by via Awwwards - Sites of the day
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Quechua Lookbook Spring Summer 2016
by via Awwwards - Sites of the day
jQuery Popunder Plugin
jQuery popunder is a jquery-plugin to create popunders in major browsers.
Popunders are popups which are opened in the background of a browser-window. This script will only work, if the popunder is opened on a user-generated event (e.g. click or submit).
The post jQuery Popunder Plugin appeared first on jQuery Rain.
by Admin via jQuery Rain
Flexdatalist : jQuery Autocomplete Plugin
Flexdatalist is (another) jQuery autocomplete plugin with support for <datalist>.
The post Flexdatalist : jQuery Autocomplete Plugin appeared first on jQuery Rain.
by Admin via jQuery Rain
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Why JPEGs are like McDonalds Apple Pies (and SVGs are not)
Last week we looked at a simple, free SVG editor called Boxy SVG ( it's here in case you missed it).
Let's see where it takes us today. But first, here's an idea…
SVG isn't an image format – it's more of a recipe
[caption id="attachment_129311" align="alignright" width="291"]
That makes it very different from all the pixel-based formats we've used in the past. Let me explain.
You could think of our classic pixel-based image formats -JPEGs, GIFs and PNGs - as being like those McDonald's Apple Pies. Each comes packaged in precisely fixed amounts. You can't ask the McDonalds serving staff to whip you up a 'family-sized' pie or to rustle up a 'half-slice' to have with your coffee. Well, technically, you can ask but you'll get a strange look.
It's a reasonable serving for one person, but if you need to share with 2, 3 or more people, you need to stretch your pie further – i.e. everyone gets less.
But SVG is like having a good apple pie recipe.
[caption id="attachment_129313" align="alignright" width="409"]
You hold the instructions to make as much or as little pie as you want.
Sure, there are numerical amounts written into the recipe – 8 apples, 4 cups of flour and so on. But if you need to feed twice as many people, you just double the measurements. If you want to feed half as many – just halve the numbers. It's designed to scale.
And because you control how the pie is made, you can even 'change things up' a little and customize the basic pie recipe for different people's needs. Nanna likes a handful of black currants in her pie. Your brother loves custard. Small, thoughtful changes to the original recipe are easy and valuable.
Of course, the 'S' part in 'SVG' stands for 'scalable', and it's part of what makes SVG so useful for the web. But 'scalability' – by itself – doesn't always mean 'more usable'. Sometimes we need to change how our layouts are displayed. SVG can help us.
Making Charts with SVG
Here's an SVG chart that I created using Boxy SVG. It shows the number of mentions of the phrase 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars' in books since 1960 (data via Google NGRAM).
[caption id="attachment_129310" align="aligncenter" width="800"]
You might typically see this type of chart online as a JPEG or PNG - in fact, you can export it from Boxy SVG as a PNG if you wanted to.
Ok, so, why not make it a JPG and be done with it?
Reason #1: The File Size
- The JPEG version is 47kb. (JPEG link)
- The raw SVG version from Boxy SVG is 14kb (SVG link).
- With a little tidying, I got it down to 10kb (SVG link).
The Boxy SVG chart isn't perfect out of the box. View the source and you'll see:
- some extra empty TSPANs in the text
- the extreme number precision makes numbers longer and more unwieldy than they need to be (tools like SVGO can fix this for you)
- elements moved inside the editor tend to get transforms added to their original X & Y positions. Ideally any repositioning would be made to that original X & Y co-ordinate.
A little bit of find-and-replace resolves these issues in five minutes. Even with these small issues, the Boxy SVG is clearer and easy-to-read than anything else I've worked with.
Of course, either of the SVG files above will still be laser crisp at 2000px (if required) with no increase in file size. The JPEG certainly wouldn't.
Still, internet speeds are fast – we're not going to fight over 30kb between friends, are we?
Reason #2: SVG has Non-Scaling Strokes
This is an SVG trick that I only became aware of yesterday.
While it's always handy to be able to squish down our images to fit it into a small screen, there's a point where our linework legibility simply breaks down. Similarly, highly scaled-up image lines can become fat and oafish.
[caption id="attachment_129308" align="alignright" width="400"]
Unfortunately, that's an unsolvable problem in our PNGs and JPGs. We just have to live with it.
Non-scaling Strokes
Continue reading %Why JPEGs are like McDonalds Apple Pies (and SVGs are not)%
by Alex Walker via SitePoint
Social Media, Email Marketing & Blogging: Top 9 Tactics for Finding New Customers Online - Infographic
Looking to grow your list of leads? Rely on these tried and true digital marketing methods.
Social media
Private message:There's still incredible value in one on one exchange. Reach out to Facebook, Twitter or Google+ fans via private message, and offer personalized consultations or custom promotions.
