Github.js is a JavaScript plugin over GitHub APIs v3. It gives an easy way to feature your GitHub open-source contributions on your website or portfolio.
jQMeter is a simple, light-weight jQuery plugin that allows you to display an animated horizontal or vertical progress meter. Just pass in the goal and amount raised or completed, and the rest is optional.
It has a simple design out-of-the-box, but this is on purpose so that you can customize the look to match your needs. You can pass several formatting options including width, height, background bar color, bar color, etc. You can also choose to display the percentage completed or not, as well as control the animation speed.
The post jQMeter : jQuery Animated Horizontal or Vertical Progress Meter appeared first on jQuery Rain.
Online portfolio of the UI/UX/Web and Graphic Designer Kévin Ufarte.
The Mozilla Foundation (best known for the Firefox browser) recently launched its Teach the Web initiative (#TeachTheWeb). The aim of this project is to support and encourage web literacy, helping more people take their first steps into developing for the web and connecting with a vast support community. Webmaker is a Mozilla site offering lots […]
Continue reading %Creating Mobile Apps with the Webmaker App%
This article is part of a web dev tech series from Microsoft. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.
This Node.js tutorial series will help you build a Node.js-powered real-time chatroom web app fully deployed in the cloud. In this series, you will learn how to setup Node.js on your Windows machine (or just learn the concepts if you’re on Mac), how to develop a web frontend with Express, how to deploy a node express apps to Azure, how to use Socket.IO to add a real-time layer, and how to deploy it all together.
The tutorial will use the optional Visual Studio and the Node.js Tools for Visual Studio plug-in as a development environment—I have provided links to free downloads of both tools. This is a beginner- to intermediate-level article –you’re expected to know HTML5 and JavaScript.
Part 1 - Introduction to Node.js
Part 2 - Welcome to Express with Node.js and Azure
Part 3 - Building a Backend with Node, Mongo and Socket.IO
Part 4 – Building a Chatroom UI with Bootstrap
Part 5 - Connecting the Chatroom with WebSockets
Part 6 – The Finale and Debugging Remote Node Apps
Welcome to Part 1 of the hands-on Node.js tutorial series. In this instalment, I will explain what Node.js is, why you should pay attention to Node.js, and how to set up your machine.
Node.js is a runtime environment and library for running JavaScript applications outside the browser. Node.js is mostly used to run real-time server applications and shines through its performance using non-blocking I/O and asynchronous events. A complete web ecosystem has been built around Node.js with several web app frameworks and protocol implementations available for usage. It’s definitely one of the easiest and fastest way to develop real-time applications on the web today.
Why use Node.js? One word: JavaScript. JavaScript is an extremely popular language and is credited with being one of the driving forces that turned the web into the dynamic wonderland that it is today.
JavaScript arose on the front end but -- thanks to the V8 JavaScript engine and the work of Ryan Dahl -- you can now run networked JavaScript applications outside of the browser precisely to build web apps. Node.js lets you unify the programming language used by your app. No longer do you need a different language for your backend—you can use JavaScript throughout. If your background is in building and design websites and web app frontends in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you don’t need to pick up another language to develop complex data-driven back-ends for your apps.
Node.js plays a critical role in the advancement of WebSockets as a method for real-time communication between the front and back ends. The use of WebSockets and the libraries building on that protocol such as Socket.IO have really pushed what is expected of web applications and lets us developers explore new ways to create the web.
To get started, you'll need a reasonably up-to-date machine. I will be showing you how to install Node.js on Windows 8.1.
First, download and install the Node.js runtime. Choosing the Windows Installer is one of the easiest ways to get started.
Alternatively, if you are a fan of Chocolatey, the package manager for Windows, you can install Node.js by running:
You should double-check that the Node.js executable has been added to your PATH system environment variable. Watch this video if you want to see how to change your environment variables on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. You will want to make sure the following folder has been added to the PATH variable:
If you go to your Command Prompt and type in node –h, you should see the help documentation for the node.js executable displayed.
Along with Node.js, npm, the system used to manage node.js packages, should be installed and available on the Command Prompt as well. Simply type in npm –h, you should see the help documentation for npm displayed.
