HTML All The Things - Web Development, Web Design, Small Business

RSS | Spotify | Reddit

Patreon

Wednesday Dec 05, 2018

The Hustle

Wednesday Dec 05, 2018

In this episode Mike & Matt discuss the entrepreneurial hustle, focusing in on the online freelance game for web developers and designers.

Segment 1 - Freelancing Online

There are a lot of developers, writers, virtual assistants, and more that work freelance online
As a small business, we have experience getting work from freelancing websites and other site resources, however, please note that we work almost exclusively in the web development/design segment of the business so your mileage may vary if you’re freelancing in a different field
There are a lot of different websites and services that are set up for freelancers and their customers, most of them are basically job boards with full service solutions that contain various features such as:
- Portfolio Page: Set up a portfolio containing things like pricing per service, project showcase, history on the site (ie took successful jobs, their rating as a service providers, etc.), list of skills, and more
- Job Board: A list of jobs typically posted by potential customers, this job board generally has a bunch of topics ranging from app development to content writing. Customers can also post things like their budget, how much they’ve spent on the site with other freelancers - to judge how serious they are, and customers can also have a profile that proves how “legitimate” they are, or show off what other projects they’ve had done so developers have an idea of their expectations
- Payment Systems: A lot of these sites have some sort of payment system in-place that helps customers pay freelancers, and in turn, help freelancers get paid on time.
- Premium Services: Often times these sites are free to use, but have premium features that are for sale for customers and/or freelancers. Some of these premium features include: bidding for jobs (limited bids for free, freelancers can pay for more), premium job listing (appear at the top of search results)
Services we’ve used include: Guru.com, Freelancer.com, Craigslist, and Kijiji

Segment 2 - Our Experience w/ Freelancer Online Services

Guru.com
- We’ve applied to a few jobs on Guru without much success, however, we have had success via our portfolio on the site
- Once we listed our skills and experience on there, we generated a few leads from people contacting us right from our portfolio page
Freelancer.com
- This was the first freelancing site that we tried, it seemed really popular and active so we went in head first
- We tried starting with smaller jobs, $100 or less, and ended up scoring a low-cost small adjustment job which ended up being an entire mess of a situation - mostly because the customer had an issue with his account and because we didn’t take a look at how Freelancer charges for their services
Kijiji & Craigslist
- In the very beginning we tried to get some free advertising going in the “classifieds” space
- We took a look at what other people were posting on there in the web development space, most were quick $500 or less websites that were all-in
- Following in their footsteps we released a few different ads at different pricepoints, listing similar packages on our website
- This resulted in one long-term customer relationship from a person that called us from the ad, but wanted general development services - not the package that we had advertised
- We also got a call or two from people that wanted extravagant websites for extremely cheap, being offered $100CAD for an entire restaurant website at one point
- Craigslist did not result in any leads, only Kijiji in our experience

Segment 3 - Creating Projects

This was a very important step for us as it gave us skills and portfolio work that we could then show potential clients
We created Chrome Apps, Chrome Extensions giving us a niche area of focus
Web templates and snippets have us experience with basic html and css
Not only can projects potentially generate revenue if monetized but they refine and showcase many soft and hard skills such as project management and coding style
A big thing for us is looking at projects as a potential revenue generators but with a worst case outcome of being a portfolio item that presents and refines our skills
For us we always needed to keep the the timelines on these projects very tight otherwise we would get sidetracked and lose focus
- For Clicks to Riches we finished it within a week of intensive work
- For Html All The Things it was also only a couple weeks
- A project like Content Collector which has not been finished and is fully on the backburner suffered from loose timelines
The chrome app projects that we did directly affected getting our biggest client
Another flaw that we have when it comes to this is being hesitant to create a project:
- Based on how many similar solutions to something are out there
- Not knowing the audience well enough

Web News - Updates vs Stability

What do users prefer when it comes to their applications or operating systems receiving updates.
- Having the same version for long periods of time with no features added or optimizations made but great stability
- Having new features and optimizations every month or so but have the chance to lose stability
An example of fairly stable consistent operating systems with minimal updates would be iOS and partially android.
- They usually receive one large update a year with only minor security updates in between almost like a hybrid system
Windows on the other hand will receive updates almost weekly that seem to be fairly untested and large updates also come multiple times a year and have the potential to introduce massive issues like with the last large scale fall update deleting a users documents folder
Updates to platforms can also cause problems such as Webflow or Wordpress releasing updates which makes features and plugins behave differently.

