If your Intel MacBook Pro gets hot while you’re coding, running Chrome, using external monitors, and juggling client work, the first instinct might be to replace it.
That was my thought too.
Instead, I spent some time figuring out what was actually causing the heat. The good news: my 2019 MacBook Pro was in much better shape than I expected.
The real problem was mostly unnecessary background activity.
Continue reading “How to Optimize an Older Intel MacBook Pro for Web Development”
I had some consulting work come in – task was pretty straightforward, then again what
exactly is “straightfoward.” In software though, nothing is ever “straightforward”, though
that word gets used a lot to describe something pretty close to being straightforward but not
exactly so.
Alright anyway, I was working off a Genesis theme. Themes, templates, architecture. I think
these terms are all synonymous, the keyword really here is architecture. There are some bad ones,
good ones and terrible ones. Genesis in my opinion is pretty good. But what qualifies as “pretty good”, really? For starters I’d say architecture that is lightweight, modularized, and loosely coupled. Architecture where we can inject new features seamlessly.
I was working on enabling an author box on a blog page, on every single blog post – so this was to be a global implementation for a blog. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with Genesis themes but good news is there’s a pretty big community around it and chances are I would be running into a frequent feature.
Continue reading “Customizing the Author Box using the Genesis Theme”
I’m back in the mood for more Javascript, more specifically “vanilla javascript” – which is just a phrase for writing Javascript in it’s true form, free from any frameworks or libraries. I guess the only thing we would be dependent on would be the “Javascript Engine” itself and the available “API’s” available for our use. I think this is pretty cool, we can do a lot with just “vanilla javascript” alone.
Now don’t get me wrong, frameworks and libraries are great – they take care of all the nitty gritty cross browser stuff but often come with unnecessary bloat or extra features that aren’t even utilized. Frameworks like ReactJS and VueJS manage DOM manipulation for you so you can offload having to manage a bunch of selectors. There are some key concepts to be learned in writing plain Javascript though, as we shall see – we can achieve the same functionality with much less code.
Taking a quick break from System Architecture for a bit, right now I’m in the mood for some (asynchronous) function callbacks using Javascript. A clear understanding of this will help any javascript developer in understanding the dynamic language we all have grown to wrestle with – Javascript.
Continue reading “Asynchronous Function Callbacks using Javascript”
I was recently introduced to a client hosted on Pantheon.io, a hosting platform packed with some really great features, services, and tech support. I really like their site as well, their catchy logo just put the cherry on top. After using Pantheon for a couple days, I couldn’t help but spend some quality time with this hosting platform. Let me tell you, user interface goes a long way when choosing a hosting platform at least for me.
Continue reading “Pantheon.io Hosting Review”
This little tidbit I consider a golden nugget for those looking to optimize their website’s page speed. I ran into a situation recently (actually times) where I needed to defer some scripts down to the footer area. If you’ve been developing a while now, you know about render blocking scripts. Put simply, we want our DOM to load first before any scripts are executed.
I’m actually not very well versed with using Flex (I definitely should though of course), I really only use it when absolutely necessary – usually as a fall back plan or when I want to adjust a few elements on mobile. That’s what this post is really about – Flex and how it saved me numerous times on one (no, many) of those head scratcher projects.
Continue reading “Mobile Stacking Order using Flex”
Sockets. Let’s first get that out of the way. We can at least understand what “Secure” and “Layer” means. Not that the concept of sockets should overshadow it’s phrase constituents but it’s important to get a basic understanding of what’s really going on under the hood.
SSL encryption has been around for a very long time, besides having a fast site, security is a necessary feature every site must have. What good is a fast site if it’s hacked, even worse exposing your visitors to malicious content can have a permanent effect. Everything is in jeopardy – you’re business, your branding, your future. So what to do –
If you’re an SEO marketeer or a developer – you will see this a lot.
From Google Page Insights, Pingdom, SEM Rush, GTMetrix and other page speed tools – “Leverage Browser Caching” is bound to come up. If you’re ignoring this, then you’re business, your client, or site is at a major loss. Page speed is a huge variable when a customer first engages with your site – chances are high rate of drop offs will occur if you don’t leverage browser caching.
Continue reading “Leverage Browser Caching with .htaccess”
GZIP is one of those big words used in programming to generally describe compression. Then again, you end up asking what “compression” is in the context of programming and computers. These two terms can be a little intimidating to the noob and not until you’ve really implemented it, or experienced it first hand you won’t really know it’s true nature and the fundamental idea behind it. So let’s do that.
We often see these two terms come up frequently during page speed optimizations. Software tools like GTMetrix and Page Speed Insights. If you’re running into page speed issues or a really slow loading page, these tools will recommend compressing your files. Alright so what does that mean?
Alright, a lot actually. But in simple terms:
Compression is the process of encoding information using fewer bits. — Ilya Grigorik, Google
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