. Both sides had their spin machines moving. I wasn’t surprised by the venom being slung by both sides, but I was disturbed by it. Here’s why: Read More…
Dear Fellow Developers,
I am writing this open letter to you in the hope that you will hear me and stop one of the most annoying practices I see you do consistently. Frankly, it’s not only bad form, but it also has the potential to have very bad future consequences, as well as an impact on the overall user experience of the site.
PLEASE STOP CALLING JQUERY AND CSS FILES MULTIPLE TIMES ON A PAGE. Read More…