You can find us on...

Wednesday Nov 28, 2018

Cross-Platform Web Development

Wednesday Nov 28, 2018

Matt's freshly back from vacation to discuss developing for multiple platforms using various tools such as Apache Cordova, React Native, and Ionic. Allowing developers to use what they're familiar with, and still make apps for a variety of platforms.

Segment 1 - When to Use/Not Use Cross-Platform Development

Cross Platform Web Development allows you to build apps in Javascript that you can then use as native apps on iOS, Android and even Windows
This allows developers that are already familiar with JavaScript to great native experiences without having to learn new languages
In some cases, like with Apache Cordova a team can use one single code base with some hooks for different platforms to build their application for the web, android and ios
This allows for more agile development and smaller development teams as you don’t have resources tied up in native app development
This issues arise when needing to perform complex multimedia tasks like constantly playing audio and video
As we’ve experienced heavy media tasks can cause crashes in webviews where native code might perform just fine
Just beware when decided to go with cross platform development because you can never simulate the performance of a native application, so if buttery smooth animations and lightening quick load actions are important to you, the native way is prefered
For a small business though, like a bakery or restaurant, if they want an application that resembles their website then using a cross platform framework is ideal because it can save them money and give them the functionality they desire

Segment 2 - Cross-Platform Technologies

Apache Cordova
- https://cordova.apache.org/
- Its free and open source
- A plugin that allows you to create native applications out of standard website code (HTML, JS, CSS)
- Provides developers the opportunity to create only one main code base for all platform
- Also the main advantages of cross platform technologies are they give you the ability to create a offline mode and access native api’s such as push notifications, file systems, etc
- It is necessary to create hooks that change how the application loads depending on if it’s on the web or if it's packaged as a native application
React Native and Nativescript with Vue.js
- https://facebook.github.io/react-native/
- https://www.nativescript.org/vue
- Both of these frameworks allow for development on both Android and iOS
- They use a very similar structure to their corresponding technologies with some minor differences when it comes to views, as xml is used to construct layouts
- Both use JS as their scripting language
- These frameworks allow developers that a familiar with React or Vue to build Native applications that perform very close to their Obj C or Java counterparts
Ionic
- https://ionicframework.com/
- Allows you to make web apps into desktop applications for both MacOS and Windows

Segment 3 - Progressive Web Apps

These are websites or web applications that with minor adjustments give the user native functionality straight for the browser
This doesn’t require you to have to build the application and package it for a specific platform (i.e Android, iOS), the newest browsers, safari and chrome both can auto detect if you have a progressive web app in the browser and the prompt the user of the functionality
To create a PWA there are only a few steps required:
- Site has to be HTTPS secured
- Page need to be responsive for mobile devices
- Page needs to use Service Workers to load URLS offline
  - A service work is a background script that can be created and tied to your webpage but which does not have access to your DOM elements
  - Through the service worker you can access the native API’s of you desired system like push notifications
  - They can also be used to process parallel tasks as service workers run on their own threads (cores)
- A Web App Manifest file which allows you to put information and image data for adding your application right to the users home screen on their device (like a real application)
- The site must be able to load ‘fast’ on a 3G connection
https://www.pwabuilder.com/
- Really interesting utility that allows you put in your websites URL and gives you a list of steps plus helps you create the necessary changes to make it a PWA
PWA’s I’ve used
- Twitter has a really good PWA, allowing you to not have to worry about installing another application
- Telegram message application has a good PWA that work on both PC and Mobile

