Code articles

HTML is one of the foundational building blocks of the Web. But just as web design best practices and techniques change over time, so does the code we use. As HTML evolves, some of its older markup has been deprecated while other parts have been repurposed. Does that create more problems for us, though? Would we be better off starting over so we can make sure we’re all working from the same language rather than trying to edit out the bits we don’t...

Sass – the extended arm of CSS; the power factor that brings elegance to your code. With Sass, it is all about variables, nesting, mixins, functions, partials, imports, inheritance, and control directives. Sass makes your code more maintainable and reusable. And now, I will show you how to make your code more structured and organized. The organization of files and folders is crucial when projects expand. Modularizing the directory is...

A hacked WordPress site is as damaging as having your home burgled. It can completely shatter your peace of mind and adversely impact your online business.  Why do hackers target WordPress sites? The answer is relatively simple: WordPress is the single biggest platform for website creation these days, so there’s a larger base to attack; this attracts the attention of online criminals.  So, how can a hack impact your website?  Depending...

One of my mottos in life, and in business is this: “If Google tells you to do something, you better get it done.” And when it comes to using HTML meta tags for SEO, none of us should be messing around. That said, you know how it is with Google search. The algorithms are always changing and what Google deems important one year easily falls by the wayside the next. Which is why some of the meta tags you might run into are nothing more than legacy remnants...

The short answer to the title question is “no.” The long answer is more complex, and begins with, “kindof…” There are several JavaScript alternatives for developers, but (for now) they have to be transpiled into JavaScript before they’re deployed. People Love to Hate JavaScript This is not a surprise, if we consider some obvious drawbacks of this programming language, including IEEE 754 Double Precision, the fact that a number...

If you own a website, you should have at least heard the term AMP before. If you haven’t, it’s likely you will hear more about it very soon. Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project has impacted the user experience of millions of mobile web users since its initial launch in 2015. Though primarily used to help website owners build interactive sites that load fast on mobile devices, this project never fails to impress with new and...

For those too young to remember, the Browser Wars entailed a tech rush by, among others, Netscape and Microsoft, resulting in useless features being implemented because they were fast to bolt-on, and useful features being rushed because they were hard. After the Browser Wars, the internet entered an era of stability as the last vestiges of the old web were mercilessly hunted down and destroyed by Google. Chrome and Chromium-based browsers...

With Instagram, Snapchat and other “young” social media platforms taking over the internet, Twitter still remains one of the most popular marketing channels. It has around 326 million active users per month which means that your target audience is likely using it. This is why you should at least consider using it as a marketing channel for your business. Having Twitter as one of the main marketing channels is not only going to help build...

When you’ve worked in the digital industry for long enough, eventually you’re going to have to work with code that you’ve inherited from someone else. Whether this is part of a handover process from another company, written by a developer that has since moved on or written by a freelancer, sooner or later you’ll find yourself sifting through line after line of code that you didn’t write. When this happens it’s easy to slip into a...

COBOL is a programming language that was originally designed in 1959, an era that many people might think of as being “before computers”. That’s not true, of course; they just didn’t have computers at home. The language is still being used by some businesses on giant mainframe computers. It’s a bit like Linux: people interact with it every day, they just don’t know it. The point here is simple: the world more or less runs on old code,...

DOMmy.js is a super-lightweight, standalone Javascript library, designed to work easily with the DOM and produce powerful CSS3 animations via JS. Full disclosure: I developed DOMmy.js. And in this tutorial I want to demonstrate how it can be used to keep your webpages nice and light. DOMmy.js has a very shallow learning curve; it’s even shallower if you have ever used an old-generation style framework such as jQuery or Prototype. DOMmy.js...

TL/DR: When you use eight values specifying border-radius in CSS, you can create organic looking shapes. WOW. No time to read it all ? — we made a visual tool for you. Find it here. During this year’s Frontend Conference Zurich Rachel Andrew talked about Unlocking the Power of CSS Grid Layout. At the end of her talk, she mentioned something about an old CSS property that got stuck in my head: The Image is set round just by using the well-supported...

CSS Grid and CSS Flexbox are complimentary web layout technologies that have been hotly anticipated for years. However, despite some superficial similarities they are actually used for very different tasks; they each solve a very different set of problems. In an ideal scenario, you may find that you employ both for different layout tasks. In this post we’ll look at their differences, look at how they solve various layout problems, and...

First let’s define what we mean by “Monolith” and “Microservice”. A monolithic architecture is built as one large system and is usually one code-base. A monolith is often deployed all at once, both front and end code together, regardless of what was changed. A microservices architecture however is where an app is built as a suite of small services, each with their own code-base. These services are built around specific capabilities...