If you encounter an error similar to this one…
…the resolution is to create a folder at the path specified above, as shown in this StackOverflow question. This is only an issue in the latest Node.js installer and should be resolved by next release. You can create the folder like so:
With Node.js installed, it’s time to select a development tool. Feel free to use any editing tool you want. Throughout these tutorials, I will use Visual Studio to develop, debug, and deploy the chat engine; as well as Node.js Tools for Visual Studio (NTVS) –a free open-source plug-in for Visual Studio that supports developing Node.js applications.
What’s cool about NTVS is that it adds Node.js support for editing, Intellisense, performance profiling, npm, TypeScript, debugging locally and remotely (including on Windows/MacOS/Linux). It also makes it easy to quickly create web sites and deploy them to Microsoft Azure Web Sites or Cloud Services.
If you do not have Visual Studio, you can download a free copy of Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition. Then, download the free Node.js Tools for Visual Studio plug-in. You may also use Visual Studio 2012 Pro or higher (requires Update 4) or Visual Studio 2013 or higher (requires Update 2). The NTVS plug-in is compatible with both editions.
Note: Screenshots show Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate.
Starting a new Node.js project is fairly straightforward.
server.js file in the Solution Explorer (on the right typically but may be located elsewhere on your screen.)
As is typical in other languages, the generated code example shows you how to output “Hello World” in the browser. Let me explain how the generated code in server.js works line by line. As stated in this tutorial series description, I am assuming you have a knowledge of JavaScript, HTML5 and how HTTP/the Internet works.
Continue reading %Build a Node.js-powered Chatroom Web App: Getting Started%
In this article, we’re going to take a look at the CSS will-change property, what it is, when and how to use it, and how not to use it. There’s quite a bit of technical documentation available with regards to will-change, so I’ll reference a lot of those resources throughout this article, and compile them in a list at the end. This article will serve as an overview of the important parts with some quick examples.
Today many front-end developers are leveraging CSS3 transitions, transforms, and animations to add a new layer of application interactivity that was previously left up to JavaScript libraries or Flash. Now we’re able to perform smooth and beautiful animations with minimal CSS. If you’ve been experimenting with and utilising these CSS3 properties, you’ve likely come across the terms CPU, GPU, and hardware acceleration. Let’s break these terms down quickly:
How does this improve the performance and quality of animations? Well, for starters, on WebKit-based browsers, we may often see a flicker when performing some CSS operations, namely 2D transforms and animations. In the past, we’ve gotten around this by tricking the browser a little. We would make the browser thing it was performing a 3D transform, thus offloading the operation onto the GPU. That’s because 3D transforms are automatically moved there. That leads us to some trickery like this:
There are some similar tricks, but for the most part, this covers us. However, this is a hack, and this is where the will-change property will help us out greatly, when used correctly. Let’s investigate.
Continue reading %An Introduction to the CSS will-change Property%
Google caused a lot of publicity when it released its new design language, "Material Design" in 2014. Its inception in Android 5.0 Lollipop aimed to cross bridges between various devices and create a consistent user experience. As it turned out, Material Design gained more ground than Lollipop, used by more websites, apps and services not related to Google. Considering that up to a year ago, KitKat's Holo design language was still used and recommended, Material Design's rise in popularity is astonishing.
On SitePoint, we provided an analysis of Material Design and its design influences through the years. It illustrated the design aspects behind the Material Design language.
Whilst the official Google Reference is a good place to start with Material Design experiments, those who prefer prototyping before going deep into development might find Proto.io useful. We covered Proto.io last year, but the company recently announced the launch of their new Material Design library, which will allow you to jumpstart prototyping using Material Design assets, effects and guidelines.
Continue reading %Prototyping for Android with Material Design%
Finding a list of links on a website is not a rare thing. For example, a lot of blogs have their own blogroll to spread the word about their friends' blogs, or other websites displayed in a carousel to highlight some links, whether internal or external.
To create these lists, you can just add them in the HTML code and hardcode the links. The problem is that this method isn't very practical: to modify, remove or add a link, you must modify the source code.
That's why the links manager exists in WordPress.
As its name suggests, the Links Manager allows you to manage a list of links, sorted by categories. These links are accessible from the administration panel so you can easily add a new one or modify and remove an existing one.