Web News - Strict Learning

Disclaimer: We are not education experts in any way, we discussed this and wrote the notes below based on our personal experiences.
Schools seem to want you to do it right the first time, or risk losing marks, time, or electronic components in the case of our college labs
Meanwhile actual learning is supposed to be filled with mistakes and experimenting so that you can figure out what works and what doesn’t
Example: In college, we would receive a new set of components for our labs that would be conducted throughout the semester, however, we would receive a limited set of components - sometimes with spares, sometimes we’d only have one of each
- You could purchase more if they were in stock, but that’s expensive for a student
- These components are generally cheap electronic components - yet we were expected not to break them, or have a bunch of DOA components
- This discouraged messing around with circuits and caused a lot of checking over and over to ensure your circuit was correct before hooking it up to power
When we learn new web technologies we typically end up setting it up incorrectly a few times, and have plethora of errors throughout the process as we figure out how things should be working.
- This type of learning I find personally the best for understanding what you’re doing and what you can/can’t do with a piece of technology, however, this could get you docked valuable marks in school
The counter argument is that you should make all your mistakes before the test, however, in college especially, those “in-between” marks can add up to 10% or more of your overall grade depending on the class.

You can find us on...

Wednesday Nov 21, 2018

Front-End Developer Roadmap

Wednesday Nov 21, 2018

In this episode we dive into the the Front-End Developer Roadmap by Kamran Ahmed, going through all the technologies you need to learn from the basics, through the mastery phase of your career.

Segment 1 - Roadmap Discussion

We discuss the 18-20 main points of the developer roadmap
Source: https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap

Segment 2 - Update on HTML All The Things

Authentication for admins was added to edit the site
Pagination with infinite scroll was added
Major code refactoring
- Created components out of reusable code
- Got rid of redundant variable setting
Deployed database and server authentication on our Digital Ocean docker setup
Messed around with nginx configuration files

Web News - Microsoft Office vs Google Docs

Microsoft Office has a premium paid-for desktop experience in the form of the Office Suite (main programs: Word, Excel, PowerPoint) they also have a free Office Online counterpart that work at a basic level for editing, and allow people to view documents online
- This plugs into OneDrive (desktop app, web app, and mobile app)
- Both versions talk and work with each other
Google Docs has a similar offering, however, it is free.
- Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are the main programs within this suite.
- Integrate well with Google Drive and have collaboration features
- They have desktop “apps” if you’re using Chrome, as well as Chromebook apps and smartphone apps.

You can find us on...

RSS | Spotify | Reddit

Patreon

Wednesday Nov 14, 2018

Developing with Vue.js, Node.js, and MongoDB

Wednesday Nov 14, 2018

We've been hard at work, learning a new development stack on which the HTML All The Things website is built.

Note: Matt is on vacation for 1.5 weeks, this episode has been pre-recorded before his departure, some things that were discussed may have a different status (hopefully complete) upon the release of the episode.

Segment 1 - VueJS Frontend Development

Due to the nature of VueJS, we spun up an entirely new development environment
Switching from Notepad++ to Visual Studio Code w/ the Vetur plugin
Some of the most valuable/used parts of VueJS that we used include:
- Components - are like small pieces that makeup the website, placed in separate files and used over and over again, can be imported into each other (component inside a component)
- Scoped Stylesheets - limit the styles you're applying to the file you're writing them in, we limited many styles to specific components, allows you to use the same classnames and ids with completely different properties
Dynamic data was the most challenging part of using VueJS, not from a technical perspective, but more so from a procedural standpoint - not used to having them as apart of my workflow
Vuex, Vue Router, Axios
- Vuex is a state management solution in vue that allows all components to share data between each other
- We use it for storing our loggedIn status for our editing content
- Vue router is used for handling any routes so that we can navigate around our site

