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While going open source might be a good choice, you'll also need to invest in the right community. GitHub is one of the best places to do this, not only because of the sheer amount of users who visit the site, but also because of the features that GitHub offers. If you find an open source app on GitHub, I'll show you a few things you can do with it, including viewing, editing, and forking the code.
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In our final lesson in this jQuery for Beginners tutorial series, we’re going to take a brief look at jQuery UI - the most widely used jQuery plugin for adding graphical user interfaces to web apps. From fancy forms and visual effect, to draggable widgets, spinners and dialog boxes – jQuery UI gives you the power to create rich web UIs.
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Many people have realized the importance of learning how to code as a life skill. No matter where you go, and what job you have, it’s always seen as in a positive light if you know how to work some code, even if that’s not your profession. As this importance increases ever more, there are plenty of new initiatives to get kids to learn code in school. While it’s great to see them, you can take control of your coding education by taking some steps on your own.
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As we near the end of our jQuery mini-tutorial series, it's about time we took a more in-depth look at one of the most used features of jQuery. AJAX allows a website to communicate with a server in the background without require the entire page to reload. From Facebook-style infinite status streams to submitting form data, there's a million different real life situations in which this technique can be useful.
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Today we're going to kick it up a notch and really show where jQuery shines - events. If you followed the past tutorials, you should now have a fairly good understanding of the basic code structure of jQuery (and all the horrible curly braces that go with it), as well as how find elements of the DOM and some of things you can do to manipulate them. I also showed you how to access the developer console in Chrome and how you might use it to debug your jQuery code.
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jQuery is arguably an essential skill for the modern web developer, and in this short mini-series I hope to give you the knowledge to start making use of it in your own web projects. In the first part of our jQuery tutorial, we looked at some language fundamentals, and how to use selectors; in part 2, we moved on to methods of manipulating the DOM. In part 3, we'll tackle the problem of how to delay jQuery until the page has loaded.
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Last week, I talked about how important jQuery is to any modern web developer and why it's awesome. This week, I think it's time we got our hands dirty with some code and learnt how to actually make use of jQuery in our projects. I'll say this now - you don't need to learn Javascript in order to use jQuery. It's probably best if you think of jQuery as an evolution of Javascript.
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jQuery is a client-side scripting library that nearly every modern website uses - it makes websites interactive. It's not the only Javascript library, but it is the most developed, most supported, and most widely used. It's one of the building blocks of any modern website. But what exactly is jQuery, what makes it so popular, and why should you care about it if you're starting out as a web developer?
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Times are tough, and as society moves increasingly towards digital services and everything online, there is never a lack of jobs for those with tech skills. If you’re sitting there thinking “you know, I really ought to learn some new skills”, then peruse this list and find something that appeals to you. You never know – [...]
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Skilled programmers have been in high demand for years now, and it doesn’t look like that demand is about to go down anytime soon. But even if you don’t intend to make a living as a professional programmer, being able to code proficiently is going to come in handy in any computer-related job – even as a manager. But if you’re reading this, I probably shouldn’t have to tell you why becoming a coder is a good idea. You already know.
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For the average kid, computers and smartphones are fun tools. Education comes much later. Getting a kid excited about programming might take some doing because logic needs a bit of time to develop. It is imagination and creativity which arrive first. That’s where the crux of these ten tools lie…using creative tools to get children excited about programming.
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One of the entries on my New Year resolutions this year is to learn how to code. With it being October tomorrow, I am rapidly running out of time if I am going to make the December 31st deadline for getting started. But my procrastination is partly due to the fact that I look upon [...]
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As everybody who is reading this now is likely to be a geek, it's easy to imagine there is no such thing as a noob these days. This is far from the truth. In fact, at the end of last year it was estimated that only around one-third of the world's population had access to the Internet. This means that around 4 billion people aren't online, and most of those will also not have the first clue about computers.
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Yaara recently wrote an article detailing six basic tech skills everybody should possess. It's a great read, both for those just starting out on their journey into geekdom and for those of us who merely know computer noobs. And we all know at least one at some point in our lives, don't we? Whether it's an elderly parent eager to Skype or a child cajoled into signing up to Facebook.
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Plain text and code editors are certainly nothing new to the iPad - but the Kodiak PHP IDE brings to the table one incredibly powerful feature: the ability to actually run your code, offline, on your iPad. It’s also an incredibly slick code editor, as you’d expect. Let’s take a look at what makes Kodiak stand out. The app is on-sale for $4.99 for a limited time, before going up to full price of $9.99. This app couldn’t come more highly recommended.
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