To display and use the links added in the Links Manager, we have several choices. By default, WordPress provides us a widget to add to a sidebar, which will display your links. But you can also build your own lists thanks to the dedicated API.
The Links Manager was provided by default in WordPress in earlier versions. However, it disappeared with version 3.5; since this release, you couldn't find the Links Manager on a brand new WordPress installation. Moreover, if you used an earlier version than 3.5 and upgraded your installation, then the Links Manager was removed, unless you used it.
If you used an earlier version of WordPress than 3.5, and had links before the upgrade, then you should have the Link Manager. If you haven't, you can find it by downloading the Links Manager plugin, which is the official way to retrieve the old tool. You can install it just as you would install any other plugin, or you can install it as a mu-plugin if you think that it should be a part of WordPress.
Note that the plugin is a very short one: actually it is a one line plugin that only adds a filter to activate the Links Manager. That means you can activate the Links Manager by yourself by adding the following line in the functions.php file of your theme.
Continue reading %Mastering the WordPress Links Manager%
I've been talking a lot about Sketch App lately. I never forget to mention that it’s an excellent tool for mobile application and user interface designers.
I've also said that I think comparing Sketch to Photoshop is silly considering it’s a photo-editing tool.
But the fact is, Photoshop has become so versatile that we compare it to almost every other design tool -- Sketch 3 is no exception.
In reality Sketch more closely resembles Adobe Fireworks more than anything, which is fortunate for the developers (Bohemian Coding) because Fireworks is no longer in development. Lucky timing, intuitive business strategy; whatever you want to call it, Sketch App is filling a void and it’s filling it well.
If you've been living on Mars for the last two years, here’s some backstory on the matter. Sketch App is currently sitting on version 3.2 (stable) and you can buy it from Bohemian Coding for a one-time fee of $99.
Despite the fact that it’s only available for Mac OS X, it’s taken the design industry by storm.
Ehhh, sort of.
Actually… you can, but don’t expect complex image adjustments, filters and actions. Instead, you should expect the simplest form of bitmap image editing imaginable, for example these features:
Even the Magic Wand tool I feel is too much. In the case of user interface design, I’ve never understood the reason for it being there.
Many of the other features, however, allow us to design for current trends. Photography and “big images” are all the rage at the moment, whether we’re using high-contrast, impactful imagery or blurred backgrounds. Blending big images into a solid or “super gradient” background is also a major trend.
But that’s for web design, and even then it can be an instinctive habit to accomplish such things in Photoshop and copy the final bitmap over to Sketch.
Of course if you want manipulate your dogs head and create a dog/frog hybrid with laser eyes, then Photoshop is definitely your best bet, but if you can stick to using a singular application, your workflow will output better, non-destructive results in a timely manner.
Let’s start with colour adjustments.
Begin by copying a bitmap image onto your canvas — a range of custom options will immediately appear on the right-hand side; Sketch App calls this area “The Inspector” and it’s where we adjust and style our layers.
First, check the box that says “Color Adjust”. It’s here that we’ll be able to make adjustments to the brightness, saturation and contrast of an image, but for the sake of this mini-tutorial we’ll only reduce the saturation to zero.
Press “R” to initiate a Rectangle shape and draw it directly on top of the image. Sketch’s snap-to automatic alignments should make this a breeze, but you can double-check the dimensions in The Inspector. While you’re there, uncheck the Borders and select a Fill → Linear Gradient, then use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + Alt + Down to reorder your two layers.
Switch back to the image (which should now be on top), change the Opacity to “25%” and the Blending Mode to “Soft Light” — this is how we use Blending Modes to create colourful but subtle website backgrounds.
Tip: blending modes actually work with all kinds of layers, not just images.
Churn the Opacity back up to “100%”. Instead we’ll make the background blurred, a common trend in modern web design that allows a more optimal focus on typography with websites that have big image splash screens. Check the “Gaussian Blur” box and turn it up t0 50px.
You should notice almost instantly that the blur exceeds the dimensions of our box — we can fix this by applying a mask. Right-click on the rectangle in the layers sidebar (on the left) and click “Use as Mask”.
