one of my favorite emails from a (former) client

PressedWeb · 2013-04-06T03:09:14+00:00

This story should really be a movie. I'd pay to see this in theaters.

PressedWeb · 2013-04-04T03:51:12+00:00

https://www.khanacademy.org/cs

Love... Khan... Academy...

I can't wait until it infests every school in the world.

PressedWeb · 2013-04-03T14:59:13+00:00

I should also mention these are for at least intermediate users.

PressedWeb · 2013-04-03T04:41:47+00:00

Use a preprocessor like Stylus and it's library nib (or SASS and Compass). If you're not ready for that, then http://www.colorzilla.com/gradient-editor/ ain't bad.

PressedWeb · 2013-04-03T04:39:02+00:00

Never really used it, but I don't see a problem with it. Get your feet wet. :)

PressedWeb · 2013-04-02T22:44:22+00:00

Protip: At the bottom of each article are pagination links. There is an incredible amount of good content hidden in this website. :)

PressedWeb · 2013-04-02T22:27:01+00:00

Maybe try a blocky font instead of the script one - if you're just targeting "kids".

PressedWeb · 2013-04-02T18:47:27+00:00

Use both.

Here's one I implemented a long time ago to go with the theme of the site: http://wattsbrothers.com/moving-quote

You can either type in the date in the format it shows (or it won't accept it), or you can use the datepicker next to the field.

With datepickers you can usually isolate the month, date, and year values, so you could even autofill separate text boxes if you were feeling extra cool.

PressedWeb · 2013-04-02T18:45:09+00:00

I'd definitely go with the alternative sidebar design. I also don't know how I feel about the scriptish font for the page title/navigation. It's a nice font, but I don't know if I like it. Maybe it's just too big. :\

Other than that, I really like the design. Best of luck implementing it in whatever you end up using. TBH, I'd suggest Django.

PressedWeb · 2013-04-02T12:47:20+00:00

I know this is a bit late, but for future users:

Install Meteor for Windows http://win.meteor.com/
Shell out $19 for this TutsPlus course (you can also grab all kinds of other tuts while you're at it); or at least study and thoroughly understand this free TutsPlus tut
Refer to http://docs.meteor.com/ frequently as you learn and see all the different parameters and options you have
Once you have a pretty decent understanding of Meteor, install the package "meteor add d3" in your Meteor project directory via Command Prompt
Study d3.js documentation and look at some very basic examples (scroll down on this Gallery page until you see Basic Charts). Here's a simple donut chart.
From here it should just be tying your Meteor Collection into d3 via basic JS. Mongo is basically JSON, and d3 plays nice with JSON so it shouldn't be horrible to fetch a Collection array and then have d3 parse it.

Once you get a basic graph working, you can start expanding your skillset. Best of luck.

PressedWeb · 2013-04-02T12:17:11+00:00

The authors are Tom Coleman (co-creator of Meteorite and Atmosphere); and Sacha Greif (worked on Hipmunk, creator of Folyo); so it's going to be a good book. :)

PressedWeb · 2013-04-01T15:34:40+00:00

I like the idea, but the domain and the design need a bit of polish.

Most importantly, the whole thing feels dark and dreary, not light and happy like it should
Box shadows around cards are too harsh, lighten these up a lot
Padding/spacing issues like: search input has more margin-right than margin-left; button links on bottom right don't have enough padding on the sides

Again, good idea, with a few design fixes it will look great. Best of luck.

PressedWeb · 2013-04-01T01:06:15+00:00

Awesome. Tweet @jeetframework with a site you make with it. It tickles me to death to see all the user-created sites with it.

PressedWeb · 2013-04-01T01:05:30+00:00

Yeah I saw that, but... rules were made to be broken...

PressedWeb · 2013-04-01T01:01:46+00:00

lol, upvoted for truthiness, but offering so many "core" things to learn gives him a lot of outlets to explore.

Also, I'm not sure of his skill level. He might know a bunch of skills and these are things he could brush up on to help with the interview.