Segment 2 - Nodejs and MongoDB Backend Development

Nodejs
- Used as our server to serve webpage content from the Mongo Database and store content in the mongo database
- The server has be handle many calls to it that request things like:
  - Get all content
  - Get content of a specific type
  - Add content of a specific type
  - Delete content
  - Authentication
- These are standard server requests but still took some time to setup as we’ve never hooked in vue.js into Node, usually use the built in templating engines
MongoDB
- A alternative to sql that stores objects in json blocks
- Has great hookins into Nodejs using the Mongoose package
- Used to store our content block data and admin user account for editing the site
- Had to implement mongo admin and database users so that even if our site is hacked they can’t delete or modify the entire mongo database

Segment 3 - Digital Ocean and Docker Deployment

Digital Ocean provides a vps with an already installed Docker instance.
Docker is a way to create small virualizable containers for each technology in your stack
In our case we used docker to create 3 containers:
- Nginx - serve static files and proxy routes to Nodejs server
- Nodejs - run our server infrastructure
- MongoDB - runs our mondodb server that communicates with Nodejs
Had to learn how to create a docker compose file which is a configuration file for building your containers together and letting them know how to communicate
Everything is launched and built through a SSH into your digital ocean server. You have to be familiar with using a Command Line Interface (CLI)

Web News - Wrapping it Up

In this Web News we had a discussion regarding our current status (at the time of recording) in the development of the HTML All The Things website, as well as what to complete for deployment.

Wednesday Nov 07, 2018

Gathering Project Scope & Requirements

Wednesday Nov 07, 2018

Getting details from your customers can be a challenging experience, but it is vital so that you can deliver a complete produce on time.

Segment 1 - The Contact

There are a lot of way that customers can contact you
Some clients want to be hands-on, some want to hand over everything to you - the professional, and others get right to the point
Despite how many details these customers give you, every project has a unique spin on it, even if it seems run of the mill, this makes it vital that your communication is on point
Sometimes you need to resist customers requests/demands in order to deliver a complete and quality product (ie refusing to move forward on a project that hasn't had enough details communicated to begin accurately)

Segment 2 - Gather Project Requirements

Before sending the first quote we need to know what the client needs us to do
Ensure that you ask the right questions to get all the information you need, clients generally don't know how many details you need

When we work on a small business site some of the sample questions we might ask include:

How do your current clients find you?
If you have a site currently, what are some things you like about it, what are the things you really don't like
What is the intention with the new site, generate leads? Just a digital business card/a way to for people to find your phone number?
Who are your biggest competitors? And which of their sites do you like the most?
Do you have a database of products you want displayed on the site?
Do you want to be able to edit the main components of the site yourself?
How important is the google rank to you?
Do you see your website expanding in some way? Becoming a web app? Or growing a lot? Having a team of editors?

Generally you should gather details over a personal meeting or screen share
After gathering the details you can start creating the basis of the project including details on time to completion and what will be required
This is a major component in your quote for a client

Segment 3 - Changing Project Requirements

Changes can suddenly happen, even in the middle of a project
They can be brought on by customer preferences, market conditions, or company-wide strategy changes of some sort
When a project requirement changes, especially when it drastically changes from the original vision, it often falls to you as the creator to make the appropriate changes
It’s important to have a layout of what you’re willing to do with a client before you begin any work and to have a similar layout for what you're willing to do about changes that arise

Web News - What do yo want from a phone/Android launcher?

We all have different needs and wants from our mobile devices, they’re an extension of us and the main way the people communicate with one another these days
With that being said, they’re still mobile computers and can be used for a wide variety of tasks from working on the go, taking photos, chatting with friends, and much more.
With different use cases comes a variety of user preferences in terms of hardware and software
Are you a fan of Android fragmentation, or is there too much variation?

Apply to become our SubReddit Manager/Mod - matt_lawrence@digitaldynasty.ca

You can find us on...

