Archive for August, 2013

Pulldown vs Bower, which is for you.

August 27th, 2013 No Comments

bower-logo

Recently Jack Franklin of JavaScript Playground and Tom Ashworth created Pulldown and it is pretty sweet. Now there is no better information on Pulldown vs Bower than the information in the projects README.md, I just wanted to quickly look at how you might start using one of the two today.

Both Bower and Pulldown are package managers. Meaning they allow you a quicker faster way of grabbing any dependencies you might need for a project. Rather then going to the jquery site and getting the source then coping and pasting it into a blank document and saving it from there. These two tools allow you to run simple commands and POOF, you have what you need.
(more…)

Staying up to date with the web

August 22nd, 2013 No Comments

It can be hard to stay up to date with what is going on on the web. If you are new to the web industry it can be a bit daunting trying to stay up to date when new technologies appear. I thought I might share a few of the outlets I use to keep up to date:

Podcasts

Shoptalk:
This is a great podcast hosted by Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert, it is really a question and answer show. The questions from people focus on stuff like “How do I become a web developer?”(the answer is just build websites by the way) to ways you might keep a local database in sync with a live database. They also record live, so if you can catch it, you can participate in the chat room as they are speaking with their guest.

Upfront podcast:
This is a newer podcast and it only runs about ~30-40 minutes. It is run by Jack Franklin and Ben Howdle. They focus mostly on front-end tooling and best practices, you can expect to hear about newer projects and technologies that are out there.

JavaScript Jabber:
This one is run by a bunch of people. It is pretty much exclusively focused just on javascript, talking about testing, various patterns and libraries. The panels are usually pretty large, so you do get a lot of different opinions, which can be nice.

The Creative Coding Podcast:
The creative Coding Podcast is all about…well creative coding. Hosted by Seb Lee-Delisle and Iain Lobb, they have not aired a new podcast in a while, but if you have a listen through the archive they are fun to listen to, and might inspire you to play around a bit more!

Happy Monday:
This is a pdocast that is more about how people work, hosted but Sarah Parmenter and Josh Long. The episodes are short and sweet, but talk to people about their motivations and experiences.

Bizcraft:
Bizcraft is all about the business of running a company. Hosted by Carl Smith and Gene Crawford it is some insight into how decision are made, or how they might deal with clients. It can be a really fun educational listen!

News Letters

JavaScript Weekly & HTML5 Weekly:
These are very similar in their content, but they are nice little weekly looks at what has been happening around the web. The latest breaking stories on browser specs or new best practices. They also post links to videos from recent conferences or talks, which is probably one of my favourite portions of the newsletters.

Sidebar:
Sidebar is small list of the best design links from the previous day. It covers web design and development, iOS design, UI and UX patterns and much more. It is a nice quick view, since not everything will be what you are interested in!