Notice that all of these changes are non-destructive; we can rapid test multiple ideas (colours, blurs, intensity, et cetera) and those variations are never final.
Now select the rectangle and attempt to resize it, or alternatively you can use The Inspector to declare new dimensions. Since the image is masked, it never exceeds the boundaries of our rectangle and this is by far the best way to accomplish cropping, because not only can we declare specific dimensions, but we’ve not done any destructive damage to our image.
It might be useful at this stage to roll back to the very beginning by using CMD + Z and undoing everything we’ve done so far; all you should be left with on the canvas is your original image. If you double-click on the image you’ll access a range of more destructive actions such as Crop and Invert.
Continue reading %Getting to Grips with Basic Image Editing in Sketch App 3%
In Thinking MU, we believe that life’s for living intensely, without limits. Everything in life is attitude.
Responsive portfolio website for Greg Norman. Digital Product Designer. User Experience. Cape Town. South Africa.
Ruby is built with simply professional demos that are catered for every specific need. Each demo is unique to serve the main topics, from business, portfolio, education, to landing page. It is completely compatible with iOS and Android app. It’s ve
WordPress Website Design & Development For Brave Businesses.
Folio One template is designed for Ad Agencies, Freelancers, Tatto Artist, Jewelry Designers.
Beautifully responsive, one-page experience for Polish sci-fi writer Jacek Dukaj’s new novel “The Old Axolotl”.
A tutorial on how to create a slider with a "prism" effect using javascript, HTML5 canvas globalCompositeOperation and a layering technique.
Form inputs without a doubt encompass a sizable portion of the Web. Since form controls can and will be encountered by users daily, it only seems fitting to lend our attention to a few suspects by furnishing each one with Sass' strength to help us theme our project's input's swiftly.
A placeholder is a hint to users as to what information can be entered within the corresponding control. It applies when the value of the type attribute is set as text, search, tel, url or email; otherwise it's ignored. Unfortunately to style the placeholder requires the appropriate vendor prefixes associated with each pseudo required so authors can deliver coverage across the major browser vendors such as IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera.
This placeholder @mixin can be used within a variety of contexts such as applying it alone or combined with a selector of your choosing. I've also taken the liberty of constructing a Sass map that contains all the properties you're allowed to style.
index.html
_placeholder-mixin.scss
The @at-root directive used by these mixins works by switching context where the nested call in your Sass is placed and pulls the declaration to the top level of the selector chain.
Continue reading %Theming Form Elements with Sass%
A JavaScript library for connecting SVG things.
The post SVG Connectable.js : JavaScript library for connecting SVG appeared first on jQuery Rain.
Simple tutorial which will help to share articles from the webpage to Whatsapp using jQuery. Report says that by adding a Whatsapp sharing button on websites that will generate more shares than popular social sharing websites.
The post Share Content on Whatsapp using jQuery appeared first on jQuery Rain.
Confirm dialogs for buttons and links using jQuery and Bootstrap.
The post jQuery Confirm Dialogs with Bootstrap appeared first on jQuery Rain.
