Monday, 8 December 2014

Find A Coding Buddy To Make Learning Easier And More Fun

There are plenty of resources for learning code, but none is better than a real person who can explain concepts to you, logic brainstorming with you and answer questions for you. That is why, if you are an experienced programmer or a beginner, you should get a co-coding.

Coding with another person will help you learn a new language more efficiently. Not only have a knowledgeable give you the backup you need to figure out a language, but also gives you someone to teach, it's a great way of learning companion. Belle night of his life, developer exist, explains why she finds her mate so valuable coding:



      I have yet to find a method of learning that better than having a real person to talk to.

      My co-founder Josh, who is primarily a Python developer, has practically learned Objective-C by me thanks to my many theoretical align programming questions ("How does a statement whether the job again?") And help with debugging when I'm really stuck.

      At least, having a fellow patient coding that can explain the fundamentals of programming is a big help. Josh often help me think through the most logical way to approach a problem, before I resolve the details of in Objective-C.

Having a partner could be the difference between learning to code in a few months and learn to code in a few weeks.

Thursday, 13 November 2014

7 CSS Units You Might Not Know About

It's easy to get working with CSS techniques that we know well, but doing so puts us at a disadvantage when new problems emerge.

As the Web continues to grow, the demand for new solutions will also grow. Therefore, as web designers and front-end developers, we have no choice but to meet our set of tools, and know well.

That means knowing even specialty tools - which are not used as often, but when needed, are exactly the right tool for the job.

Today, I'll introduce you to some CSS tools you may not have known before. These tools are each units of measurement, such as pixels or ems, but chances are you've never heard of them! Let us enter.

Rem

Let's start with something that is similar to something you are probably already familiar. The em unit is defined as the size of the current font. Thus, for example, if a font size in the body element, the value em any child elements within the body is equal to the font size is set.




Here, we have said that the div will have a font size of 1.2em. That's 1.2 times what the size of the font that has inherited, in this case 14px. The result is 16.8px.

However, what happens when the font sizes defined cascading em inside the other? In the following excerpt we apply exactly the same as the above CSS. Each div inherits its font-size from his father, who gives us gradually increasing font sizes.





While this may be desirable in some cases, often you may want to simply rely on a single metric to scale against. In this case, you must use rem. The "r" in rem means "root"; this is equal to the font size set on the root element; in most cases be the html element.






In the three divs nested in the above example, the font would evaluate 16.8px.
Good for Grids


Rems are not only useful to determine the font size. For example, you could base a complete network system library or user interface styles in the HTML root using rem font-size, scale and use em in specific locations. This would give more predictable size and font scaling.





Conceptually, the idea behind such a strategy is to allow the interface to scale with the size of its content. However, it may not necessarily make the most sense for all cases.
vh and vw

Responsive web design techniques rely heavily on the percentage rules. However the percentage of CSS is not always the best solution for each problem. CSS width is on the array element containing nearest. What if you want to use the width or height of the view instead of the width of the parent element? That's exactly what the VH and vw units provided.

The vh element is equal to 1/100 of the height of the viewport. For example, if the height of the browser is 900px, 1VH evaluate to 9px. Similarly, if the viewport width is 750px, 1vw evaluate to 7.5px.

There are seemingly endless uses for these standards. For example, a very simple way to make slideshow full-height or full-height fence can be achieved with a single line of CSS:





Imagine you wanted a holder that was created to fill the width of the screen. To accomplish this, you must set a font size in vw. That size will scale with browser width.

Vmin and Vmax

While vh and vm are always related to the height and display width, respectively, Vmin and Vmax are related to such maximum or minimum widths and heights, depending on which is smaller and larger. For example, if the browser is set to 1100px width and 700px height, and 1vmin would 1vmax would 7px 11px. However, if the width is set to 800px and height set to 1080px, Vmin would equal 8px while vmax would be set to 10.8px.

So, when might you use these values?

Imagine you need an item that is always visible on the screen. The use of a height and width set to a value below 100 vmin allow this. For example, an element of the square that always plays at least two sides of the screen may be defined as:




If you need a square box that always covers the visible viewport (touching all four sides of the screen at all times), using the same rules, except vmax.






Combinations of these rules provide a flexible way to use the size of the viewport in new and exciting ways.

ex and ch

Former and ch units, similar to them and real, are based on the font and size of the current font. However, unlike them and real, these units are also based on the font family, as determined based on the measurements of the specific source.