Wednesday Oct 31, 2018

Responsive Design

Wednesday Oct 31, 2018

Responsive design has revolutionized how websites are developed, but static layouts still have their place. We explore these two different layout methods in this episode of the podcast.

Reference from Treehouse: https://blog.teamtreehouse.com/which-page-layout

Segment 1 - What is Responsive Design?

Responsive design responds to its environment, in the case of web design it’s specifically referring to how a website’s user interface responds to different window sizes and technologies available.
This gives us the ability to have a single design that changes and adapts to various devices from ultrawide PC displays, down to older smartphones.
It also allows users to make the most of the screen real estate they have
Responsive design makes the use of a variety of tactics that are generally found in CSS including: media queries, relative positioning, relative length units, whitespace
- Having two browsers snapped to each side of a 1080p display for more information, rather than always having a webpage open at full resolution
Responsive design makes the use of a variety of tactics that are generally found in CSS including: media queries, relative positioning, relative length units, whitespace

Segment 2 - How to Implement Responsive Design

CSS Responsive Tactics:
- Media Queries
  - Offer breakpoints to a design, allowing developers to apply design changes at a specific breakpoint, such as a certain max-width (probably most popular breakpoint)
- Relative Positioning
  - Position: relative;
  - Positioning absolute elements within a relative container and then controlling that relative container to automatically move the elements within the container
- Relative Length Units
  - Units that allow your elements to be responsive. These units are dynamic and change based on their environment
  - Unlike exact, or absolute length units which are (cm, mm, px, etc.)
  - 3 examples:
    - rem - relative to the font-size of the root element
    - % - relative to the parent element
    - Vw - relative to 1% of the width of the viewport
  - Reference link: https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_units.asp
- Whitespace
  - The space between elements (ie the space between columns)
  - It’s basically blank space on the web page
  - Responsive design uses this as a buffer zone to move elements around various elements
  - Filling a site up too much (minimal whitespace) requires space for elements to be displaced and the site will become too crowded on smaller screens (infinite scrolling, or a lot of pagination)
Main high-level CSS responsive tactics include: Flexbox, CSS Grid
Mobile or Large screen first design?
- It seems currently it’s more popular to design for mobile first and then create media queries for larger displays
  - This is useful if you are also designing for older browsers and want to use newer technologies like Grid of even Flexbox
  - Older browsers will see a mobile design (one column) while any larger screen or new browser can utilize the newer technology for a more advanced/easier to set up layout
- Traditionally we design for larger screen and adapted for mobile/smaller
  - This is still viable depending again on your audience, an older audience for example still prefers larger screens

Segment 3 - When to use Static instead of Responsive Design

Static layouts/static design is when the page is laid out in a fixed way
The elements on the page do not adjust to the screen resolution, or window changing size, generally, overflow is used in order to scroll all around the page
Older sites, especially those that appear left aligned and not fullscreen are done in a static layout, as they’re typically 640px or 800px wide and remain left aligned, if the screen shrinks below this point, as with a phone screen, the user must scroll around the design
Elements are generally not optimized for all platforms, which results in very small buttons, and text on high definition and mobile phone screens
Modern Static Design or Static Layouts
- We’ve experiences situations in which a single device, or a single type of monitor will be used, adding responsivity in any way would add additional development and testing time and obviously cost more money
- With a single screen in mind you can use the space at your disposal more effectively, have content blocks that perfects fill any available whitespace (within reason) and take advantage of any unique characteristics (ie notch)
- Industrial equipment is often like this, when they use a technology called PLCs to control them, generally an HMI (Human Machine Interface) is required to control it via a touch screen, with the web steadily expanding it’s not outrageous to assume that one day a browser version of an HMI may be used on these touch screens, which are all one specific size and don’t update like consumer products (remain the same for years, even decades)
When we first got into business we set out with the idea that we’d never make a static layout, all our websites were going to be mobile-friendly and responsive
- Even a few years ago when we opened, there was a lot of production websites that had either a static layout, or had a separate mobile site
- Today responsivity is the way to go and is generally cheaper and less clunky than an entire mobile website
- We wouldn’t recommend making something with a static layout unless it has a very specific fixed set of parameters that need to be met, or if it will exclusively be used on a specific display for years to come

