freshmade

Bootstraps and Boilerplates!

jack — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 04:56:40 +0000

Bootstraps and Boilerplates, an intro into common and feature rich UI frameworks. When you're beginning a new project what features are you most commonly looking for and why? This should hopefully serve as a great template for when to use which and why.
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An Easy Geek Holiday Wishlist

jack — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:07:41 +0000

Every year the holidays edge closer and I am just awful at letting my family know what I'd like for gifts, a wishlist if you will. So a few years back I decided to somewhat automate the process. As I work online I generally see things I'd like on different sites and bookmark them to potentially purchase at a later date, I started tagging links with xmas2010 that year and then I could easily pull the list out and email it to my relatives, then it struck me, I'm taking too many steps there, I should just aggregate that info on my personal site. I've used this method with really good success and decided I should let you know about it too! Without further ado, a Geeks Holiday Wishlist!

Okay, so let's start by setting up a file that will return some links.
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The Bundle Trend, and How YOU can Benefit

jack — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 04:53:54 +0000

If you work in design, development or even print you've probably heard about a Bundle deal or a dozen. So what is so great about Bundles? The Bundle effect I first fell in love with was MacHeist, you got a ton of really awesome apps for one low price! In my mind they were really the trendsetter in this market but a ton of really awesome deals have been popping up the past few years. I know, I really didn't mention what was so great about them, in short they help smaller shops and indie developers get their apps out there in front of a much wider audience. This helps them pocket some cash for their hard work and efforts while the Bundle purchaser gets an awesome app at a tremendous discount!
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Compatibility Mode Sucks, And Here’s Why

jack — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 21:15:33 +0000

Microsoft in it's infinite wisdom decided that you as a developer should be able to check development using an older version of their rendering engine. Developer rejoiced in this idea and figured that it would make things awesome from this day forth for the worlds most widely used browser. Compatibility Mode was born, but the issue is that it doesn't actually work as promised *sadface*.
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Code Hoarding and other Nonsense

jack — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:15:10 +0000

Code Hoarding. Over the lifespan of a production website it's easy when refactoring or doing some design updates to toss old code into a folder for later use, that we will never look at again. Or when we notice the myriad of folders like _old, archive2009, _red-site and so on we begin to feel a tad disgusted, yet still don't clean it up.
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Do You Like Snippets?

jack — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 15:40:44 +0000

As I'm ramping back up to get back into writing I'm looking for suggestions on the type of content you are interested in. I've been meaning to start publishing more snippets and such but am also wanting to hear more about what types of posts you like. Is it screencasts? Perhaps more software or services reviews? Let me know, don't be shy.
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User and Touch Friendly Multiple Select Boxes

jack — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 02:53:06 +0000

I've done it folks, I've single-handedly fixed the internet! Okay, not the internet as a whole but form interaction! Okay, just multiple select drop downs but it's a start in the right direction.
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An apology for my absence

jack — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:36:12 +0000

I've been immersed in projects the past few months and unable to get anything really written for the site, I plan to return as soon as I can! In the meantime feel free to prompt me on the contact page with ideas of what you'd like to read about an I will be sure to get on that as soon as possible!
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Enjoy Low Carb Alpha PNG

jack — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:48:17 +0000

I got a tip from Noah Rosenberg at happyMedium on an app I'd been overlooking for quite some time. That app is imageAlpha and it's a companion to the wonderful app imageOptim that I've used for the past few years.

So what's so great about imageAlpha?
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Adobe CS6 Pricing Model Update

jack — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:17:00 +0000

Adobe CS6 and Creative Cloud has been announced, and I'm fairly excited. Adobe is getting ready to push out their latest and greatest Creative Suite and now there are options over the usual Arm and a Leg pricing tier. This can be a really good thing for freelancers and lean shops in the coming months! The old model for freelancers and professionals alike was "Oh, yeah, it's been 6 months so it's time to shell out another $500+ for the new Creative Suite." but it looks like Adobe is going to offer their products as a subscription.
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Slicy by MacRabbit with Retina Goodness