The ch unit or character unit is defined as the "new measure" the width of the zero character, 0. Some very interesting about what this means can be found on the blog of Eric Meyers discussion, but the basic concept is that, given a monospace font, a box with a width of N character units, such as width: 40CH;, can always contain a string with 40 characters from that particular source. While conventional uses of this particular rule refer to trace the braille, the possibilities for creativity here certainly extend beyond these simple applications.

The former unit is defined as the "height x of the current source or half an em." Thex a given source height is the height of the lowercase x from that source. Often, it is the mark of the source media.
There are many uses for this type of unit, most of them for micro-typographic settings. For example, the sup element superscript means, can be pushed up in the line using the relative position and a lower value of 1ex. Similarly, you can pull down an element subscript. The default browser to utilize these rules and specific vertical-align subscript superscript-, but if you wanted more granular control that could handle the explicit type this:


Monday, 10 November 2014

Design Tip: The Value Of White Space


"Above the fold" is not just a newspaper term. On the Web, it refers to the part of a Web page displayed in the browser of a visitor without scrolling. It is the most valuable part of the page - and everyone in an organization wants privileged. But, in trying to please everyone, web designers often try to cram too much within too small a space.

Remember that the value of white space. It makes your page look more attractive, professional, and readable. All are key components of a successful website!
Activate your blank

White space is a term that refers to the design of space that is not occupied by text, images, or other elements of the visible page. The amount and use of white space is a key component of legibility and readability of a page. There are two types:

      Active White Space: Space that is deliberately left blank for a better structure of the page and to emphasize the different content areas.
      Passive white space: The empty space around the outside of the blank page or within the content areas as a result of poor design.

 




A page with very little white space makes visitors feel uncomfortable because the page seems cluttered and difficult to read. Visitors get overwhelmed quickly and move to a more welcoming place. Conversely, pages with lots of white space seem empty, as if there is not enough content to fill the page. Visitors may wonder, "why bother with anything?" and go somewhere else.

If properly used, the blank is an integral part of the design of a page and a major contributor to the ease of use. The content is structured feel, it's easy to find information, and the page layout works with the content to highlight the most important information.
The design with white space in mind

So when you are designing or redesigning your page layout, consider using the active whitespace to create a consistent look. Create your own or choose a ready-made template with white space in mind template.

A good page template includes an active whitespace as an intentional element that visually separates page navigation, content, header, and footer. Visitors can predict where the areas of navigation and content will, as they jump from page to page.

Often, it is best to make your first page layout design on paper instead of coding it. Avoid the temptation to start adding site logo and "just a little content" and focus on how the individual elements combine to create the overall effect instead. When you've spent a lot of time coding example, are less likely to change - even if the page is not as great.

Consider creating shadowboxes as placeholders for content. You get a better sense of weight and contrast page without being distracted by the content.

Here's an example. At a glance, you can immediately identify areas blank white space on liability:

Wednesday, 29 October 2014

9 Tricks To Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

An email newsletter is the perfect way to stay in touch with your customers or followers. Often, your business or website will have numerous product updates, upcoming events or possibly you would like to share. It is always possible to publish new information to your blog or social media streams, but your audience can only go so far to get to you. In this case, the email is certainly not dead technology, merely untapped potential.




he process of creating and sending a newsletter is much easier than one might think, but designing a custom template and build your own code - this may take a little longer.

We have compiled some great tips to get the design HTML newsletters quality like never before. Even if you are a novice in the subject will surely find some valuable information to begin the process of e-mail marketing.

Objectives of a newsletter

Before entering the design aspects we should clarify its intent to build a newsletter. Depending on the type of website you run, the information in your newsletter can vary dramatically from the others, but the primary purpose of a newsletter is to provide convenient updates right to your Inbox for your reader.

Regular Internet users are likely to check their email more than twice a day. Even those who are constantly busy will take the time to go through your posts at least once a day. This is the perfect place to grab attention, even without visits to your site now. Even if no one is accessing your links, information is being received, which is ideal for building a brand.

Consider some of the issues that would have to offer in their design. Are you including links to register for the service; Blog links possibly, or more recently published articles on your site? Design your newsletter to reflect how you want your readers to respond, but ultimately it aims to promote interest and pass around some interesting tidbits of information for the masses.

1. Use the tables in their designs

This may seem a bit contradictory to modern web standards of today, but emails are still archaic in their rendering engines, so you have to build to older models. Unfortunately tables are the easiest way to get everything working properly between different email clients. Depending on your knowledge of the construction of table-based designs, this reality could come as good news!

You may also wonder why the div block elements and others are not so good idea. Most email clients are built to shed any weird CSS content. This means you will not be able to use much of anything except for online providers (and even full support is poor). Clients such as Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Gmail from Google have little support for floating bodies and direct positioning.

