MattBango.com Notebook

Customize Bash

Matt Bango — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:36:15 +0000

If you're anything other than a beginning web developer, chances are that you use a command line. I'm a big Apple fan and I don't even own a Windows machine anymore. That being said, I spend a lot of time in Terminal using SVN and especially if you develop in Ruby on Rails. In this post, I'd like to share a little trick that I learned on how to make Terminal easier on the eyes. It's a simple process that has some nice results.

Hover Zoom Effect with jQuery and CSS

Matt Bango — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:31:43 +0000

Recently I’ve been prototyping some interactive thumbnail effects for various projects. I’d like to share one of the effects with you and how I built it. It’s a nice looking effect that I’m calling “hover zoom” because it’s pretty self explanatory. I’ve seen similar effects to this one on a few sites here and there, [...]

Lessons Learned

Matt Bango — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:24:46 +0000

Web design and development is an ever evolving profession that is quite different than it was just a few years ago. It is a continually improving field and the competition is constantly growing more intense. If you want to stay with the best, you must improve your own skills. One exercise that I do every so often is to look back on my previous work and designs. I want to share with you some of my thoughts and lessons that I have learned in this exercise. Some of the lessons I'm about to share with you can be abstracted into life lessons and more than just development or design lessons.

Pure CSS Timeline

Matt Bango — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:22:34 +0000

I wanted to build a CSS timeline for the “About” section of my site while using some clean and simple markup. I wanted to avoid using images as much as possible, so I spent a few minutes prototyping some options and came up with a solution using unordered lists. The result is a simple and clean looking timeline with some very straight forward markup. In this article I'll share my approach to creating a timeline out of CSS and HTML which results in a nice looking, simple timeline.

Introducing iPhone as Art

Matt Bango — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:36:23 +0000

I have recently purchased a new iPhone 3G S and I’m hooked. I’m not sure why I haven’t made the plunge in earlier, oh wait, *cough* AT&T *cough*. I’ve been playing around with the iPhone SDK for a few months now, so I knew my way around the iPhone quite well. However, one feature caught [...]

OS X Workflow: Vertical Highlighting

Matt Bango — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:09:34 +0000

Quick Tip: Hold the 'Option' key in your text editor to be able to select text vertically!

As a web developer I spend a lot of time using a text editor, at least 6 hours a day. I know there are other developers out there who stare at the millions of pixels of letters as...

Prepared Statements in PHP and MySQLi

Matt Bango — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:33:17 +0000

This article is intended for readers who have experience using PHP and MySQL. You should also have a general understanding of databases and programming (both procedural and object-oriented) as well as how to use PHP to execute a simple query to MySQL. I will not cover how to install PHP or MySQL, however at the end of the article are some links to help you get started with the installation process and for some further reading on the subject. I will be covering the basics of prepared statements in PHP and MySQLi and why you should consider using them in your own code as well as some technical explanation as to why you should use them.

Free Shopping Bag Icon

Matt Bango — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:31:36 +0000

The other day I was creating an icon for an online shop, however it turns out that we ended up scratching the “Shopping Bag” idea. I thought I would share it with everyone instead of letting it sit idle in a folder somewhere on my hard drive. I will probably be doing this with icons that I make and end up not using in projects, so make sure you come back often to check! The icon can be used for personal use, but you need my permission to use it commercially (Read the Legal Notes).

Welcome to MattBango.com

Matt Bango — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 05:23:08 +0000

As you can see, the new MattBango.com is now up and running! MattBango.com is now my web development portfolio. A lot of you are use to seeing my photography site here, however it has been moved to MattBangoPhotography.com (update your bookmarks!). This Notebook section is where you'll find a lot of tutorials and news and hopefully some pretty interesting articles.