167 items tagged “webdevelopment”
2012
How should one go about designing a simple web based collaborative text editor?
Take a look at the open source ShareJS library, which implements a bunch of the fundamental (and extremely tricky) algorithms you need to get collaborative editing in the browser to work well: https://github.com/josephg/ShareJS/
[... 53 words]How can I keep my website content exclusive?
No, there isn’t—people can always copy things if they really want to, it’s part of the cost of doing business. If you were to publish a book people could always photocopy it.
[... 108 words]Any source available to download sample data (in 10+ GB) for testing?
Wikipedia has some pretty interesting dumps, in both XML and SQL format: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/I...
[... 100 words]How difficult is to to learn a language framework, like node.js?
The answer varies enormously depending on the language and the framework. Some frameworks are very easy to pick up, others are harder.
[... 162 words]What is a development framework?
The most useful distinction, in my opinion, is to think about the difference between a framework and a library.
[... 271 words]Did Mark Zuckerberg have any knowledge on building scalable social networks prior to starting work on Facebook?
I’m going to bet he didn’t have this knowledge, simply because back when he launched Facebook in 2004 almost NO ONE had this knowledge—there simply weren’t enough “web scale” products around for the patterns needed to run them to be widely discussed.
[... 143 words]How does a new Website that depends on content from users start?
The tried and tested way to solve this problem is with a closed alpha period. Launch the site as a private alpha, then invite a bunch of people you know and trust to start trying it out. Once you launch to the public you’ll already have some content and more importantly you’ll have set an example of how new users to the site should behave.
[... 121 words]Can you use dropbox to host a wordpress site?
No. Running WordPress requires a web host that supports PHP. Dropbox only supports static content.
[... 30 words]Why weren’t the features of Sass originally built into CSS?
This is not a straight-forward issue: CSS has a very long, complicated history. A good starting point for understanding the reluctance of the CSS working group to add variables/constants etc to CSS is this essay by Bert Bos of the W3C (entitled Why “variables” in CSS are harmful) http://www.w3.org/People/Bos/CSS...
[... 66 words]How can a web developer keep up with new technology?
Keep an eye on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/
[... 111 words]Why do tech companies provide MacBooks for software development?
Smart tech companies give their engineers the laptops that they ask for. Engineers are EXPENSIVE, and anything you can do to increase their productivity is worth the money. If they prefer to work on a Mac, buy them a Mac.
[... 55 words]What’s the best way to handle logins?
First, make sure you’re storing the password as a salted hash, using a deliberately slow hashing algorithm such as bcrypt, scrypt or PBKDF2—here are some recent articles to get you up to speed:
[... 176 words]Does Amazon have a API for websites to utilize order and delivery fulfillment?
The Amazon Fulfillment Web Service used to handle this http://aws.amazon.com/fws/—but their site now says "Effective June 2012, Amazon Services will no longer support Amazon Fulfillment Web Service (Amazon FWS). All functions and services currently supported by Amazon FWS are currently available through Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS)." So I guess you want the Amazon Marketplace Web Service: https://developer.amazonservices...
[... 82 words]Ideas on how to secure good clients for web development? Or—How to turn my skills into decent pay?
Don’t get work through elance—get stuff from your personal network instead. If you don’t have a personal network, start building one!
[... 230 words]Are there any website thumbnail services that generate images in real-time?
http://url2png.com/ generates images on demand—you pass the URL directly to the service and it replies with a PNG image. The first load can take a few seconds (depending on how long it takes the originating site to serve up the assets etc) but they cache the generated images so future requests for the same URL will be served instantly.
[... 79 words]Is there such thing as a specific multi-site search?
Yes—Blekko does exactly this, with its “slashtags” feature: http://help.blekko.com/index.php...
[... 27 words]How do you know the real size of a web page?
The Google Chrome developer tools can do this, on the Network tab. Take a look at the bottom blue bar (which says “5 requests | 29.49KB transferred”)
[... 51 words]Has JSON pretty much replaced XML for string processing for the web, or are there use cases where XML is still necessary?
It’s replaced XML as the default format for most APIs. XML is still necessary for Atom/RSS feeds and other existing standards built on top of XML. It’s also a better choice than JSON for markup-style data—stuff like XHTML where tags are applied to sequences of characters within larger chunks of text.
[... 81 words]What is the best way to allow users to add videos on a website ?
Encourage them to host their videos on YouTube, Vimeo etc and give you the URL, then generate an embed code on your site (using your own code or with the http://embed.ly/ API).
[... 71 words]How can a new developer get involved in open-source projects?
I was going to say the same thing. Find a useful project in GitHub (preferably one that clearly has an active maintainer), fork it, fix a bug (look at the project’s issue tracker) then make a pull request.
[... 80 words]Why are front end developers so high in demand at startups if front end development is relatively easier than other fields of engineering?
You’re starting with an invalid assumption. Front end development is absolutely not “easier” than other forms of engineering.
[... 333 words]Can Scala gain wider usage than Java any time soon?
No, because Scala is harder to master than Java.
[... 54 words]How do you change page content and URL without reloading the whole page?
This can only be done using JavaScript. You use XMLHttpRequest to pull in new information from the server (also known as Ajax—most people use a JavaScript library such as jQuery to handle this) and then use the HTML5 history API, in particular the pushState method, to update the URL.
[... 133 words]How long until Ruby developers are as cheap as PHP developers? is it already happening? should I still learn it or it only has a couple years left and I’m better off with SSJS?
If you want to be a highly paid engineer, you should worry less about your expertise in a specific language and more about developing broad and deep skills across a wider range of development topics.
[... 197 words]What are good ways to design a web application? Do you, for example, begin with a wire-frame of the front-end and work your way back to the database schema? The reverse? Figure out both ends and work towards the center?
I start with a working prototype, which I find I can often knock together in a couple of hours using Django. Having a functional (albeit buggy, ugly and insecure) prototype makes it much easier for me to start to reason about the larger application. There’s not much point in coming up with a comprehensive architecture plan only to find out you’re building the wrong thing!
[... 111 words]What (web) development platform has a low learning curve in terms of development, deployment, scalability, performance, and portability?
Sadly, none if them. Each of the things you list is almost a discipline in its own right, and there aren’t really any shortcuts—you just have to get stuck in and learn about them as and when they become a problem.
[... 67 words]Web Performance: What is the best way to measure page load times on different locations of the world?
Google Analytics has a built-in “Site Speed” report with a geographical map that can help with this (under Standard Reporting > CONTENT > Site Speed > Map Overlay).
[... 52 words]Is there a simple way to create a form that asks people to upload a picture and an answer to a question, and then gives me access to that info?
You could build this very easily using http://wufoo.com/—an online form building tool (with a superb interface).
[... 55 words]What are the pros and cons of open sourcing my website’s code?
I’m afraid if you’re expecting to open source your code as a magic bullet to get others to work on improving it for free you are likely to be disappointed.
[... 250 words]Which web frameworks should I focus on to make myself the most well rounded and to be able to solve the most problems as a web application developer/architect?
Being an expert web developer isn’t about which framework you know, it’s about the fundamentals. It’s important that you know how the tools you are using work, so you can fix things when they break—Joel Spolsky’s law of leaky abstractions is a great essay about this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ar...
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