The best solution would be to nest multiple tables within. The padding and margins are not adjusted to a particular scale and many email clients. This is one reason to stick to use width = "value" in its cellular elements of the table. They always show the same width no matter which email client of your readers are using, so it's much safer and more coherent set padding and margins using empty tables cells.

2. Positioning fixed width

You have some options in building design projects newsletter, however, the best option to take is to set fixed widths for the table that contains. There are many varying monitor resolutions - you will not be able to please everyone. If you do not have static widths particular elements, you can always use width = "100%" in your table that contains. This will allow your content to fill the entire width of all email clients.

However, for many this method is a little too loose. Newsletters constructive require a fixed width in most cases, especially if you plan to use banners and images set to a particular size. I recommend working with 500px - 600px maximum width of the document. The horizontal screen size of the iPhone and some BlackBerry models are limited to 320px by 500px so even in your email template will be reduced to fit properly.

Given that many mobile users choose to view the email without HTML anyway, this should not be a big problem. Users of desktop clients and webmail likely experience a similar configuration, regardless of operating system they use. When in doubt create a template designs and choose the ones you like!

3. Pixel Units

Unless you plan to use the elements of the fluid in your newsletter you probably have to size some things. Try to keep it in pixels (px), more than any other type of unit. Percentages may easily be confused with the many customers webmail and windows software. With fewer page elements, fluid designs can emerge unscathed, though with some errors.

But pixels are always a sure thing. Working within the 600px width limit max, you can actually fit a lot of content inside. The exhibition is easier if you split your designs in two or three columns, and always write your sizes in pixels. The only exception may be the font sizes where EMS can not support their better readers, but differ em similarly sized percentages - so for the sake of simplicity, stick to the pixel-based alignments.

4. The possibilities with CSS

It may seem that the email design is to destroy using CSS styles. Although there are a lot of unsupported functions, CSS is still perfectly acceptable in many cases. Campaign Monitor has a beautiful table supported CSS properties listed email client. All basic support such as font-family and font-style concepts, so you can ignore the <font> tag if desired.



Be careful about your font styles to not push the limits too far. If you are uncomfortable with inline styles, it is always possible to use the HTML font tag though has been deprecated. If you're a CSS designer, you do not have to leave the system, but any abbreviated CSS coding can lead to faulty designs. For example the font: 12px / 14px Arial, sans-serif; Shorthand can save a lot of space, but is not fully accepted in the design of email, even when used with inline styles.

Even your color choices should be written out longhand. Hex Color as #ccc or # E3F must be written in full as #cccccc or # ee33ff respectively. If you can build what you need without CSS I recommend that path, but does not completely shy away from CSS email designs that contrary to popular belief that it is compatible with the majority of cases.

5. Anchor Links Best Practices

You probably want to include some links in your newsletter. These could be the outgoing links to other pages on the web, or maybe links that lead to the most popular pages to this website. Moreover, most of the footnotes contain a link to unsubscribe to your readers to opt for the process e-mail, but how should handle all these links in your design?

Well, it should be noted first that the email clients are very picky about their designs. Many will choose to overwrite your link styles, even CSS online. A good trick is to include both color and line and additional span tag inside the anchor element. If the color and style of your links are important to the overall design you'll want to take extra caution. I added a small code example below:



Hover effects not supported in Outlook 2007/2010, Gmail, iOS or Android. You can still include the style of: hover for all clients support: 2000/2003 Outlook, Hotmail, Apple Mail and Yahoo! Mail, but I personally do not see much benefit in partial user experience, since no anchor selectors are strongly supported recommend only offer 2-3 link colors used throughout the design.

As a presumption users also expect their links open in a new tab or window. Ideally, the target = "_ blank" attribute should be enough for all browsers recognize this functionality, and the inclusion of this attribute in your anchor links should not jeopardize email software such as Lotus Notes, or as Outlook either.

6. Test all major clients

A recent study of the most popular email clients (made by Campaign Monitor) shows ten of the most popular clients email in the last year. It may seem a bit tedious, but designers should get into the habit of reviewing your newsletters in all major email clients, at least in some of the most common clients such as Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail.




This does not include webmail only, but the software also runs on both Mac OS X and Windows. Also according to your diagram mailing iOS and Android have shot both in the top 10 in recent years. In fact the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad Mail ranks # 2 most popular Outlook right on! Unfortunately there is no way to prove this without owning one device - so you'll have to settle for other options.

An error with mobile stand comes in many models of iPhone and Android. Mobile email provision often resize the text in your template. This may not affect the design very much, but can be annoying to some readers. Using the CSS -webkit-text-size-adjust: none;, will ensure default text size, even throughout all the parsing engine without a try.