Group and Communities Discussions:
Join both private and public Google Plus communities, Facebook and LinkedIn Groups that relate to your industry. Build relationships with the members and eventually recommend your product.
by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World
7 Meditation Apps and Devices for Mindful Entrepreneurs
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Stress is a part of everyday life, especially if you have to deal with difficult clients, stare at a computer screen for several hours of the day, or constantly reply to emails — not to mention the often horrific commute to and from work during rush hour, and various other things you have very little control over.
Luckily, meditation can help reduce (or even stop) stress.
Meditation is a practice in which you learn to rest your mind and reach a state of consciousness that results in total clarity and calmness, usually achieved by sitting comfortably, closing your eyes, listening to ambient sounds and breathing deeply. You can meditate for as little as 10 minutes a day. Ironically, the main cause of the average entrepreneur’s stress (technology of course) can also help us find our zen. Let’s take a look at seven apps and gadgets that can help you meditate, a modern alternative to a practise that’s been used for thousands of years.
1. Calm
Calm is a meditation app that helps with sleep, relaxation, and mindfulness. It’s free to download via Google Play or the Apple App Store, and once you login via Facebook or e-mail you can start a beginners session called ‘7 Days of Calm’. Each session is only 10 minutes long. Perfect for busy entrepreneurs to use during lunch breaks or when stuck in traffic! If it works for you, you can subscribe for $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year.
2. Muse
Muse is a headband that measures brain signals while you meditate. Its seven calibrated sensors (two on the forehead, two behind the ears, three reference sensors) detect and measure the brain’s activity.
It connects to an app on your mobile device via Bluetooth and once connected, you’ll be taken through a tutorial on how to adjust it to fit so that it reads and monitors your brain signals effectively. Before every use, because your brain is different on a daily basis, you will complete a 60-second brainstorming task.
After de-stressing you with relaxing music, Muse offers feedback on your meditation session by converting your brain signals into wind sounds. Calm winds indicate that your mind was settled; winds become stronger when the brain is more active. After use, your progress is recorded and you’ll unlock new app features.
Are there any downsides? Maybe. It looks quite obvious that you’re wearing it, and it costs $249 (on Amazon) — if this doesn't bother you, the reviews are averaging at four stars!
3. Spire
Spire ($149) is a small stone-shaped activity and mindfulness tracker that fits easily on your waistband, making it ideal for those who are constantly on the move or need something they can take to work. It records your breathing and activity and conveys it on its corresponding app.
Spire displays your breath in real-time on your device screen, as if you were breathing on a mirror, and lets you know if you’re feeling stressed or lacking focus. Once it notifies you of your current state of mind, the app provides you with activities in order to achieve the best level of mindfulness.
Sadly it isn’t available for Android, but it’s coming soon!
Continue reading %7 Meditation Apps and Devices for Mindful Entrepreneurs%
by Rebeka Bergin via SitePoint
Avoiding a JavaScript Monoculture
JavaScript, as a language, has some fundamental shortcomings -- I think the majority of us agree on that much. But everyone has a different opinion on what precisely the shortcomings are.
Christoffer Petterson recently wrote that "JavaScript just needs to become a better language" -- about the shortcomings of the JavaScript standard run-time, and how this creates a culture of micro-packages and polyfills.
In this related opinion piece, I'd like to challenge that point of view:
Shortcomings of the JavaScript language and run-times are not the fundamental reason we have micro-packages or polyfills.
While various shortcomings of the standard run-time library are the obvious, immediate reason for the creation of micro-packages, I'm going to argue that this point of view is actually obscuring a deeper, underlying problem.
As to opinions about the shortcomings of the language itself, or the standard run-times, it's important to realize that every developer has a different background, different experience, different needs, temperament, values, and a slew of other cultural motivations and concerns -- individual opinions will always be largely personal and, to some degree, non-technical in nature.
For me, the best answer to shortcomings of the language itself has been Typescript, but I understand that's not everyone's cup of tea. For one guy, it's CoffeeScript, for another gal, it's Dart, Scala, Go, Rust, and so on.
My point is this: the fundamental problem is neither shortcomings of the standard run-time library, nor is it any specific technical shortcoming of the language itself.
The real problem is our lacking willingness to embrace cultural diversity.
One Size Does Not Fit All
It seems there's a thriving mass delusion that we can somehow make JavaScript the ideal language for everyone and every thing.
Initiatives such as ES6, while seemingly improving things, are actually a step in the wrong direction.
For instance, those who prefer classical inheritance may enjoy the addition of the class keyword, while others may reject it as conflicting with the idea of a prototypical inheritance model.
Again, this is all opinion-based, and due to the sheer number of developers who rely on this technology as their bread and butter, sub-communities and religiousness forms around patterns, anti-patterns, practices, de-facto standards, micro-packages, polyfills, frameworks, build-tools, etc.
Continue reading %Avoiding a JavaScript Monoculture%
by Rasmus Schultz via SitePoint
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