Category: Web Development

Chasing your own tail

Working on the internet is great, it gives people around the world a level playing field in which to achieve their goals. A single developer can start a simple project with only a laptop and a internet connection and within a few years they can be in charge of a massive global company. But the internet is also a crazy place with it’s rush to get the latest technology out there, the newest framework, the ideal way to build an app or the latest social network.

As someone who works with the web I find that somedays I am spinning around like a dog chasing it’s tail (which is always funny) trying to keep up with what’s new or to find out how a new technology works. For example here’s a list of technologies I currently have an interest in:

  • Angular 1
  • Angular 2
  • Ionic 1
  • Ionic 2
  • NodeJS
  • ExpressJS
  • Sass
  • Less
  • Firebase
  • Bootstrap
  • Responsive Web Design
  • Mobile app development

Some list, it looks like one of those job ads that list everything but really tell you nothing about the role. This is another list of technologies a modern web developer could look at:

  • React
  • React Native
  • NodeJS
  • Express
  • HapiJS
  • Angular 1 & 2
  • Ionic 1 & 2
  • AppCelerator
  • NativeScript
  • Sass/Less
  • RWD
  • Native iOS
  • Native Android
  • jQuery
  • Ember
  • .Net framework, all of it
  • Git
  • PHP
  • Rails

This is a long list, it’s taken me a whole day coming up with the list let alone spending time learning these technologies.

The problem that the web has is that it’s become a massive marketing playground. Large technology companies are telling developers that there technology is best, that it does everything a developer will want or that the latest version of their technology is coming out with these amazing features.

Then there is social media telling developers about what they should be looking into, what is going to be the next big thing over the coming year. Or which technology/framework all new projects will be built it so you ‘must’ be using this or you’ll miss out. Then there is the recruitment industry that likes to tell developers that their clients are looking for developers who can do this (see list above).

It’s crazy.

I remember when I started working on the web all you needed was HTML, CSS and JavaScript, that’s it. These three technologies are still around, see central to working on the web.

In order to stop feeling like a dog chasing it’s tail (see it’s mad) I need to focus on a few things, Angular, Ionic, JavaScript, Sass, HTML and GTD. By narrowing down what I’m looking, by specialising what I do it’ll make me a better developer.

So now I need to go into my RSS reader and Twitter and remove the feeds and accounts of things I think I should be interested in and just have a few feeds on these technologies and a follow a few Twitter accounts.

The web is great, but it is also crazy being able to specialise is better than trying to learn everything, that’s impossible.

A great book about this is Philip Morgans – The Positioning Manual

Freelancing Websites

Over my last few posts I have been talking about contracting and why I personally like contracting. There are two main ways of finding work as a contractor either through recruitment agencies or via freelance websites.

There are many of these freelancing websites, Upwork, Freelancer (UK), PeoplePerHour and Toptal. Sometimes I have shied away from these sites and they are usually swamped with developers offering very cheap services that I cannot possible compete on, full websites for £100 or a complete mobile app for £250. Now I’m not to sure about the quality of the work that these offer would receive, but I can see how a client with a small budget can be tempted with offers like these.

For me to use one of these sites at the rate I’m looking for I need a site that both has a high number of users and has a high level of entry. So the clients who look for freelancers on this site know that the quality of developer they are looking at is at a high standard, and they are willing to pay for this high standard.

One site I have looked into that fulfils these two requirements I have is the Toptal Web Developers group who, on their website, say ‘hire from the top 3% of freelance web developers’. The main reason I like Toptal is that there signup process is very thorough, you have to complete a signup form, give examples of work and even write a blog post about them, which is actually a good idea. Because sitting and writing out your thoughts on why you want to signup to Toptal makes you really think through the process and what you are looking for from a freelancing website.

I’ve seen a fellow Ionic developer Julien Renaux who is on Toptal, I contacted him via Twitter to see if Toptal was a good service, he said that it is and he has had no problems with it.

So if you are looking to become a contractor/freelancer and want to find work from places other than recruiters (who are still a valid and useful resource) then one of these Freelancing websites maybe an option.

Here are some links to podcasts where people have spoken about how they have succeeded using one of these freelance marketplace websites:

My thoughts on the mobile web 

Currently the mobile web is growing and growing, every week there is a new ways of using web technologies to create mobile apps.My weapon of choice is Ionic, mainly because the Ionic team have created a framework that allows a web developer to create apps that work well and look fantastic. 
It really shows the power of the web, it’s everywhere, you can build anything with just HTML, CSS and JavaScript. For a company who want their product to reach as many platforms as possible, the mobile web is the ideal solution. A single web developer can built apps for mobile, tablet, desktop and now TV.

The web has always been an exciting place to be, but now with the options for the mobile web, being a web developer is a great place to be.

