Admin, Author at Happy Gooner

A valuable new JS animation library

There are so many new framework, plugins and tools out there which a web developer needs to keep more than an eye out for. It’s a pretty exhausting process. Your focus is on keeping your boss and clients happy but you need to find the time to try new stuff out and find out ways to streamline and improve your workflow. Some of the new stuff works for you, and others pass you by. I’ve recently stumbled across GreenSock and I was immediately taken by what it had to offer. GreenSock is a GreenSock, the light, but powerful JavaScript framework which makes it easy to animate HTML elements.

I enjoy learning about JavaScript so I was keen to give GreenSock a go. I like it very much. The extensibility is fantastic and the plugin library is robust. The ease of use, clear documentation and community support has made GreenSock a benchmark product. I sense it will save me a good few hours of work going forward.

I did spend time learning Flash in the past but when the entire industry shifted to JS and CSS based transitions there were very few libraries who gave same performance. GreenSock appears to have filled the void. It quickly helps you give your web pages a polished look. It’s not open source, which is not a great concern at the moment for me. There is an option to upgrade and pay a yearly feel for some bonus plugins. I won’t upgrade yet but I’m sure it’s something I’ll consider in the future.

I’ve created a website to showcase the projects I intend working on during the coming weeks. I hope you’ll return and give me feedback when I have built up a few projects.

A horrible, horrible fixture

Yep, pretty much as expected, Sunday lunchtime was not particularly relaxing. I love my lazy Sunday’s but this day won’t linger long in the memory. The NLD was similar to the last one and the one before that. Ultimately, I was content with the point and I expect many fans from both sides felt the same. Maybe we can just settle for a point apiece for each fixture and avoid all of this angst and worry.

Tottenham did start very well. It took us a good 20 mins to get our passing game going and even during our good periods, we never look completely at ease and settled. The likes of Dembele and Wanyama squeezed the life out of the midfield, Rose and Walker pushed back Walcott and Iwobi and even our dominant central defensive partnership looked fallible. It was a frustrating game to watch. We never played with any fluency or composure. Always rushed, always under pressure on the ball. Even ahead at half-time, I was never confident. The equalizer was deserved and the poor tackle made my Koscielny which led to the penalty, was an clear demonstration of his poor judgement during the game.

But I’m probably not the person to give a measured, informed match report. I switched off the TV with 25 mins to go. I sensed it would end in tears for me and I couldn’t stomach witnessing their winner. I got on my MacBook and caught up with some work emails. I nervously glanced at a the BBC website, expecting to hear of a Kane winner but thankfully the scoring was over for the match. I’d make an awful competitor on the pitch. Bailing out at the first threat of a looming defeat. I’ve missed many a goal over the years as I retreated to the concourse at Highbury and latterly at the Emirates due to a fear of seeing us concede a late winner. A clear lack of bottle and stomach for the fight.

The one big fear is that in April, the return fixture is set to have huge ramifications for the title race. They’ll only be three games left after that game. Our last game at White Hart Lane. Where we have won more titles than Spurs. The atmosphere will be hostile (unlike the Emirates which was again hosting a sedate affair) and it’s going to be one hell of a match. A shame then that I’ll probably be going for a stroll in my local park, many miles way from a TV.

A website updated

They say a week is a long time in the world of politics, but the pace of change in the field of web development is incomparable. The speed of change in the world of front end web development is often bewildering and difficult to keep up with. I put the finishing touches to my first site about eight months ago. It really does seem like a lifetime ago. It’s difficult to comprehend the difference in the way that site was built and how my new site was structured.

It’s gratifying to see a real demonstration of how much I’ve learnt in the past year. Thinking back to how I built my first site, I’m amazed by just how I made things difficult for myself. There were a large array of css files, each individually linked to the head of the HTML file. In fact there were no less than 18 CSS files. The main CSS file stretched to over 1,200 lines with the media queries placed at the bottom. The site was responsive……to a degree. Looking back it’s a wonder that working on the site didn’t lead me to the brink of insanity. I had made a token attempt to use SASS to try and bring a little order structure of the file system, but it was a half-hearted attempt at best.

It was a similar story with respect to my JavaScript files. Bloated files were linked to the master html file and plugins were used to perform simple actions which I could have coded myself. Images were not properly compressed and how the site would download successfully without a long delay, will always remain a mystery to me. The html file was made up of a vast collection of classes and ID’s which would have perplexed the most experienced web developer. It was frankly a mess.