jack — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:39:23 +0000

Looks as though the team over at MacRabbit has done it again. Brilliant app that takes a lot of headache out of exporting multiple images from Photoshop. That brilliant app is called Slicy! And if you haven't experienced the polished apps of MacRabbit yet head over to my earlier review of Espresso IDE.
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Using Data-Attributes in HTML5

jack — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 04:06:31 +0000

Today we're going to talk about HTML5 Data-Attributes and how you can leverage them with ease. I was working through an idea to help a friend do some sorting for some list items in a portfolio and I tried to attack it purely with css classes and remembered that there is great power in utilizing HTML5 to ease the burden.
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Rookie Flights: RC Tricopter

matt — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:28:45 +0000

Yesterday, I was invited out for a little afternoon flying, with my friend BJ Pennovich, who flies and builds remote controlled planes and copters. I have been wanting to build and fly a tricopter for aerial shots with my GoPro, not to mention they just look fun. So what happens when you mount a GoPro to a tricopter? Well that all depends on who's holding the controls. More after the jump.
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Integrating LESS into WordPress

jack — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:38:19 +0000

I put together the followup screencast to the previous one on Installing Wordpress via Command Line. Now we'll be going over how to supercharge your Wordpress Theme development using CSS Preprocessors, I'm using LESS in this instance.
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Add Some Muscle to Your GoPro

matt — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:57:00 +0000

As a video equipment nerd, I've come to love the GoPro HD and HD2 cameras. Small, light, versatile cameras that can be seemingly placed anywhere you might want to share a point-of-view from. These little gems seem to dominate the action camera market and there is plenty of gear to get your hands on to enhance the experience.
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Sublime Text 2

jack — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 06:52:18 +0000

Okay, it took me a little time to get around to checking out Sublime Text 2 but I finally caved after seeing Jeffrey Way use it so exclusively in his Screencasts. I previously wrote about Chocolat as a great replacement for TextMate, and I haven't given up on them as the beta keeps getting better and better but there is a huge appeal for Sublime Text 2 growing in the coding community.
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Hands on with LiveReload 2

jack — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 05:50:34 +0000

After a few evenings working on a responsive redesign of the site using LiveReload 2 I have been nothing but impressed, I was using it lightly during the open beta period but they ended up releasing a polished product that is unrivaled. Now I'm sure a lot of folks are thinking "Heck, how much time are you really saving by not needing to hit refresh?" (or Command+R, F5 depending on environment) but when you're working on an intricate project you find yourself nearly wearing out those keys, this can help out tremendously.
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WordPress Install via Command Line

jack — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:06:34 +0000

Okay, in an effort to somewhat diversify the content on the site I'm putting together a couple of screencasts. This is a fairly simple tip to get you up and running in Wordpress using the Command Line, this will save you a ton of time over using FTP, trust me. So let's jump right into the video and extra info you may be searching for.
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Customize the WordPress Tweet Button Text

jack — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 04:20:32 +0000

The Tweet button is popping up in Wordpress themes left and right, of course this is a fairly simple thing to accomplish. There are a few schools of thought on the best way to implement the two I'm going to give you a few defaults but also show you how I leverage Wordpress Custom Fields to provide an easily controllable option.
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Getting started with CSS Media Queries

jack — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:10:49 +0000

I had a truly geek moment. I sat literally on the edge of my seat at AEA in 2010 while Ethan Marcotte unstoppablerobotninja.com and known on Twitter as @beep spoke of flexible and responsive design and how he incorporated css media queries to make a flexible and responsive site. When he pulled up robot-or-not.com as his freshly created demo site I can actually remember leaning over to the guy next to me and stating with the utmost certainty "This shit is going to turn front-end dev on its fucking ear." after that I had a tough time focusing on nearly anything else.

I of course tried to take it back to my company at the time and see if there was ANY way to leverage it with any current or upcoming clients, but alas it was not quite ready for prime time. However, it was fully ready for what we consider progressive enhancement! If we followed the ideals of progressive enhancement we could use certain technologies straight away and the hell with IE, the fallback is the same desktop page they're already seeing!
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In Browser Debugging Tips

jack — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:10:28 +0000

Okay, so two very mainstream options out there for browser debugging are going to be Webkit Inspector (found in Safari & Chrome) and Firebug (a Firefox Plugin). Both function in similar ways and have a lot of benefits when debugging …
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