A collection of mobile event plugins for jQuery.
This is a series of plugins that create additional events that can be used in combination with jQuery when developing for mobile devices. The events are also compatible with desktop browsers to ensure ultimate compatibility for your projects
The W3C recently announced a Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) snapshot – a document that “collects together into one definition all the specs that together form the current state of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as of 2015. The primary audience is CSS implementers, not CSS authors, as this definition includes modules by specification stability, not Web browser adoption rate.” This motivated me to consider the relevance of CSS in today’s modern web developer community, and how best to implement today.
Because so much has changed over the years, I thought it would be appropriate to do a developer based ‘snapshot’ of where CSS is now, and how to embrace the future. My personal experience was not enough to satisfy an answer, so I did much research and interviewed industry experts on their point of view. With all the data I acquired, I knew I had enough findings to support writing a book! I decided writing series of online articles on CSS would be much quicker to market, so I am proud to introduce this first post of the Mastering CSS Series.
For many web developers, the notion of questioning the relevance of CSS may seem odd. However new trends in web development have put in question the use of CSS. I strongly consider reading the article by Louis Lazaris, who presents the case that CSS is alive and well. Although most of his article provides insight into why CSS is still quite alive, he also mentioned the popularity of React, which uses inline styling via JavaScript. He also references an article regarding the debate around “do we even need CSS anymore?” which does a good job explaining some of the pain points developers have faced when implementing CSS. I am referencing these articles because they provide context for the challenges CSS developers face, and why some have considered other alternatives. So does that mean CSS is trending down?
As the opening words of this article clearly show, there is momentum in the field of CSS. The major browsers out there are still working hard to implement CSS features, and the passionate developer community is working hard to continue making great websites with CSS. Think of the innumerable blogging sites using WordPress which of course uses CSS to complement theming. With a strong foundation and active community, CSS is very relevant today.
Continue reading %CSS in the Modern World%
Automated testing is really widespread these days and of course Ruby has its own set of tools. One of these is RSpec, an insanely popular tool for automated testing. The good thing about it is we can test nearly every aspect of the app with ease. If you don't set up automated testing, you'll end up having to manually re-test all the features of your app every time you refactor the code or add something new. For large apps this becomes really tedious!
In this screencast series we are going to have a look at using RSpec and supporting libraries like Capybara and FactoryGirl with Rails. You'll even get to write your first spec!
Continue reading %Watch: RSpec — The Set Up%
Telerik Platform is Telerik's answer to mobile, cross-platform application development. It's used by thousands of companies and developers to create robust, cross-platform solutions. Built on this success, Telerik is working hard on Telerik Platform 2.0, which will be released in December.
Telerik Platform 2.0 gives us a glimpse into the future of mobile, cross-platform application development. The company's goal with Telerik Platform 2.0 is creating a unified experience for mobile application development. A quick look at the product shows us that this is the most unified mobile development solution in the market, offering a far superior development experience compared to existing development tools.
Based on existing users of the product, developers are estimated to be 60% - 80% more productive developing high quality mobile applications with Telerik Platform 2.0 versus developing the applications using native languages.
There is a lot to look froward to and Telerik Platform 2.0 is a major milestone for the platform. On December 3, the company is hosting a free webinar to make you familiar with Telerik Platform 2.0. In this free webinar, Rob Lauer, Brandon Satrom, and Hristo Borisov will introduce you to Telerik Platform 2.0 and help you get up to speed in no time. Sign up for the webinar to learn more about Telerik Platform 2.0.
Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative is getting a lot of exposure since its launch in early October. Let’s see what it is, how it works, and you can publish your own AMP HTML pages.
In this age of speed, a page that takes more than a few seconds to load is losing its appeal, and this is especially important on mobile phones.
Many studies have shown that page load has a direct impact on sales. For instance, conversion rates drop 27% after one second, and bounce rates drop 56% after the same amount of time.
On the SEO side, page speed is one of the many ranking factors for Google, hence your site’s visibility is at risk if it’s too slow.
Therefore, user experience, business goals, and findability are all impacted by site speed.
Responsive web design and carefully-crafted sites with performance in mind are part of the solution. While working on these issues, we can’t blame others, or we’ll soon get closed inside walled gardens.
Facebook’s Instant Articles and Apple News are answering these issues in their own way. Fortunately, the AMP Project, while promoted by Google, is an open-source project and you should give it a try.
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Performance best practices are built-in with AMP: asynchronous calls and lazy-loading on components, no repaint while loading the page, no FOUC effect, inlined critical CSS, no extensive use of the CPU and GPU, minimal JavaScript usage, a CDN by default for scripts, and a minimal tracking footprint.
Everything that we should keep in mind when developing fast rendering pages has been enforced for us:
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Here is a minimalist AMP page:
[code language="html"]
<!doctype html>
<html amp lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<link rel="canonical" href="__CANONICAL_URL__" >
<meta name="viewport"
content="width=device-width,minimum-scale=1,initial-scale=1">
<style>body {opacity: 0}</style>
<noscript>
<style>body {opacity: 1}</style>
</noscript>
<style amp-custom>
__YOUR_OWN_CSS__
</style>
<script async src="http://ift.tt/1hxtDVM">
</script>
</head>
<body>
Your actual content.
</body>
</html>
[/code]
As you can see, there is a default style to which you can add your own inline CSS, and an asynchronously-called script hosted on a CDN. We also have a viewport meta tag and a canonical link. And that’s about it.
Styles
You can add your own styles within the <style amp-custom> element. However, not all features are allowed.
JavaScript
The AMP JavaScript library includes built-in components and handles the loading of external resources behind the scenes, extensively lazy-loading as much as it can. It is also responsible for the painting of the page.
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Continue reading %An Introduction to Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)%