For my new site, I used Gulp as my choice of build system. I minified my CSS and JavaScript files and all were concatenated into single CSS and JS files which are linked to my index html file. SASS has been used in a much more measured and structured way, which has helped to simplify my workflow greatly. Using media queries in each individual SCSS file has been a joy. Images have been compressed and I’m sure my site will download a lot quicker. CDN’s have been utilised where possible and using an autoprefixer has saved me a time and a fair degree of pain. The plumber plugin has helped deal with the inevitable errors and setting up a live server has further improved the speed of my workflow. And finally, with experience, my HTML file is now a lot leaner and semantic.

I have no doubt that in eight months from now, when I work on another refresh of my site, I’ll laugh at the primitive work environment I’ve set up. But for now, I’m enjoying coding a whole lot more than was the case during the start of the year. I hope you enjoying viewing my new site.

Who’s looking forward to the NLD?

Probably the neutral fan. It rarely fails to excite, usually goals, often produces drama and a red card is likely (especially if Xhaka plays). But I can’t say I ever enjoy the games, as I wrote last year.

At least we’re playing well on this occasion. All of our top players are playing well and we definitely have the momentum behind us. I enjoyed Tottenham’s performance at Wembley a great deal. It could hardly have gone better. Low morale, ongoing injury problems to key players, a manager who’s losing his mojo and a fanbase who are frankly panicking at the prospect of coming over the Emirates. Forget all that nonsense about ‘form going out of the window’ when it comes to local derbies. This is really set up for us to put down a marker for the coming months. We’re fully prepared mentally and physically for a sustained, competitive title challenge. Spurs are likely to accept a battle for a Europa Cup place is a more realistic goal. What joy to see them return to playing football on Thursday evenings.

I didn’t attempt to get hold of a ticket for the match. I detest Sunday lunchtime KO’s with a passion. Atmosphere diluted and a post-match session is tempered by having to work the following day. I’ll probably watch the game at home. Going to the pub will inevitably mean sharing the match with Spurs’ fans and I can’t handle that. I’ll only make an idiot of myself and at my age, I can’t be doing with people looking on my behaviour with a mixture of bemusement and embarrassment.

I’ll get a few beers in and pace around my flat as I endure the game. I’d love to build up an unassailable lead so I can relax and savour our win but I can’t see it happen. We will have to grind out a win. They’ll come and defend in depth and it won’t be pretty. I can see us winning 1-0 and it will leave us in a really positive mindset going into the international break. Let’s just get the game over with, escape with a unspectacular draw and let’s all agree on who really is the top team in North London.

‘Talk is cheap. Show me the code.’

This quote by Linus Torvalds is a source of support and reassurance as my education in coding continues. My JavaScript masterly, though has some way to go (I sense I’ll be saying this for sometime to come) but I’ve had a good couple of weeks. What’s really energised me is the fact I’ve enjoyed going to several meet ups in London.

I spent a day with the guys and girls at CodeAcademy on Saturday. We camped in the reception of the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch. It was evidently okay for us to piggy-bank on their wifi and the mood of the place was animated and vibrant. I had ever come across the place before and I had a very productive day. The turnout of coders were not as high as usually is the case by all accounts, but the place was very busy nonetheless. I spent the day ploughing through the Basic Algorithm Scripting exercises on the Free Code Camp site. I got help from more experienced coders and all in all, I went home happy after a good 6 hour JavaScript bonanza.

I then went to the Founders and Coders bi-monthly meet up near Mile End on Monday evening. It was an open session for coders to come together and share their knowledge and experience of coding a variety of languages. I didn’t do much coding during the evening but I got the benefit listening to coders with an advanced knowledge of JavaScript. It confirmed that I seem to be on the right track.

My plans for the coming week can be summarised below:

Continue to use Eloquent JavaScript, written by Marijn Haverbeke as my main book resource
Complete the video course ‘JavaScript: Understanding the Weird Parts’ by Anthony Alicea. I found this course on the Udemy site and I’m delighted that it’s so widely regarded amongst coders. It really goes into detail of what is go on ‘under the hood’ with JavaScript and it gives you a real depth to your understanding of the programme. It covers Scope, closures, prototypes, ‘this’, builds your own framework, and more. There’s a total of 85 tutorials encompassing 11.5 hours. It’s a hugely enjoyable and informative course.
Work my way through the exercises on FreeCodeCamp and CodeWars

Will keep you all posted of my progress. The ride’s been enjoyable thus far.

JavaScript, JavaScript and more JavaScript

So my focus really has been on JavaScript these past few weeks. I’ve had a complete change of mind-set and it’s paying dividends for me (well I think it’s paying dividends).

