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CSS Grid - Why it's Amazing, and How to Get Started

CSS Grid - Why it's Amazing, and How to Get Started. Inspired by @mor10 - CSS Grid Changes Everything (About Web Layouts) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txZq7Laz7_4

A few evenings ago, while trying to answer a question on Quora, I had the pleasure of coming across Morten-Rand Hendriksen’s[1] talk CSS Grid Changes Everything (About Web Layouts)[2]. While I had briefly played around with CSS Grid a while back, it wasn’t’ until I watched this vid, that I truly became hooked. If you take nothing else from this post, watch this vid!!

[youtube=https://www.youtube.c…

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Wow - amazing how I search YouTube for php unit testing and get all these results that are multiple years old. Then I search Javascript and it’s just like “here’s these nice vids from 3 months ago” :o

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Me: starts learning how to unit test WordPress plugins (yeah, I’m a bit behind on that…)

Also Me: Ok, except the entire plugin I wrote is in Javascript…

Guess it’s time to finally learn Javascript testing… can’t be as convoluted as php testing… oh wait

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Never Graduate Week 2018!

Never Graduate Week 2018!

It’s been close to a whole year since I’ve written, and we’re in the middle of Never Graduate Week (which I’ll now call NGW), here at Recurse Center. I’m surrounded by so many wonderful, and inspiringly awesome people this week – so I decided it was time to start blogging again!

I’m in the middle of lots of transition and balancing right now in my life, and it’s been a super busy week (on top of…

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If anyone’s interested in following: I created a GitHub repo to keep track of my daily web dev & design learning, and list useful tools & resources!

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Other - when themes & sites decide to change the scrolling speed & number of lines scrolled, from what I have it set to. Oddly - they always seem to set fewer lines/slower speed - which makes the whole site feel sluggish and slower. I set it for a reason...

Don’t take customized functionality away from your users... empower them instead!

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Not sure which is more annoying: when websites decide all links must automatically open in a New Tab, or when they disable your ability to open them in a New Tab...

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I’ve been working on a Zemanim* plugin - and I’ve got it working great in Javascript + jQuery, but I’m trying to transfer parts of it back to being PHP, so it can work well as a plugin/widget, and I’m super lost on a lot of that primarily because of AJAX issues.

The main issue at this point is that it utilizes the HTML5 Geolocation API, and I need a fallback for browsers that don’t support that and/or users who don’t want to let the site use their location data. 

I’ve been trying to fall back to the PHP of the plugin I’d originally based this off of - though, as I’m writing this out, it just occurred to me that I could simply rewrite that portion of the plugin that functionality using Javascript!!

*An app that calculates specific times of day according to their definitions in Jewish Law

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1. Fuck AJAX... particularly Fuck trying to use AJAX with WordPress (this is probably my fault for having just tried to jump into learning it in the middle of trying to work on either stuff I didn’t know how to do, but still... it is a *pain*)

2. I’m falling in love w/ Javascript Promises already - and I’ve barely even used them yet... but, I can already see how many fucking problems they solve!!

Can’t wait to rewrite the code I’ve been working on to utilize them... cuz omg everything’s gonna be so much nicer!!

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Tfw you read a UX article about 12-column grid design and you're like "...or you could just use bootstrap and have an instantaneous prototype cuz it automatically does all that stuff anyway and let's you define the mobile stuff simultaneously anyway..."

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CSS Isn't Black Magic - Understanding Browser Rendering of CSS

CSS Isn’t Black Magic – Understanding Browser Rendering of CSS

I just came across this really amazing article by Aimee Marie Knight, called CSS Isn’t Black Magic, that explains how CSS Rendering works in the browser, as well as the CSSOM (CSS Object Model) and the CSS stack(s). One great thing is that it expands on how specificity works, and what gets prioritized – which is really important for targeting tags and elements, and knowing which css portions will…

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Really brilliant and helpful post by @ipstenu (Mike Epstein)

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Hey, so how did you go about learning programming? I find myself too easily distracted and without many if any people to ask for help past roadblocks

