Latest content

What is a Senior Developer

Submitted by Dave on Wed, 02/08/2017 - 06:56

There are lots of developers out there with varying degrees of experience and expertise, some mid level, some junior and some senior. Some developers may think they are one level and be completely off the mark. In this post I'll try to give an overview of what I look for in a senior developer.

The best senior developers will have the abilities bellow and will strive to tick these off as experience:

Symfony

Submitted by Dave on Tue, 05/03/2013 - 09:49

Main image

First thoughts are Symfony is ace!

Only been using Symfony for 1 project but the amount of coding it has saved has been worth the time spent learning how it works.

To use it you work with Bundles that you think of as modules. You'll use the command line to create the bundle then create Entities that are really your data structure. Once you have your bundles and entities you run some commands on the command line and you have a working app! It creates all your forms, controllers, database tables and structure from your entities.

Lost and Found

The Lost and Found website was built by myself (David Slack) and designed by Arm & Eye.

Read more about Lost and Found

Web design "Fold" myth

Submitted by Dave on Mon, 03/12/2012 - 10:07

Main image

As a web developer and web designer I need to take into account everything on a site from SEO, marketing, usability across devices, the look and feel, UI, browser compatibility, etc, etc, etc. This is all fine and I'm happy with this.

But, over the years I've heard the term "Fold" and "Above the fold" and "The scroll" when designing websites. This is rubbish!!
http://www.whereisthefold.com/
This site shows some of the older "Fold" on websites, but it is useless and wrong today.

Ebay shop - Tech Genome

Tech Genome came to me asking for a logo and ebay shop.

Read more about Ebay shop - Tech Genome

PHPUnit on Windows 8

Submitted by Dave on Sun, 04/11/2012 - 20:49

Make sure you have PEAR inplace by following here

Open a new cmd prompt in admin (press the start key, type cmd, right click, click Run as administrator)

Type

pear config-set auto_discover 1
pear install pear.phpunit.de/PHPUnit
pear install phpunit/DbUnit

Pear on Windows

Submitted by Dave on Sun, 04/11/2012 - 20:42

So you have Windows 8, Aptana and WAMP and want to install Pear? This is how I did it.

WAMP 32 or 64 bit

Submitted by Dave on Thu, 01/11/2012 - 16:49

Main image

I use WAMP as my server of choice but a few months ago I installed a new version. After installing this some of my sites stopped working, I tried to change from PHP 5.3 to PHP 5.2 and PHP wouldn't work. At this point I put my old version back on and didn't think about it.

Last weekend I reformatted my computer and I put the new version of WAMP on. Same problem.

After checking the logs I noticed Curl wasn't working. I tried different versions of PHP and MySQL and none of these worked.

Windows 8 Shutdown

Submitted by Dave on Tue, 30/10/2012 - 11:05

Main image

Start on the Windows 8 desktop, or in a new folder - anywhere except in the Start Menu folder!

Right-click, New, Shortcut. Paste the instruction:

C:\windows\system32\shutdown /s /t 20

(remember the space between t and 20)

Name the shortcut, e.g. Shutdown computer

Use Windows Explorer to navigate to the crucial folder:

GoCardless

Submitted by Dave on Sun, 07/10/2012 - 08:51

Main image

Found a great new payment gateway to use instead of Paypal, GoCardless. I'm using it on one of the websites I'm developing (myBubbleBee) at the moment and it seems to work well. It's easy to setup (the api is very simple), cheap at 1% (or under) per transaction and simple for the customer for both recurring payments and 1 off payments.

My BubbleBee

My BubbleBee was created for

Read more about My BubbleBee

Lucky Fingers

Built with Drupal 7 this portfolio site for Lucky Fingers is my first with the new Admin theme.

Read more about Lucky Fingers

HTML5 Shiv

Submitted by Dave on Sun, 22/07/2012 - 10:32

HTML5 is great, I think we all agree with that? With the new elements like <section>, <header> and <nav> it makes so much more semantic sense (see below for more). But what about IE old browsers that have now way of knowing the new elements? Well, they will simply skip these new elements, but at least cause no error. So if IE7 and IE8 skip the new elements, how can we style them? Usually, we can't.

Infinite loading

Submitted by Dave on Thu, 19/07/2012 - 15:41

Added in some infinite loading to the blog using this. Try scrolling down on the blog page

e-Commerce in Drupal

Submitted by Dave on Tue, 10/07/2012 - 14:39

Well, I've got to say it, the Drupal / e-commerce solutions are not great!

New Law (Cookie Law)

Plugin to add a small bar at the bottom of the site with a link to the Cookie policy.
The bar is only visible if the cookie is not set.
The bar will retract after 8 seconds
Once the bar has retracted an agreement cookie is set to true and the bar will not show again.

This plugin reqires jQuery 1.4 or higher

To use simply add to the body like $('body').newLaw();

Options:

Read more about New Law (Cookie Law)

The Natural Apothecary

The Natural Apothecary is a basic site consisting of just 2 pages, a home page and an about page, there is no contact page.

Read more about The Natural Apothecary

Scripts, modules, apps, programs, snippets, plugins, etc

There are many scripts I create everyday in many different languages and I'll try to keep them all here for reference.

At the moment I use Javascript, php and html to create most of my scripts but I might add in C++, CSS, Pearl or any number of other languages to these pages at any time. Most of the bits you will find on these pages will be Drupal themes or modules, jQuery plugins or php scripts.

I'll try to keep this all as up-to-date as possible and try to keep things as free from bugs as I can but please let me know if you have any problems.

Read more about Scripts, modules, apps, programs, snippets, plugins, etc

Git

Submitted by Dave on Thu, 24/05/2012 - 17:43

Main image

I've finally started using Git the way its meant to be used!

I've created a small plugin for jquery and added it to Git hub and Bit bucket. But the thing I found most useful was I could change the file as I wanted and go back later, I can clone the plugin in work, change it and have the same version at home either on another branch or on the same branch. Now it's ready to let into the wild I can simply link it up to my website and let people use it.

jQuery mobile menu created by Dave Slack

What is it?

A small plugin to change a 'ul li' list to a 'select option' list and back again on mobile devices

Why?

I've been putting together a new admin theme and decided it should be accessible to mobile devices, not just desktop machine. My reason for this is there have been times when I've been out and about need to change something on my site. I had a hard time doing this because of the desktop only admin theme.

After making the theme mobile friendly with media queries and liquid display I still found the menu system was just too clumsy.

Read more about jQuery mobile menu created by Dave Slack

David Slack - Web developer

What is a Senior Developer

Symfony

Lost and Found

Web design "Fold" myth

Ebay shop - Tech Genome

PHPUnit on Windows 8

Pear on Windows

WAMP 32 or 64 bit

Windows 8 Shutdown

GoCardless

My BubbleBee

Lucky Fingers

HTML5 Shiv

Infinite loading

e-Commerce in Drupal

New Law (Cookie Law)

The Natural Apothecary

Scripts, modules, apps, programs, snippets, plugins, etc

Git

jQuery mobile menu created by Dave Slack

What is it?

Why?

Pages

Latest content

Social networks

What I'm listening to

Off-site News

My blog

Latest tweets

Tags

Calendar

Friday, November 1

You are here

David Slack - Web developer

Search:

Latest content

What is it?

Why?

Pages

Latest content

Social networks

What I'm listening to

Off-site News

My blog

Latest tweets

Tags

Calendar

You are here