Last month at Secondwednesday I was asked to talk about the issue surrounding Native code vs web code for mobile apps. If you missed it or would like to use it for reference please see below. If you do find it's content useful and would like to reference I would appreciate a mention to @madebyscience | @m6tt.
Cheers and enjoy!
Quick tip for anyone struggling to add Roboto Light to their app. Before you start adding fonts to the assets folder, there is an easier way.
On phones runing 4.1 or higher you can use the following attribute in your layout.
android:fontFamily="sans-serif-light"
-co Matt
If, like me you have discovered the developer menu missing after getting a shiny new 4.2 update, here is how to re-enable it.
Need an Android Designer/Developer? I can help. I'm currently looking for freelance projects this year. I'm looking for awesome agencies in need of beautifully crafted Android apps.
Want to know more about how I can help, please get in touch.
-co Matt
One of the things I do the most on Android is handle the connectivity of my app. Forgetting to do this, or doing this incorrectly will at best create a user experience to be desired and at worst cause your app to force close without warning.
Finally a quality resource for Android app designers. Unlike iOS Android has always been less strict with it's UI guidelines, to some extent this is due to a lack thereof. Happily now we have them in abundance with the new Android Design Site
I am a huge fan of Google's AppEngine. It makes coding small or large sites in Python/Django an absolute breeze. When combined with Google Apps it makes setting up a new scalable website easy and very cost effective. Hypr is a micro blogging engine built specifically to run on AppEngine.
Using a mailto: link on your site is an open invitation for spam bots to fill your inbox. Luckily it's easy to avoid this with a small piece of javascript.
http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/
Incredibly sad news, Steve Jobs has passed away at the age of 56. Steve Jobs' genius gave the world some truly great innovations in technology and design. He is an inspiration to us all and will not be forgotten.
I remember the first time I sat down at a mac when I was 15. I had never seen a more beautiful and intuitive computer. I knew from a young age I wanted to create, to "make stuff that does stuff" but until this moment I didn't know for sure how I should do that.
The work Steve jobs has done at Apple has had an irreversable influence in shaping my passion and for that I am greatful.
My deepest sympathy and condolences to his friends and family. Rest in peace Steve Jobs.
Since I have started using Toto to power this blog I have wanted a way to tweet my new posts automatically and couldn't find a nice solution, until now.
Two weeks ago I finally downloaded iA Writer by Information Architects. It's an app I have admired from a far for a long time. I was expecting it to be good but not this good.
A tiny jQuery plugin to help with your Media Query development. When I was getting to grips with media queries and which ones I should use for what devices I found it difficult to work out which media query I was currently looking at. I tried a few things such as setting a different background color for each mq. This worked up to a point, but it distracted with the styling I was doing. So I wrote a quick script to help.
Clearfix is a solution to prevent elements that contain floated elements from forgetting what height they are. It's a common problem when developing a web page and clearfix solves it by using the :before and :after pseudo selectors to clear the inner float and give the parent element back it's dignity.
As part of less-boilerplate I have written HelpLess. A full featured helper library to make your LESS coding even more of a breeze.
A few months ago I started developing with LESS. LESS by @cloudhead is an extension of CSS that adds dynamic behaviour to your stylesheet markup. LESS is completely backwards compatible with CSS, it adds variables, mixins, functions, nested declarations and more.
These days text renders pretty nicely in most browsers. However I think it could be even nicer. This is a little trick to add extra crispness to your web pages text.
I love html5-boilerplate and have been using it for months now. Almost every project I do starts its life with createproject.sh. I also love LESS. I felt it was time the two met.
And so I give to you less-boilerplate. A LESS based version of html5-boilerplate that compiles LESS to CSS with the build tool.
After months of actively avoiding writing anything for my previous blog I have decided it's time to start afresh.
Over the past few weeks I have repeatedly found myself wanting to put a quick post together to talk about the things I have been discovering in the world of web development.