If you know friends or coworkers who use alternative software, you may want to ask for your help in testing the newsletter. You can send a copy of the email to check on your device or borrow the equipment out actively clear coding errors. Luckily Outlook offers a Mac version to install so you do not have to locate a Windows user for these optimizations, but when it comes to Lotus Notes or Windows Mail, you may be out of luck.

The alternative is to pay for a solution as my E-mail Preview, unfortunately, do not provide any free demo accounts, but their service is well known for offering fabulous views prior to its design. Email acid is a similar service that does offer a free account, but does not allow you to test on all clients, which kind of defeats the purpose. Representation services online should be useful if you need to test many newsletter templates in the long run without the use of alternative equipment, however, are not critical, so do not stress if you can not test everyone!

7. Always offer Web-based views


Readers will not always be able (or willing) to see your email natively. Offering another version somewhere on the web will give you a sense of ease and compatibility. This process can not be fully automated unless you are looking to include a plain text version.

Thus, would strip all HTML tags design newsletter. You would not be able to include links or styles for anything. All content is presented simply as a plain text file for readers without rendering capabilities. This is certainly a good alternative, but they offer a full web version of the newsletter that removes the damage caused by any misrepresentation. Most readers will be running a web browser until the day you can style and build your newsletter on and for perfection.

How do you set the page is entirely your decision. Some websites dedicated blog a post all to double the content of the email, perhaps with some additional information. Others will create a separate page on the main website without direct links in the navigation bar. This method can be beneficial because readers are not distracted by their primary content website template or sidebar.

8. Adding image content

Images are another reason to offer its readers a web-based solution. By default, the email clients are configured to strip images from the contents. If your address is added to a safe list, all images are displayed by default, but the user has to accept this configuration so it is certainly not a guarantee. Just make sure that the images are not required as part of the main content, but included as extra padding for aesthetics page.

Once you get to exporters graphics are some tips to building images specifically for email. You always want to set the width and height attributes in img tags. Without these specifications in order, some clients will distort the image content. An alt tag is also useful for visitors to know what is in the content of the image before it is loaded.

As mentioned above, the positioning of images in your email can be tricky. Avoid at all costs floats! The attribute align = "left" image will work much better, or, alternatively, an exact map of cells in tables to meet your images at the top, left, or right of your newsletter. You will not be able to get a perfect match-up with so many customers out there (especially mobile clients), but optimizing your images and maintain small file size for best results.

As for image storage, it is recommended that you keep all the files on your own web server. This is the best option instead of using another host of images or by uploading files to an online news service. Also you should separate the content of your newsletters, away from the rest of the images in a folder structure like this / img / mail or / img / email / 2011.

9. Avoid the Spam folder!

This may be hard to hear, but not all email clients are friendly towards newsletters. There are billions of emails sent every day and most contain spam or malicious content, so having these safety measures incorporated into the inbox is clearly the safety precautions.

However when it comes to internet marketing, you can easily be discouraged to see their latest newsletter ending away. To reduce the chances of this happening you should clean your design for simplicity. No images or make annoying popping their title text with hundreds of keywords.

Also, try to keep your content brief and on-topic. It is not necessary to include the full content of all articles or pages. Try adding one or two sentences with an alternate link out of your website instead of a long list. The shorter your email looks, the more likely it will pass inspection spam.

Wednesday, 22 October 2014

Moving Meta Boxes In The WordPress Editor

WordPress 3.8 introduced a new way to display messages in the old design of filters using a single column. A filter is a function that processes the data at certain points in the page life cycle. As the name suggests, a filter can be used to filter and / or manipulate certain data before displaying it in the browser or save the data to the database. Using a combination of filters and hooks action is not only possible to set the number of columns, but also to organize the order of the goal boxes within a column. In today's article, we will be building on what we have learned in the article Introduction to WordPress Meta Boxes much force a single column layout and the position of the goal boxes within the column.
One Column Layout

Meta boxes arrange a column one design requires the use of two filters. They are screen_layout_columns and get_user_option_screen_layout_ <post_type>. The first sets the number of columns in the design for each type of message, for $ columns [message] = 2; establishes a 2-column layout post and $ columns [message] = 1; 1. fit in "get_user_option_screen_layout_ <post_type>" does the same but in a different way. The message type specified in the filter name for the function to simply return the number of columns.

my_screen_layout_columns function ($ column) {
      $ Columns [<post_type>] = 1;
      return $ columns;
}

my_screen_layout function () {
      return 1;
}

add_filter ('screen_layout_columns', 'my_screen_layout_columns');
add_filter ('get_user_option_screen_layout_ <post_type>', 'my_screen_layout');

