When Homeland first came out, season one had me hooked. Season two still had me hooked, the storyline remained suspenseful and deciphering if Brodie was good or bad was thrilling.
When season three rolled around, the show was losing some obvious steam. We had already determined that Brodie was one of the good guys, he was just a little messed up. And after the end of season three when Brodie died, it freed up the shows director and writers to pursue any direction they wanted too.
When it comes to source control, us developers are an interesting bunch. I have seen a few different styles of committing and using source control. We pick whatever works for us without really giving it any thought.
It actually dawned on me the other day after a fellow developer commented on my workflow style with Git that perhaps some developers out there are making it not only difficult for themselves, but their team and organisation as well.
If you answered yes, you have just found the solution. Keep on reading.
If you are new to styling placeholder text or perhaps have just not noticed, Firefox in version 19 and beyond by default applies an opacity of 40% (0.4) to placeholder text, as per the documentation.
While I have known about this particular caveat for a while, it turns out a lot of developers who I have asked were not aware that this happens. So next time you change the colour of placeholder text in Firefox, set the opacity to 1 and you should be fine.
Well, it is official: the HTML5 standard has been announced as finalised and is now officially recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
While many of us have been using HTML5 for years now, todays news means that there is no reason to use anything else. Mostly supported by the browsers that matter and polyfills for browsers that lack support for some features.
The W3C mentions that it worked with more than 60 companies getting the standard finalised and that over 4,000 bugs were resolved in the process.
In the front-end framework race there are many contenders, but the one that stands out from most is AngularJS which is supported by Google. It simplifies the process of complicated and simple application flow, but when it comes to rendering many items (especially using ng-repeat) you soon notice AngularJS struggles.
I will not bother posting my own benchmarks, as there is pretty conclusive proof out there you can find via a Google search. I love Angular, do not get me wrong, but it sucks for rendering lots of UI items, like for example a large catalogue of products comprised of; titles, descriptions, star ratings and a thumbnail image.
Recently a British company called Centre for Process Innovation released a report proclaiming that we will see windowless planes within 10 years. With the windows being replaced by OLED screens which amongst other settings, could mirror the outside of the plane to make it look see-through.
While the rendering images and subsequently released video look kind of cool, the cost to implement OLED screens into existing planes would be astronomical. Not to mention requirements around power would need to be considered as well as lifespan of an OLED panel which currently is estimated to only be a few short years (based on current OLED high-end televisions).
When Tim Cook proudly announced Apple Pay recently and the impressive number of stores it had got onboard, I was shocked. Had Apple finally pulled off a feat many others have struggled to implement on such a large scale? Early reports indicated a resounding yes.
Now, it seems some other major retailers are planning on launching their own offering to rival Apple Pay and shuttering support for it. The retailers include; Walmart, Kmart, 7-Eleven and Best Buy. Expected to launch next year, a payment service and accompanying app called CurrentC which sounds like a bottled juice drink than it does a payment service.
Occasionally the Internet delivers and gives us something decent other than videos of cats playing keyboards.
Flexbox is one of the newest and potentially most useful parts of CSS3 in a very long time. Support amongst browsers is fairly decent and while it is not really that new, being able to use it is.
This cheatsheet shows some nice easy to understand and follow, examples of how to use Flexbox. While the cheatsheet does not explain all of the great uses of Flexbox, it will help you understand how to use it.
Recently the AngularJS team released a slideshow showcasing what we should expect when AngularJS 2.0 is released. It detailed that controllers, directives and AngularJS as we all currently know it will be changing, with the aforementioned features being removed.
Some people are excited and others are naturally freaking out. The steep learning curve of AngularJS means that some have had to struggle and learn harder than others to get to the point they are at now and when 2.0 is released, it will be an entirely new framework.
If you work in the tech industry, more specifically as a developer (software or web) you are slowly dying from a disease commonly known as: overtime.
There is no cure for overtime other than something called common sense. It comes in many different forms, but for many including myself, it can be a hard pill to swallow when a deadline is looming or a culture of overtime is prevalent. When the company comes to expect overtime, in this economy you have two choices: deal with it and hope you do not burn out or find a new job.