It has been almost three months since I first released my Prerelease of The jQuery Course. I feel I owe it to everyone to talk about the development of the course. Happily all the news is good news!
Signing on Karl Swedberg as Editor
Over the next month, I will be finishing the course with Karl Swedberg as editor. He is the author of the Learning jQuery Book and also the creator of the Learning jQuery blog…
One area a lot of us developers like to worry about is personal productivity tools. When I think about all the time I’ve wasted on finding out the best tools for the job, I wonder.. why am I wasting all this time? The reason is because I’ve lost site of, “The Mission”.
The Key to Productivity, “The Mission”
The first, biggest key to productivity is to define your underlying philosophy of why you do what you do…
This article is the all-encompassing thought train of me wrestling with the overarching concept of organizing and sharing knowledge online. I’m building an application that deals with these very concepts, so consider this market research that you get to listen to and take part in via the comments.
What do we organize and share online?
There are a few things that a person shares online…
Note: Normally I write solutions to problems, but this a problem I have no solution for. By explaining it I believe it will still be educational and therefore worth publishing.
The project I’m working on at the moment is in Groovy. In order to set JSON on page load, you have to escape either single quotes or double quotes.
var myJSON = ‘this is the cat\’s first day in Marc\’s house’; // JavaScript string
With groovy, you can cast something as JSON and set it to the view pretty easily…
Every good developer has their own independent visions, but even when visions line up developers chose to build independently instead of together. College students don’t seem to have this problem, but anyone seasoned in their career will only work for money or so it seems. The risk is gone, the emotion, the drive, the opportunism to create something new that drives new businesses goes away…
A very fundamental part of JavaScript is the if statement. One thing that gets people all up-tight is using ternary operators and not using curly brackets in your JavaScript. Some argue that it isn’t readable. In this article I’ll show you what practices I use and hopefully you can give me your thoughts.
Normal if statements
Nothing special here, just a normal if statement.
foo = "bar";
if ( foo == "bar" ) {
foo = "something";
} else {
foo = "somethingElse";
}
If statements can be written without curly brackets
foo = "bar";
if ( foo == "bar")
foo = "something";
else
foo = "somethingElse";
What people don’t like about this is if you need to do another action inside the if statement, then you have to manually go back and wrap it in curly brackets…
Before jQuery 1.4, you had to specify the dataType in all of the types of ajax requests.
$.get(url, data, function, "html/json/xml..");
$.post(url, data, function, "html/json/xml..");
$.ajax({
…
dataType: "html/json/xml.."
});
Now, you can have the server respond with the mime type like application/json and jQuery will automatically switch the dataType for you! This makes more sense because the server is the one sending the response, jQuery is only handling it…
jQuery Essentials on Slideshare – View more presentations from Marc Grabanski
Want to download the presentation? PDF of jQuery Essentials
…
It can be a pain to create HTML elements in JavaScript. In this article I will outline a few ways I deal with HTML. First, we’ll look at whether to use an HTML string or a jQuery object, then look at my little HTML string builder utility and finally get some links to templating libraries for building more complex HTML.
HTML String, or jQuery Object?
The first question you have to ask yourself is whether or not it makes sense to build out HTML as jQuery objects, or if you require the speed of building strings…
When I started learning Ruby, managing gems was a huge problem to the point I would make fun of it. Now I use RVM which helps you install multiple versions of ruby on one computer. Not only does it do that, but it makes gem management a breeze as well! Beyond RVM, Rails 3 provides us with bundler, which allows you to install gems based on a list of dependancies automatically. Very slick…
BBQ: Back Button & Query Library
Source: http://benalman.com/projects/jquery-bbq-plugin/
Leverages the HTML5 hashchange event to allow simple, yet powerful bookmarkable #hash history. In addition, jQuery BBQ provides a full .deparam() method, along with both hash state management, and fragment / query string parse and merge utility methods.
ColorBox: Lightbox
Source: http://colorpowered…
Marc Grabanski
Marc Grabanski is a professional web developer out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He currently runs a consulting company and is partnered with local businesses to create startup companies.
Technical Abilities
Marc’s technical skills are focused towards user interface development (JavaScript / CSS / HTML), but also spans across a wide range of technologies and skill-sets. He runs a blog titled, “Jack of All Trades Web Development” and is currently focusing on sharpening his skills with web application development…
Ajax Messages
Javascript/Ajax, PHP, MySQL, CSS, XHTML
Ajax Messages is a demonstration of the power of Ajax.
Clean Calendar
Javascript, CSS, XHTML
Clean Calendar is a DHTML date picker with very clean code.
Fisheye Menu
Javascript, CSS, XHTML
Fisheye Menu is inspired by the MacOS doc.
Clean Form Validation
…
Category: JavaScript & jQuery Tags: jQuery, jQuery UI
During the prerelease of The jQuery Course, you’ll get early access to 61 minutes of video training for $25. You will also receive the final course content when it’s ready for no extra charge.
Prerelease of The jQuery Course
Video outline
Setting out to create "The jQuery Course"
Teaching has been huge a passion of mine…
During the prerelease of The jQuery Course, you’ll get early access to 61 minutes of video training for $25. You will also receive the final course content when it’s ready for no extra charge.