I think my experience is similar to many from my background. That is from a visual design background. Learning HTML and CSS was a very pleasurable introduction to the web development world and then the first stages of learning JavaScript was akin to experiencing a slow, mental car crash. I remember going to the pub following the first JavaScript class at GA. Lots of confused, furrowed brows and pained expressions. We had sailed trough the early stages of the course and suddenly we have to confront mastering functions, loops, objects, methods and expressions. With hindsight, for a part-time course introducing students to web development, there was only so much ground you can cover in mastering JavaScript. It was a pretty tough initiation as I recall.

So I guess I was guilty of focusing in on what I really liked. Ensuring the webpages I was building were visually stunning and ensuring the code was semantic and following best practices was my early focus. But it slowly dawned on me that I needed to learn JavaScript to a really decent level. At almost every web networking event I attended, the message was simple. You’re not going to succeed in the world of web development without mastering JavaScript. The message was unrelenting.

I have made good progress recently in developing a good working environment. I’ve spent time focusing on Gulp, SASS, Compass, Bower, Node.js and CSS frameworks. But I recognised I really needed to up my JS knowledge. So I’ve devoured JS tutorials and exercises all over the web. Lynda, Tutsplus, Code School, Codecademy, the Mozilla Developer Network, github, StackOverflow, CodePen and Udemy have helped me enormously in giving me a solid mastery of basic JavaScript principals.

Now, I just need to focus on moving on from this basic knowledge to intermediate level. It’s challenging but greatly rewarding. How Objects interact with the DOM no longer confuse me and I actually enjoy dealing with Functions. My fellow students would smile hearing me talk so positively when it comes to JavaScript. I’m in a privileged position where I can have a couple of weeks off work to really speed up my JS skill level. The next few weeks I sense will be very productive for me.

A fantastic course for all web developers

I’m a bit of an old hand when it comes to online development video tutorials. I could give you a pretty good review of all the most popular sites which offer online courses in just about every area of web development.

I’ve used sites such as Lynda, Udemy, CodeSchool, TutsPlus and Code Academy extensively. Looking back now, as I’ve become more experienced, I’ve become ever more aware of the varying quality of the teaching. But on the whole, they have been very good for me and my education in learning how to code. The course at General Assembly gave me a good basic foundation of knowledge and the courses have further advanced my mastery in the field of web development.

One course I’m about to finish has been especially good and a real help to me in consolidating my understanding of a number of key areas which I need to learn to an advanced level. From the Udemy website and titled Git a Web Developer Job: Mastering the Modern Workflow by Brad Schiff, it outlines how the tutor puts together his well-honed work environment in building a website. I have completed courses on Git, Node.js, Gulp, object-orientated JS, BEM (which I’m not really sure about), webpack, Babel and responsive design. But in this course, all these features were used in coding a single page website within a really solid, easy to set up work environment. You are also exposed to areas such as automatic sprites, CSS animation and post-CSS. It’s a 15 hour course and with a discount, I only paid £10 access for all 61 lectures.

It has given me another boost to my confidence and I’ve learnt so many new tricks. The aim of the course is to ensure that good working practices are followed; clean, semantic code building a website which loads quickly and works across all browsers. Will certainly look out for any further courses by Brad. This course offers excellent value for money. Even more experienced developers would benefit from taking the course.

A long season ahead

Okay, so a new season and a time for hope and optimism?? Well not, if you’re an Arsenal fan. Two games in and there’s an inescapable feeling that we’ve been here before. That we know what’s ahead of us. No real prospect of any signings in the transfer window, players falling down injured, Wenger being at his obstinate worst and a general feeling of apathy engulfs any conversation between Arsenal fans.

Okay, I guess things are not that bleak. But I’m concerned. Increasingly concerned. Perversely, I’m stick backing Wenger. You can just hear the howls of disgust from the small, yet vocal and increasingly prominent ‘Wenger Out’ brigade. I actually sympathise with a lot of their gripes. It’s groundhog day, a feeling of stagnation.

However, it’s the vitriolic abuse which is directed at Wenger which causes me to instinctively back him and fight his corner. No one else is at the moment. He’s stubborn, dogmatic and has a unquenched zeal that he’s going to do it his way in his attempt for a fourth PL win. I’m desperate to see him succeed. The criticism he gets from the media is often a disgrace. His unrivalled consistency is ignored and his achievement in securing CL football year in, year out is ridiculed when he should be praised. The Arsenal fans who run to appear on ArsenalFan TV every time we lose to berate and vilify Wenger have long passed the point of being a caricature of themselves. Have they any self-awareness of how they are perceived?? Ranting, raving, swearing. Seemingly demented.