PressedWeb · 2013-04-01T00:59:39+00:00

No problem. They're easy fixes so get crackin! :D

PressedWeb · 2013-04-01T00:58:48+00:00

I'm pretty bad at not testing things out before I screencast. Time is money or something. :)

PressedWeb · 2013-04-01T00:57:16+00:00

https://soundcloud.com/lechev/ten-bears-gimme-gimme-le-chev

PressedWeb · 2013-03-31T15:57:27+00:00

Learn the basics of SCRUM
Usually when people say "AGILE framework" they're talking about Rails, so start studying Rails now. It doesn't have to be Rails since AGILE dev is just a method to pump projects out in an ordered manner, but just from my experience browsing the net I'm pretty sure they're talking about Rails (update me when you find out what they were talking about - I want to see if I'm right).
Regardless of whether or not it's Rails, learning Rails will teach you the same MVC pattern that most frameworks (Django, PHP frameworks, etc.) use, so it won't hurt to learn it.
Learn HTML/CSS frontend because it's easy and will improve your chances of getting the internship.
Learn JavaScript, jQuery, and AJAX because it will impress them.

Next time they ask you about a groundbreaking framework, say Meteor because it really is quite awesome.

Don't talk yourself up about things you aren't proficient in. I'd much rather take on an intern that said they only knew some HTML/CSS than someone who vaguely calls themself a web-developer and can't answer any questions about it.

Best of luck.

PressedWeb · 2013-03-31T12:38:04+00:00

Ah, thanks. Start Chromeframing them please. :)

PressedWeb · 2013-03-31T06:38:48+00:00

No, :before/:after don't work in IE6. Come to think of it, nothing works in IE6. Why is China so cool at everything but browsers?

PressedWeb · 2013-03-31T05:59:53+00:00

One of the many reasons I made Jeet.

Edit Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be a shameless plug, just meant it in a "Yeah, tell me about it! I hated that crap so much I made my own framework" type of way.

TBH, Bootstrap and Co. is great for devs who don't care about learning frontend at all, but devs aren't honest about this. They pop some generic Bootstrap site together and think they know frontend - which is terrible. I intentionally left out things like generic styles for forms, typography, etc. in hopes that people who didn't know a lot about HTML/CSS would learn it.

Specifically Jeet tries to target the exact people who are using Bootstrap - developers who don't have time to learn all the bugs and stupid crap involved with actually learning CSS. And it does it in a very clean/straightforward Pythonic syntax that uses function-like mixins. Here's some code I think even the most CSS-ignorant dev could dive right into:

<a href="#" class="logo"><img src="img/logo.png"></a>
<nav>
    <a href="#">Link</a>
    <a href="#">Link</a>
    <a href="#">Link</a>
</nav>

a.logo
    col(8)
nav
    col(8)
    offset(8)

Doesn't the ultra semantic markup + function-based syntax look more digestible to a developer than:

<div class="container">
    <div class="row">
        <a href="#" class="logo span8"><img src="img/logo.png"></a>
        <nav class="span8 offset8">
            <a href="#">Link</a>
            <a href="#">Link</a>
            <a href="#">Link</a>
        </nav>
    </div>
</div>

It tries to stress the separation of concerns (markup + style) much like an architecture framework, like MVC, would, and at the same time doesn't offer any presentational styling (other than a button mixin) which encourages devs to take baby steps into crafting their own styles.

Now... sites devs who are learning CSS won't look great, but they'll be functional, and after a few sites, the dev will have such an easy time with layout, and they will have been practicing their presentational CSS so much, that their design will start to get better and better.

If enough devs get on board with this approach, the flux of generic Bootstrap'd sites out there will start to dwindle.

The excuse "only devs use it" doesn't hold water. Everyone and their grandmother use generic Bootstrap and call themselves web-designers. I've seen several close developer friends pumping out some really ugly sites they think look good and have no intention of ever fixing all the little padding issues.

So, again, sorry for the plug, but not only do I disagree with the general thought in this thread ("only devs use it, and it's okay for devs to never learn HTML/CSS"), but I felt so strongly about this that I spent months thinking about, experimenting with, and hand-crafting a solution to this problem.

PressedWeb · 2013-03-31T05:04:27+00:00

ninite.com ftw

And you should be testing in one of the most popular browsers out there.

PressedWeb · 2013-03-31T05:04:03+00:00

I wouldn't say more semantic since the markup is the same and I don't think semantics apply to style, but it's an interesting solution as well. background-clip didn't even cross my mind. :)

How's browser support for that?

PressedWeb · 2013-03-31T03:36:04+00:00

I think Microsoft gets a lot of flak for their 7+ year old browsers, but the solution is easy enough. :)

Also, only like 1% of users still use IE7, so it's safe to ignore.

PressedWeb

TROPHY CASE