Web News - Early Access Software/Games

Potential Issues:
- Developers don’t want the pressure of saying that it is version 1.0 because of the assumed amount of polish
- The developer getting paid and receiving free bug testing while in early access/beta doesn’t seem fair to the user/customer that is buying it
- The potential that you could pay for something but it never gets fully released
- Even if something is free but in beta like flutter.io a cross platform framework for android and iOS. It could be abandoned, and your efforts can be for nothing in learning it and helping with its feature development/bug fixing
Potential Benefits:
- The user can feel part of the development and evolving process of the software and when/if it is released will be more attached to the product
- Strapped for cash but talented developers have a chance to maybe release a MVP and work on it while receiving feedback and funding from the people using it
- A longer update cycle for applications/games because of constant funding
- User feedback can lead to new features and improvements as the system is not yet complete and it is easier to add/change something in this state

You can find us on...

Wednesday Oct 24, 2018

Developer to CTO w/ Azhar Zuberi

Wednesday Oct 24, 2018

We sit down with Azhar Zuberi to discuss his unique professional journey from developer to CTO of a startup.

Segment 1 - Introduce Yourself

Segment 2 - A little backstory

What would you say was the most important topic or lesson you learned in your schooling when it comes to being a developer?
How important was your first job as a developer in defining your coding style/knowledge base?
When first starting out what were the ‘popular’ technologies that you learned (i.e. angular, bootstrap, wordpress etc)

Segment 3 - Our connection

What was the reason you decided to choose us (Digital Dynasty Design) when we first started working together?
What is your workflow/process for working with and hiring off site/outsourced developers?
What are the benefits of having a small development team versus increasing funding and hiring a full staff?
What are some of the biggest challenges when have a off site/outsourced development team?
Our current development process has us using a very base Jquery, Bootstrap, JS, HTML and CSS stack. What were some of the reasons behind this vs using a more robust framework i.e. angular or react?

Segment 4 - Running a company

What are some additional responsibilities that you were not expecting when transitioning to being a CTO
What do you miss most about being just a contract developer
As CTO how important was it to have all those technical skills and years of work in a company and as a contractor
How did you learn the business side of your role as CTO and what is the most challenging part for you?

Web News - Incomplete Ecosystems

What is an ecosystem?
- A collection of software - typically from the same manufacturer - that all compliment each other
- A primary example would be iCloud storing all your contacts and other data from your iPhone for use on your Mac, or on a new iPhone if you need to sync them up
Ecosystems have been a key part of people’s workflow for the past few years
They’re often a key feature that people look for when they purchasing a device
- Apple’s ecosystem stands out in this particular example
There are a lot of ecosystems out there including: productivity, smarthome, etc.
Examples of incomplete ecosystems (rough notes/points of reference):
- Samsung has software primarily on the phone, such as Notes, Bixby, Email, etc. but has no clients for PC use, other than things that mirror or use the phone (ie SideSync)
- Microsoft’s is more focused on productivity (email, contacts, calendar, Cortana), but has no focus on smart home functionality (ie hardware). Windows Phone hardware is basically dead and therefore there is no mobile experience for Windows, with the exception of Android apps (which is a decent solution - but not as integrated as first party)
- Android has no full desktop experience (A Pixelbook doesn’t have all the pro software that Windows has, Google Assistant is on Google hardware, but not on Windows 10)

You can find Azhar via...

Contentlinq Website - www.contentlinq.com

Contact Email - success@contentlinq.com

LinkedIn - Profile Page

You can find us on...