Prerelease of The jQuery Course
“I bought this video series the moment it has been released because ive loved your previous tutorials on your blog. From the perspective of someone who has only ever lightly used javascript / jQuery its been great so far and i would highly recommend it…
Category: Communication & Reading Tags:
Being a great web developer is not something you just "fall" into. It takes time, perseverance and an ability to sift through information like crazy to find out exactly what you want to do it and what the best way to do it is. Software always changes, so being great in a sea of changes is about creating the changes and improving yourself, first…
Being a great web developer is not something you just "fall" into. It takes time, perseverance and an ability to sift through information like crazy to find out exactly what you want to do it and what the best way to do it is. Software always changes, so being great in a sea of changes is about creating the changes and improving yourself, first.
We web developers learned from each other how to be web developers…
Category: Business & Management Tags: Business
Introspection and reflection on the last few years of being a "balls to the wall" entrepreneur, I’ve studied and found a few commonalities of successful people and the ability to accumulate wealth. Of course, I’m generalizing the word "success" here.
Introspection and reflection on the last few years of being a “balls to the wall” entrepreneur, I’ve studied and found a few commonalities of successful people and the ability to accumulate wealth. Of course, I’m generalizing the word “success” here.
Successful employees and entrepreneurs do what they love doing, or at the very least, something they feel makes an impact and difference in the world around them…
Category: Tips & Random Tags: HTML5
Google Ajax API does location lookup, so it makes it a great fallback for the native HTML5 Gelocation API. Of course, the fallback will never get near the same accuracy as GPS lookup, because it does a lookup on your ISP, but it is at least able to get you in the ballpark as a fallback.
Include Google AJAX API with your api key and then go ahead and use this code…
Google Ajax API does location lookup, so it makes it a great fallback for the native HTML5 Gelocation API. Of course, the fallback will never get near the same accuracy as GPS lookup, because it does a lookup on your ISP, but it is at least able to get you in the ballpark as a fallback.
Include Google AJAX API with your api key and then go ahead and use this code.
@ javascript
@
You then have access to the user’s location with the "myLocation" variable and can take it from there…
Category: JavaScript & jQuery Tags: jQuery, jQuery UI
In this tutorial we’ll build a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game as a fun and simple project to learn jQuery grep, queue/dequeue, delay and animation as well as jQuery UI draggable, droppable, effects and button.
View the jQuery Game
I grabbed the ninja turtle sprites and renamed them and organized them into folders…
In this tutorial we’ll build a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game as a fun and simple project to learn jQuery grep, queue/dequeue, delay and animation as well as jQuery UI draggable, droppable, effects and button.
View the jQuery Game
I grabbed the ninja turtle sprites and renamed them and organized them into folders. The animated sprite of april is off another site.
Download Just the Images
First, lets setup a couple global variables and put our “good guys” and “bad guys” information in an array of objects…
Category: JavaScript & jQuery Tags: jQuery
A fairly random trail of interesting jQuery bookmarks.
jqFancyTransitions slideshow – fancy effect
jQuery 1.4 API Cheat Sheet – nice cheat sheet
jQuery Grid Layouts – haven’t used this, but I think it is cool.
jQuery Hot Keys – might need to target key combos with JavaScript?
File Style Plugin – for styling those pesky file upload elements
Flot Charts – pure JavaScript charting library that will work on iPhone – check out google’s charts too…
Category: Tips & Random Tags: HTML5, Future, 3D
After watching Jesse Schell’s presentation on the future of gaming:
I’ll summarize from memory in case you don’t have time to watch it:
Category: Business & Management Tags: My Work, Business
Despite putting the last two years into building products and clientele, I am still living in a cold basement of a house that I don’t own. I am not giving up, though. Here, I will document the main struggles I’ve had in each step of building products on the web.
Planning
Nothing goes as planned. You can have a well thought-out and orchestrated plan, but it won’t happen that way unless you are copy-catting other people or have built something really similar in the past…
Category: Marc Grabanski's Work Tags: My Work
Since this website is dedicated to documenting my career, I figure I’d better take a look at the last 11 months which have been quite inspiring.
The company I started now has a strong team and we are ready to swing for the fence next year. We have gained 20+ clients, with 30+ projects which all have been delivered on time and on budget…
Category: JavaScript & jQuery Tags: jQuery, Books
If you haven’t heard of or read jQuery Enlightenment, then you probably should go subscribe to more jQuery blogs, this one has been posted everywhere. Simply because this book is an excellent read with excellent examples, worth the $15 purchase. It has live links to code examples you might need down the road.
And no, I wasn’t paid to do this post…
Category: Linux & Server Admin Tags: Security, Linux
A friend of mine, elliot swan got hacked. One of his JavaScript files had been modified to contain some sort of advertisement. Here are a few things you can do to lock your server down, starting with simple tips and getting more advanced at the bottom.
You're looking at my set of tools. The custom search engine helps me find the answers to questions more quickly. The RSS aggregator keeps me updated with industry news that matters. And, in the near future, I plan on documenting the major steps and considerations used in SEM as a check list (although it will also work well as a list of tutorials).
While I built (and am improving) the above tools for myself, it seemed like a waste to keep them to myself. After all, good will breeds good will, and perhaps you'll even help me find more great blogs to follow.
In the name of good karma, all my outgoing links on this site are followed. Treat others as you wish to be treated, right? Besides, I think the authors who we read daily deserve all the thanks (links) we can give.
I hope you find the SEM News feed and the free SEO search tool helpful.
- Brett at SEMNewsDaily.com