Are your prospects on Pinterest? Do you want to start a Pinterest Board? When starting on Pinterest, you’ll want to fill new boards with quality starter pins. Once you’ve launched your new boards, it’s important to pin more content to them daily. In this article you’ll find out how to develop Pinterest boards for your […]
This post How to Start a Pinterest Board That Succeeds first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
Social Media Examiner - Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
Do you monitor what people are saying about you online? Are you using this information to enhance your business? The insights you gather about your customers, prospects, products and competitors with social listening can be valuable. In this article you’ll discover eight ways to use social listening for your business. Why Social Listening? Social listening […]
This post 8 Ways to Use Social Listening for Your Business first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
Social Media Examiner - Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
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Need to level up and become a well rounded JavaScript developer? Well, hopefully this post by Rebecca Murphey can help. (rmurphey.com)
HipChat combines team chat, video chat & file sharing into one simple application. Start chatting, it’s free! (hipchat.com)
There’s been a lot of hype and confusion around the new fetch API recently. In this article Jake Archibald gives it a bit more clarity. (jakearchibald.com)
Donovan Hutchinson explores 12 animation principles and discusses how we can utilise them in our work. (cssanimation.rocks)
David Noël writes about creating a healthy culture and building a sustainable company within it. (medium.com)
Addy Osmani explores new features like paint profiling, animation inspection and updates to the JavaScript editing workflow with V8. (speakerdeck.com)
Pixel Winch is a screen measurement app with a unique approach. Rather than overlaying complicated controls on top of your existing workflow, it combines aspects of a traditional image editor with the quick access of a modal interface. (ricciadams.com)
A tool to test and analyse web fonts. You can compare fonts from different sources and analyse their x-height, weights, characteristics and quirks. (webfont-test.com)
A Javascript library for creating SVG patterns. It’s built on top of D3.js with its focus being data visualisation. (riccardoscalco.github.io)
The CSS toolkit and guidelines that power GitHub. (primercss.io)
Join Yelp’s Front-end team and help build a modern, style guide-driven UX for our 138 million users! We’re looking for people who love good code and working closely with design, product and other engineers to make great features. (yelp.com)
Visual design at Help Scout has been a one man show up to this point and we’re excited to make it a team. Customer experience is our top priority as a business. Your work will guide the brand and the product moving forward. (helpscout.net)
The post Web Design Weekly #179 appeared first on Web Design Weekly.
Wavesurfer.js is a javascript library to create interactive navigable audio visualization using Web Audio and HTML5 Canvas. With wavesurfer.js you can create a cute HTML5 audio player or a sophisticated DJ application.
Crafty Vixen is a premium WordPress Theme meant for bloggers who love to make things and share them with the world.
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RESEMIN ofrece la mejor alternativa de jumbos de perforación para minería subterránea y obras civiles de túneles.
The Vienna Strategy Forum is a unique meeting of Strategic Management and Innovation in the German-speaking countries.
I\’m a 25 years old web designer and developer currently based in Barcelona. This is my new website and portfolio.
Web & graphic design is our true area of expertise.
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InCommon is a new app which helps connect people who share the same interests. The algorithm matches at least 2 similar interests to create an match. The user is then notified and has the option to send a message to the match, like them or add them a
With a new schedule and regime, we changed the author introduction post to a once per three months frequency rather than every other month like it was. As March is drawing to an end (already?!), let’s see which new souls joined us in this era of peer review. We’ll also use this opportunity to mention our newest regular authors .
We’ve seen an influx of increased enthusiasm from our most prolific members. The first two who get to pin this medal to their chest are as follows:
Younes has been with us for a while, and has been aiming for the regular author position since Q3 2014. When a man knows what he wants, there’s little that will stand in his way, and Younes grabbed the opportunity by the throat. In 2014, he was one of our most prolific authors and in 2015 he only increased his output, always keeping quality and interesting topics in mind. I take great pride in being able to welcome him into the regulars circle, and I feel like he’s just getting started.
So far (in 2015), Younes published a whopping six posts and two quick tips. Keep up the great work!
Danny has been our Drupal expert since the day he joined. If anything was going on in the Drupal world we should know about, he was right on top of it, keeping everyone up to date and preparing the readership for Drupal 8’s imminent release. Danny earned his “R” badge in March, and starting with April, he’ll be a part of the regular circle.
Danny’s contributions not only to our Drupal corprus but also to the peer review process have been invaluable. He reviewed countless articles, shot pull requests left and right, and even made important suggestions for improving the entire workflow.
Danny’s 2015 portfolio counts five posts with more incoming. Excellent work!
Apart from the regulars increasing their output, we’ve also had room to welcome some new souls on board. They are, in order:
Continue reading %Welcoming New Authors: January – March 2015%
WordPress hosts are a dime a dozen, and unfortunately even for a technically savvy person, it can be difficult to differentiate between a reputable host which is attentive to their customers, and a reseller who doesn’t own the servers and is simply marking up existing services. Additionally when it comes to pricing and support, it can be difficult figuring out who can provide the best service for you.
Rather than focusing on the basics of web hosting as this article from SitePoint discusses, in this guide we are going to focus on how to ensure that you are choosing a quality host over a fly by night company.