Implement the above, here is the code to define the layout for a custom message type called "menu". Note that in the my_screen_layout_columns () function, you must set the $ columns array element before returning:

my_screen_layout_columns function ($ column) {
      $ Columns ['menu'] = 1;
      return $ columns;
}

my_screen_layout_menu function () {
      return 1;
}

add_filter ('screen_layout_columns', 'my_screen_layout_columns');
add_filter ('get_user_option_screen_layout_menu', 'my_screen_layout_menu');

Change Order Meta Box

Once you have all Meta Boxes in a column, it is possible that your order is not to your liking. The position of a meta box on the page can be changed by removing and then including the $ context and $ priority arguments to re-add. The two arguments may seem too much, but they really work well together to provide precise control over the meta-box positioning.

Thursday, 7 August 2014

Tip Of The Week – No More HTML Coding In The MLS!

Some of you may have seen this ad in the Bulletin Board MLS. Some of you do not see the Bulletin Board MLS. Others have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, either message board or HTML code. Let me clarify one of these points. Let's talk about the other later.



Have you seen some ads with colorful scrolling text in the Comments field? Maybe Agent Notes, Address Book, Note or Sales? I know some of you have because you have sent us an e-mail asking how. Or do you put a warning citation of us because it goes against the rules of the MLS. So what about this?

Basically, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the language of the internet. For most people, it looks a bit like the Matrix. But as in the film, if you look at long enough, you start seeing the actual message.

The history of this field starts when we first went to an Internet-based MLS system. Those in the know began adding HTML codes text fields of your ads. Those who know tried, but very often made mistakes that affected all the ads that appeared on the same page as the one encoding. They messed up, you might say.

Because of this, the committee of the MLS in 2002 decided it would be against the rules. A couple of years after that, the MLS system were programmed to perform the encoding to work. You can write in the field, but it would not work. That ended that.

Fast forward to 2014 we have a new Internet-based MLS system. Entrepreneur’s agents and assistants decided to try the new HTML code in your text fields and found that it worked.

I'll confess. This was against the rules and does not work in the system for so long that I forgot the matter, until I saw an ad. Reminder of an old theme.

At the request of a couple of agents, this was taken back to the MLS committee will revisit this year. They again decided against allowing it. So the MLS has rescheduled has been set to not allow encryption.You can hire web design company in Newcastle for your next design work as they are professional guys.

This time you'll get a warning. If the system finds that the coding in any of the large text fields, you get a come as soon as you try to leave that field message. The system removes or characters that identify the encoding, which effectively breaks the encryption but leaves the rest of the character to be seen. Or you can cancel the warning and manually remove the encoding. This is the recommended action. If you do not, and try to move to the next field, the system displays the warning backup.

If you currently have the code in one of your ads, list any change will give notice to fix the problem. If you do not find on your own, you will get a friendly warning citation to correct the violation of the rules.

Thursday, 24 July 2014

Junior Cert Students Will Study Coding

Ruairi Quinn Minister of Education

COMPUTER coding courses in secondary schools will begin this September, as part of the revised secondary cycle.

The Department of Education confirmed to the Herald that the subjects of Communications and Information Technologies (ICTs) are being introduced as short courses.

These programs include coding and programming as well as digital media.



 
Reform

Department of Education Minister Ruairi Quinn also said that "it has launched a new digital strategy for the schools."

As part of the strategy is analyzing opportunities in curriculum reform.

Teachers and principals are currently being surveyed about the use of ICT in learning and teaching in schools across Ireland. The study will be completed shortly.


The department said the new changes and the strategy is not limited to secondary schools, but also to primary schools.

A spokeswoman also said the changes were not only happening in the secondary cycle.

"In the upper cycle, the National Curriculum Council is working on a review of a significant number of Leaving Certificate subjects," he said.

He added that the integration of computer issues was a "priority" for the Government and its development was considered "critical".

Internet economy of Ireland is set to more than double its value in 2020 to just over € 21 billion, with up to 79,000 new jobs to be added, according to a recent study by the UPC.

However, while schools have the option to enter the coding, the two teacher unions second level, ASTI and TUI, have banned its members to cooperate with him and other short courses offered, due to the dispute over reform Junior Cycle.

Jobs

According to the latest figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics, at present there are 80,000 people working in the areas of information and communication.

Top Jobs for the future include project management of the number one IT and software development and testing ranking the top five.

Other short courses are also introducing next September are the language and Chinese culture and artistic representation.