The Author – Bart Busschots
Creative Commons
Unless otherwise stated, the content on this site is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works 3.0 License
Mar
30
Spectacle – Another Mac Window Tiler
Filed Under Computers & Tech on March 30, 2017 | 1 Comment
Earlier this week I posted a review of the Mac window tiling app Magnet which is currently on sale in the Mac App Store for €0.99. @DriesDeRoeck replied on Twitter to point me nice free and open source alternative – Spectacle.
Mar
28
Magnet – A Mac Window Tiler
Filed Under Computers & Tech on March 28, 2017 | 2 Comments
Magnet is the first Mac app I discovered organically on the front page of the Mac App Store. I wasn’t looking for anything, I just opened the Mac App Store app to run some updates, and there, on the front page, Apple were featuring Magnet, and it caught my eye and then my interest enough to hand over €0.99 to there an then!
What does Magnet do? It’s a macOS app that allows you to quickly and easily re-size and re-position windows to a number of useful presets so you can easily lay out your windows. You can instantly adjust any given window so it takes up the left half of the screen, the bottom-right quarter, and so on. The app is clearly inspired by the built-in feature that has shipped with the last few versions of Microsoft Windows that allows you to snap windows into a few pre-defined arrangements by bouncing them off one of the edges of the screen, but Magnet takes that idea farther than Microsoft have, and it does so in a very Mac-friendly way.
Mar
14
PBS 32 of x – JS Error Handling Revision | HTML Selects
Filed Under Software Development, Computers & Tech on March 14, 2017 | 2 Comments
In this instalment we’ll continue our twin-track approach of mixing a little JavaScript revision with learning some new HTML. In this case, we’ll revise JavaScript’s error handling mechanism (throw, try & catch), and learn how to use the HTML <select> tag to create dropdown menus and multiple-selection lists.
We won’t be updating our date and time prototypes, but we will be using them in example HTML pages, so in this instalment our two tracks come into direct contact with each other for the first time. We’ll use an HTML page with multiple dropdowns to allow users to select a date, and then render that date in many formats using our pbs.Date prototype. We’ll also use JavaScript’s error handling features to respond appropriately when a user attempts to render an impossible date like the 31st of February 2010.
Finally, the challenge set at the end of this instalment will also combine our prototypes with HTML forms, and JavaScript error handling.
You can download my solution to the challenge set in the previous instalment, and all the code samples for this instalment in a single ZIP file here.
Mar
1
PBS 31 of x – JS Static Functions | Checkboxes & Radio Buttons
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Software Development on March 1, 2017 | 4 Comments
We’re going to continue our twin-track approach in this instalment – first some JavaScript, then some HTML Forms. We’ll start with my sample solution to the challenge set in the previous instalment, then we’ll look at one final new concept related to JavaScript prototypes – static functions. We’ll wrap up our revision and deeper dive into JavaScript prototypes with a final, finished, version of our algorithm for generating prototypes.
Switching our focus on HTML forms, we’ll look at some important form-specific ARIA roles, we’ll introduce two useful tags for enclosing forms, or parts of forms <fieldset> & <legend>, and we’ll introduce the concept of form data. With those foundations laid, we’ll look at how to add checkboxes and radio buttons to web forms, and how to interact with them through jQuery.
You can download a ZIP file containing the code files for this instalment here.