Unfortunately with more and more technologies coming out, different approaches to using web technology to develop cross platform apps. This ‘my technology is better than yours’ arguments start. Usually these are fuelled by the companies who’s technology it is. I mean they have to sell their product. But what is better, native, hybrid, or these ones that use web technologies to compile down to native. They are all great, but for me as a web developer I want to be able to create great apps for as many platforms as I can. For the people who use these apps, they don’t care what technology the apps was developed in. All they care is it works as they wanted to, it’s fast and looks good. For me as a web developer I want to use something that I can use my current skills for and Ionic is my platform of choice for these reasons.

So web developers enjoy this current growth we have in the mobile web it’s a very exciting time.

Loading a service at startup in a Ionic app

This is more a note to myself than a full on tutorial.

Some of the Ionic apps I create need to create add something to local storage during startup of my app. The way I’ve been doing this recently is to run a service in the Run function of my app. Something like this:

.run(function(MyService){
MyService.appStartup();
})

I’ve used this a couple of times to load something in local storage, usually app settings. Then in my service (MyService.js) I can check what is stored in my settings, and if there is nothing there I can load them in via the same service.

Why is web technology ideal for mobile

I’ve developed websites for over 15 years now, since Netscape came out. So I’ve done a lot of different websites and web applications, recently over the last 2-3 years mobile web has really grown, but there has always been the native vs web argument over which stack to use to develop mobile applications.

As a web developer I’m on the web side of the argument, the reasons for me that web suits me are, it allows me to develop mobile apps for both Android and iOS from one code base. This allows me as to develop both my own as well as apps for clients to reach both of the major platforms quicker and at the same time. 

It brings a real benefit to small to medium business who want to have a mobile app developed to hit both Android and iOS at the same time instead of getting both a iOS developer and a Android developer to create their app. Twice the number of developers cost twice as much and takes twice as long. I believe the mobile web is an ideal solution for SMB to create their mobile strategy.

Also mobile web allows me as a web developer to use the skills and experience I’ve gather over the last few years to create both responsive websites and mobile applications, using a framework like ionic to create cross platform apps.

Native is still a valid choice, but for me as a web developer the web wins.

My approach to responsive web

Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on a large responsive site using Sass.

Starting working on a responsive site as opposed to a mobile app using something like Ionic, means a lot more thought has to go into how you’ll manage and set out your sass files and use media queries.
When I worked on other responsive sites I always created a separate ‘responsive’ sass or less file (I’m mainly using Sass now, but did use Less a while ago), which contained all my media queries.
I would then load that as the last Sass/Less file, so it would pick up any styles that I wanted to amend in my media queries. This was fine, but as the site grew and there was more and more in my media queries, the single Sass/Less file became huge.
So now I’ve changed my approach, what I’ve been doing to separating my Sass files into components, so I’ll have a Sass file for each page, one for the header, one for the footer section, one for fonts and one for constant variables. I took this approach after reading this great article in SitePoint (http://www.sitepoint.com/architecture-sass-project/).
Now instead of having this single ‘responsive’ file, I’m putting all my media queries in each separate Sass file. So for example in my header Sass file I may have to site title. Within that css class I’ll have the media query for each screen size.
One extra benefit this has, besides getting rid of the massive ‘responsive’ Sass file. Is that when you work as part of a team, with other developers who are not focused on the front-end, if they are .Net developers who work a bit with the front-end work, but leave it mainly to the front-end developer. Which is how I’m working now.
If they need to amend a style that is in a media query they will be able to find the correct style a lot easier. This removes the problem where another developer may want to add a new style, and they are not sure where to add the style so they add it to a new Sass file. With this more modularised approach if they want to amend a media query based style they know where to go. Then as the main front-end developer I can manage the Sass files a lot easier.
This approach may have problems, but I’m going to give it a go on the project I’m working on.

Bower or NPM

I’ve been trying to chose between Bower or NPM as the tool I’m using for installing libraries. After using both for a little while I’m going to use Bower.

The main reason for this is because Bower is more for ‘front-end’ work, while I see NPM as more of a Node library loader. For me as a front-end developer I use Bower to get all the libraries I need for a project, for example AngularJS, Bootstrap and Gulp.

I see NPM as more of a tool for creating and managing your Node projects. As my experience using Node/ExpressJS grows I’ll probably use NPM a lot more.

But for me both package managers are a fantastic, when I look back at when I started building websites and I had to find, download, unzip, copy over to my folder, update the links in my HTML, all to install jQuery. So now we as web developers are lucky to have tools like Bower and NPM.

 

App Store Realities — Article by Stephen Orth

I’ve been a fan of Chris Beshore and his iOS newsletter, though I’m not a iOS developer the newsletter does have some great articles. One of them in this weeks newsletter is a story by Stephen North on his journey as a iOS indie developer.

Its a great read and inspiring to hear someone has started this journey as a mobile indie developer. Worth checking out.

https://medium.com/@sorthman/app-store-realities-7b54af3f574e