Nate a web developer at Eastern Illinois University and occasionally adjunct-faculty at EIU teaching some courses in the School of Business. He lives in Champaign, IL with his wife and dogs Indiana ("we named the dog Indiana...") and Bear.
Jquery makes it super easy to add functionality to your web app, and there are tons of examples all over the interwebs. But I found this great website that gives you some easy straight-up Javascript alternatives:
http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/
It’s a great idea not to include JQuery as a dependency if you don’t have to (but apparently it’s not stopping many web devs since over half of all websites use JQuery).
Good blog post from Seth Godin today titled “A productivity gap“.
You’d think that with all the iPad productivity apps, smartphone productivity apps, productivity blogs and techniques and discussions… that we’d be more productive as a result.
Are you more productive? How much more?
I wonder how much productivity comes from new techniques, and how much comes from merely getting sick of non-productivity and deciding to do something that matters, right now.
He makes a great point and I agree, lots of people get these new apps, but are they are they really getting more shit done?
But I also see the other side of the coin – all these new apps are out there as tools that work for different people and different projects. I think it’s great there are so many great productivity apps, it gives me the opportunity to use the app that is going to make my productivity the highest and fit my current project or work style. I personally love Podio because it fits my work style and is great for collaborating.
So are you just using apps because it’s new and you can? Or are you using apps because they fit your work style and actually make you more productive?
“Of every 100 American commuters, five take public transit, three walk, and only one rides a bicycle to work or school.” I’m very fortunate enough to be close enough and have a community that is conducive to bike riding. I also have to bike through snow in the winter.
But honestly, biking is just as fast as driving for me, so it makes total sense.
Read this neat article here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/12/10/why_cul_de_sacs_are_bad_for_your_health_happy_city_by_charles_montgomery.html
Many students come out of college as great programmers – but that doesn’t mean they have all the skills they need. When I look for student workers for our office, I ask our School of Business for Management Information Systems students. Unlike Computer Science or Technology majors, MIS majors are required to take the business core courses as well as their programming/networking courses. This creates a more-rounded programmer with skills like:
Read more here:
If you don’t, please follow 24Ways’ Web Advent. They kicked off the 2013 Advent Calendar with an amazing article on URL Rewrites. Well worth the read!
Here are some winners for switchign between windows and tabs. Some of these are super obvious, but there are some little gems here
From: http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/os-x/how-to-toggle-within-and-between-apps-in-os-x
There is no easier way to instantly class-up your website then web fonts. I feel like any site that isn’t using a web font service is behind the times. The standard web fonts just look so old and blah.
Adobe bought typekit a few years ago, and now they have over 500 fonts available for free! So you’ve got no excuse not to use new web fonts
https://edgewebfonts.adobe.com/
This is great to see that someone finally took the time to update favicon generators. Favicons have really evolved in the past couple years with different devices utilizing them. I think it’s getting a bit ridiculous that to fully utilize favicons for all the devices these days you have to have about 10 images (thus adding 10 lines of code to your pages). But, so is the way of progress.
It’s tough to find a way to have a free website – but here is a great option that reminds me of when I was a kid and got started with a 50mb site. Neocities has 10mb sites and allows to you write your own html/css/javascript. It is free to sign-up so it’s great way to give anyone (especially kids) a space to try and make their own web site.