I’m desperate for us to enjoy some success. I have happy memories of memorable trips to Paris, Madrid, Wembley, Old Trafford and White Hart Lane. Sharing special moments with family, friends and other nameless fans who I’ll never see again. But I’m a little old in the tooth to completely lose all perspective. Losing to Spurs is an awful experience (not that it happens that often) and seeing Jose get the better of Wenger yet again, just kills me. But I’m never going to let my disappointment and suffering lead me to launch a tirade of expletives against our manager or players. I want us to compete, I want us to play great football and I want us to sign top players. Wenger has achieved this year in, year out.

Wenger’s given us wonderful memories and given the club a foundation which is the envy of the vast majority of clubs worldwide. And ultimately, he has assembled a squad which I feel can go on and win the title, with one or two additions. Yet his real achievements are being lost as an influential small number of our fans and a prejudiced media focus on our managers’ shortcomings. Will Wenger leave the club in a mess just as Fergie did?? Or has Wenger hopped from club to club and bailed out at the first sign of a looming crisis as Jose systemically has?? Nope.

No, I support Wenger. Just let’s see us have a fully fit squad, even for a few months and the belated signing of those final two players to supplement our squad. Then all will be well with the world.

The never-ending journey

As you’re probably a little tired of me constantly reminding you…….the pace of change in the field of web development often bewilders and confounds me. The need to keep apace with developments in all things web related forever competes with my aim of keeping paying clients happy. It’s a dynamic and challenging environment to work in. A need to survive and excel in equal measure.

So after mastering HTML and CSS to a pretty decent level and having a good understanding of the basics of JavaScript and jQuery, there was so much more to learn. I enjoyed growing familiar with the major CSS frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation. Throughout this time, I’ve tinkered with a few text editors. I’ve used Brackets, Atom and Sublime Text, before finally settling on the latter.

My experience of using FTP and a web host has increased and I’ve overcome my fear of using the terminal. In fact, I actually welcome the opportunity of using terminal commands. My mastery of git and github continues apace but I’ve yet to really use git within a large development team. The joy of learning SASS to replace vanilla CSS has been a highlight of my learning.

I then moved on to having a good stab at developing a clear, solid web working environment. I’m sure every team of web developers have their own unique environment. This will have been developed over a long time and I’m keen to work with such an experienced team. I decided to learn gulp as opposed to grunt as my chosen task runner but it seems both have been overtaken by Webpack. The need for me to move on to learning React grows by the day. It’s on my list.

The journey continues and I’m enjoying the frustrations as much as the successes I savour in my daily battle to simplify my web development workflow.

Where has the summer gone?

Hello my friends, I can’t believe it’s so long since I posted on my blog. There’s no real reason for such a lack of commitment. I guess I’ve been busy, but diving into web development has meant I’ve rarely had much spare time in recent times. I think I got into a really good routine when starting my blog. I do regret losing that routine. I will aim to be more disciplined during the following weeks.

My progress in web development has continued at a decent pace. My freelance roles continue to be a mix of print and digital work. I still enjoy print design and it’s good to bring continual diversity to my work. But my ultimate focus remains on all things web related. It’s such an exciting, fast-moving world. I still use the whole range of resources on the web – Lynda, Udemy, Code School, TutsPlus and of course YouTube.

I’m pleased to say the fruits of my labour can be viewed on my portfolio site (www.hegartycreative.com) where I’ve posted my latest work www.md7events.com. I worked on the site for a friend of mine who organises viewing of sports events at high-end bars in London. He also intends organising days out at the horse racing. I’m sure the site will develop in the months to come. I’m very happy with the design and the build of the site. It’s fully responsive and I think it’s a good showcase of my skills. It would be wonderful to get some feedback from you.

My focus now will be on building more sites. I think I’ve continued to concentrate on learning stuff on tutorials and online courses. I love learning new stuff and I think I’m guilty in focusing more on learning and not simply ‘doing’ by building sites and applications which will showcase just what I can achieve.

And naturally, I need to spend more time on my blog. I’ve had a busy time generally and I regret now sharing my ups and downs with you. Over the next few days, I’ll fill you in on all the latest news. I’m loving the Olympics, was enthralled by the test series with Pakistan and very excited at the start of the football season. London continues to both delight me and make continuous, draining demands on me. But I’ve enjoyed a rollercoaster summer. Lots to look forward to.