Most of this article applies to any type of web hosting, even if you’re not using WordPress. I’m also keeping the advice very general, however it still applies to growing number of WordPress specialized hosting services.
While pricing varies greatly from host to host, you should always be wary of any host promising “unlimited” storage or bandwidth on budget plans, especially when using a shared server. While the packages might sound great on the surface, hosting companies aren’t offering these rock bottom prices to be charitable. In fact, the “unlimited” claims come with caveats which are only found in the fine print of the hosting agreement. Typically hosts will use ambiguous language such as “unlimited usage as long as it is reasonable,” or they will limit you to a certain number of files on the server. Other common caps include suspending your site after using a certain number of CPU cycles or only letting you upload website components.
Continue reading %How to Separate the Good WordPress Hosts from the Bad%
You've probably heard of a bunch of NoSQL databases: Redis, MongoDB, Cassandra, etc., all of which offer a variety of different advantages and come with a set of disadvantages. If you're building a new application, it's pretty important to select a database that meets your needs. In this article, we'll cover RethinkDB, taking a look at how to set up RethinkDB, how it fits into the landscape of NoSQL, and how to use it from Ruby.
RethinkDB is a JSON document store. That means that it allows you store a bunch of JSON documents and then query them later on. Turns out that RethinkDB isn't the only document store available. Not even close. Even when the RethinkDB project was started, there were already tons of options available for someone looking for a NoSQL database. So, what's the point of learning yet another database? To put it simply, RethinkDB combines some of the best features of its competitors and presents a pretty compelling set of advantages.
One of its closest relatives is MongoDB. Mongo quickly grew in popularity because of its focus on developer productivity: creating documents and querying them is incredibly easy to get started with in Mongo. Unfortunately, Mongo has had pretty significant problems with scaling. Granted, some of these problems arise from poor deployment practices but not all the issues raised are unfounded. But, Mongo definitely nailed developer productivity. On the other hand, we have databases like Riak that aren't as much fun to write code for, but generally scales pretty well without a ton of effort on the part of the Dev Ops team. RethinkDB tries to sit in the middle of this "tradeoff" (there doesn't seem to be a real reason for this to be a tradeoff): it attempts to provide Mongo-like ease-of-use while still keeping the Dev Ops people happy.
Continue reading %RethinkDB in Ruby%
fbPhotoStream is a simple, light-weight jQuery plugin that allows you to display Facebook photos from a public album. Just set the album id, and the rest is optional.
It has a a few design options like grid, collage, or circle mode, but you can customize the look to match your needs by adding your own CSS. You can pass several formatting options including width, height, etc., as well as setting whether you want to show captions or link back to Facebook
The post fbPhotoStream : jQuery plugin to pull Facebook Photos appeared first on jQuery Rain.
Animatrix Creative allows you to draw and animate SVG images.Professional SVG Image WYSIWYG Editor is included in this plugin, and can be accessed from the admin area. You can draw with the default Pencil tool or create shapes out of the rich Shapes library.
All SVG images are animated on the front-side, by mimicking the drawing process. You can also export and save the SVG image as well.
The post Animatrix Creative – Drawing SVG Animations Plugin appeared first on jQuery Rain.
jQuery Responsive Menu is a drop-down menu for responsive websites. It is a jQuery plugin that includes a JavaScript file and CSS file as well as sample HTML.
The post jQuery Responsive Menu appeared first on jQuery Rain.
Want to know how to grow your email list? Are you using social media to support your email list growth? If you’re thinking of marketing tactics such as email and social media as two separate entities, you’re missing out on a lot of benefits. In this article you’ll discover tips for using social media to […]
This post How to Improve Your Email Marketing With Social Media first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
Social Media Examiner - Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
Are you looking for new ways to connect with Facebook fans? Have you considered starting a Facebook group? You may already use Facebook groups for networking, but you can also create your own Facebook groups to grow your business and nurture customer relationships. In this article you’ll discover three ways to use Facebook groups for […]
This post How to Use Facebook Groups for Business first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
Social Media Examiner - Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
Checkbox-field is a jQuery plugin that turns multiselect fields into a field of checkboxes
Digital & Graphic Agency based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
jQuery.loadScroll is a simple jQuery plugin for dynamically loading images while scrolling.