Ahhh - distraction and roadblocks are the hardest parts. I had some luck, in the beginning, as both of those things go. I started off with the books on https://inventwithpython.com - there's two free books there that teach you Python by having you make games - seriously fun way to learn programming - especially if you're not an abstract math nerd (which I'm not). I also just tried to work through all the tutorials I could find in general. I was lucky that I had a close friend and a partner who were both really into Python (though neither was super advanced at the time), so I did have some people to ask for help. I also have ADHD (though I didn't know it at the time), and when I started on programming, I was OBSESSED with it - as in it was almost all I did, and you couldn't get me to shut up about it. That obsession lasted a few months, and in that time I was able to apply successfully to the Recurse Center (https://recurse.com), which was called Hacker School back then. So I spent 3 months around 60 people working on their own things and pair programming and giving workshops and presentations; we also had amazing programmers come in as residents for a week at a time. So it was a great outlet for my intense distraction tendencies. It also gave me a way to pick up many things I wouldn't have gotten to on my own. On the other hand, I literally had two weeks where I literally couldn't focus enough to work on anything - that sucked!---------Here's some things that might help:1. Immerse yourself - books, videos, podcasts. tutorials, programming tumblrs, twitters, etc. This will help with distraction - cuz at least you'll be distracted by other programming things. 2. Set goals or set a daily time to work on programming. You need to put in at least 1 hr a day, five times a week, in order to make some basic progress. If you're not already there, then progressively build up to it. 3. Write things out with paper and pen - both for planning and when you're stuck. 4. Rubber Duck - talk to a person or object, and describe whatever you're stuck on. Just the act of verbalizing externally will help out (your brain does extra cognitive processing when you do this)5. Keep a log of what you do/did each day - you're probably doing more than you realize. 6. Realize that progress doesn't happen linearly - sometimes you move fast, sometimes you can't move at all. Just keep putting in tons of effort and you'll get somewhere. 7. Go for a walk - this does great things for your memory and processing skills, as well as for stress - it's often when you realize the solution to whatever you're blocked on. 8. Journal or blog about whatever you're working on - you'll start to understand it better as you write, and you'll have a clear picture of growth. 9. Books are your friend - initially, I only relied on Internet tutorials - books often have a way better quality of information, and it made those internet tutorials way less confusing. 10. When doing tutorials: manually copy/type out the code first; look through the code you just wrote out and try to understand it; compare your observations and questions to the author's explanations and analysis. Then try to solve a similar exercise, or try to write that program from scratch, without referring to the tutorial. 11. If you don't have IRL programming friends yet, hang out in online programming spaces and make some friends that way. 12. Once you do have IRL programming friends, try pair programming (essentially 2 people work on the same task together, one person controls the typing - though you can switch) - it's probably the quickest way to learn. -------Final note: if you're having serious problems with focus or distraction, it's worth getting evaluated for things like ADHD or a learning disorder, etc. - my entire first year of progress was held back a lot by undiagnosed and unmedicated ADHD. It made many things really hard to understand, and often meant I was overwhelmed or couldn't focus. Good luck - hope this helps!!

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I've been so stressed about the amount of work I have to do lately, that I forgot: I actually like programming :)

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Disabling Emojis In WordPress

Disabling Emojis In WordPress

Back in WordPress 4.2, they added emoji into WordPress – which I think is one of the loveliest things in the world :)

Unfortunately, YSlow does not… those lovely little emoji take up some precious HTTP requests – one of WordPress’ biggest challenges can be that it comes with so much overhead – which can slow down your load time quite a bit!

Thankfully, they’re super easy to remove: Disable…

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If the iFrame is just the top bar, and it's pushing things down, why not make it position: absolute and then set top: 100px (or whatever the right value is)

Does the bar on top have any sort of ID or container? If so, you could use those to trigger it specifically - either through nth-child(n) or through .container .tumblr-iframe or similar

HOW TO GET RID OF THE NEW TUMBLR BAR ON YOUR BLOG PAGE

so for anyone who has recently updated their blog within maybe two days or so you might have noticed this new bar tumblr has put on your blog page

(sorry it’s cut off, the theme I got it from - it’s cut off at the sides)

what it basically is, is the top bar of the tumblr dashboard but it has the customize page controls on it and all the customary follow button, message button, etc.

I don’t know if tumblr is testing something out or if this is a permanent fixture in how their handling the theme controls now

it pushes down any element on your blog that doesn’t have the the attribute below or is contained inside something that isn’t fixed

position:fixed;

the solution I’ve found is to put this under <style type=“text/css”> in your theme code

.tmblr-iframe {     display: none !important; }

it still pushes everything down still, but at least it doesn’t show up and ruin the overall look of your theme

if anyone finds a better solution PLEASE DON’T HESITATE to add onto this post. I would very much like to have the unobstructive old tumblr controls back