Web Development

jQuery: Resources, Plugins and Tutorials from this week

By Gunner Technology | September 4, 2010 3:57 pm | jQuery, Web Development | Leave a comment

From navigation to slideshows to video to form validation.

It’s impossible to keep up with the awesome jQuery plugins and jQuery tutorials that come out each week, but here are three jQuery resources I found fun, interesting and/or useful over the last week.

Love to hear what jQuery projects you got going. Or if you need any help, just let me know in the comments.

WordPress: Everything you need to know this week

By Gunner Technology | September 3, 2010 3:15 pm | Web Development, WordPress | Leave a comment
The logo of the blogging software WordPress.
Image via Wikipedia

We banged out a few new WordPress sites over the passed week, including our first integration with Thesis Theme 1.8 Beta and WordPress 3.

We learned a lot, including that 1.8 won’t let you remove a JS library once you add it >:( But it wasn’t too hard to hack a fix for until a permanent solution gets released.

Along with that, here’s some more WordPress resources I checked out this week

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Learning Server-Side JavaScript with Node.js

By Gunner Technology | September 2, 2010 3:15 pm | Heroku, Node.js, Web Development | Leave a comment

I’ve been playing around with Node.js on Heroku, and freaking love it.

I can’t do exactly what I want yet, though because I need web socket support, which Heroku doesn’t offer with Node, yet.

But, check out this tutorial from Nettuts+ on getting started with Node.js (no web sockets in this one)

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Web Design and Web Development Resources for Beginners

By Gunner Technology | August 25, 2010 11:35 pm | Web Design, Web Development | Leave a comment

I really like how Mashable has branched out recently.

First they covered startups. Then they moved on to Social Media. And now, they seem to be focusing on web development and web design.

I think that’s great. They have some really talented writers with good contacts and guest writers.

If you’ve been developing or designing for a while, this list will be a refresher. If not, it will be pretty essential.

Enjoy, and let me know what resources you use; beginner, advanced, intermediate. Let’s hear it.

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What every web developer should know about regular expressions

By Gunner Technology | August 21, 2010 9:22 pm | Web Development | Leave a comment

There is an absolute bare minimum every programmer should know about regular expressions, says Mike.

I can’t agree more. Regular expressions are incredibly useful and a bit scary on first. Head on over to the linked article above to get information on:

  • The Line Anchors: ‘^’ and ‘$’
  • The Character Class: ‘[]‘
  • The Character Class Metacharacter: ‘-’
  • Matching Any Character With a Dot: ‘.’
  • The Alternation Metacharacter: ‘|’
  • Matching Optional Items: ‘?’
  • The Other Quantifiers: ‘+’ and ‘*’
  • The Interval Quantifier: ‘{}’
  • The Escape Character: ‘’
  • Using Parenthesis for Matching: ‘()’

Really great stuff.

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jQuery vs Raphaël for SVG in HTML5

By Gunner Technology | August 17, 2010 9:22 pm | Web Development | Leave a comment
A graphical depiction of a very simple svg doc...
Image via Wikipedia

I first heard about Raphaël in this article from A List Apart. Obviously, you need to take a strong list at anything that is written about positively in A List Apart.

So, I did a bit of tinkering with the framework, and it’s pretty awesome.

That said, almost every project that I work on these days leverages jQuery.

As the article says:

There are plenty of interesting jQuery graphics plugins, such as jqPlot, Flot, jQuery SVG, and others. With jQuery, you commit to 50+ KB for the minified library. Then, add the UI core, some plugins, and the extra libraries to get it working for IE. Byte for byte, jQuery packs a punch, but you get extra bits you don’t always need.

Raphaël is smaller overall for creating basic vector graphics. Watching your KB weight is something to consider when developing large scale applications, but so is using the best tool for the job.

I think that’s the point. I have generally used jQuery SVG and am happy with it. If I need to fill in the gaps, I can drop in Raphaël or if I’m rolling my own framework, I’d certainly consider it.

Anyone out there have a production app using Raphaël?

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Facebook’s Tornado turns your website into a storm of real-time user activity

By Gunner Technology | August 11, 2010 9:22 pm | Web Development | Leave a comment
Python logo
Image via Wikipedia

Tornado, Event Machine and Node. These are great tools for apps that need to leverage real-time updates.

Tornado is Python based. Event Machine is Ruby based, and Node is built on Javascript.

I’ve played with the later two, and now need to check out Tornado.

From the ReadWriteWeb post:

Tornado is a real-time web server built in Python that supports tens of thousands of continuous connections and thus the long-polling method of real-time data delivery. It is the core of FriendFeed, a technically innovative service built by two ex-Googlers and leaders in the real-time web community, which was acquired by Facebook in August, 2009. Built largely by the man who is now CTO of Facebook, Bret Taylor, this first version of Tornado was taken across the finish line by another heavy hitter: Ben Darnell of Thing Labs.

Rails or Django?

By Gunner Technology | August 11, 2010 3:11 pm | Django, Ruby on Rails | Leave a comment
Ruby on Rails logo
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Man, this debate is getting freaking tired.

I don’t know what’s worse. This one or the Prototype vs jQuery debate.

Anyway, the questions shouldn’t be Rails or Django.

The question should be When Rails and When Django.

I’m not going to set here and debate the merits of Rails’ magic or Django’s performance.

The fact of the matter is, there are projects better suited for Rails and projects better suited for Django, and they’re both really good frameworks.

I’ve dived into Django Nonrelational for Google App Engine. We host my company’s site on App Engine and recently moved it to Django.

It’s been great.

We use it as a CMS and CRM tool, and it was fast to setup, and the Django admin application was an answered prayer.

But, the user interaction is limited to simple questionnaires that don’t require sign in or authentication or many of the other aspects of a ground up, custom-built web app.

If I were to build, say, a social-bookmarking site or a social network or some other user-focused project, I would go with Rails.

Rails, in my experience, allows for more rapid prototyping and pivoting.

And finally, consider your talent. Don’t go with Rails if you’re loaded with Python talent and don’t go with Django if you’re loaded with Ruby talent.

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WordPress plugins for SEO, Security and Performance

By Gunner Technology | August 10, 2010 9:22 pm | SEO, Web Development | 1 Comment
WordPress
Image via Wikipedia
If performance, SEO and security aren’t on your Web Development checklist, you’re failing your client. Here are some amazing plugins to help you out if you’re deving with WordPress.

Did I miss anything?

What else is on your checklist when developing a WordPress-based website?