Lyndsey

Hi guys,
 
I thought it would be cool to start a topic for people to share sites they find useful for their design/development processes. Here is a list of sites I find useful and/or use regularly:
 
General Stuff:
http://jsfiddle.net/ - Useful for JavaScript troubleshooting. Test your code and just play around with HTML/CSS and JavaScript. If you're looking for help with a piece of code, save your Fiddle and send it to someone else who can take a look at it You can also save revisions of your Fiddle to track your progress. http://pastebin.com/ - Useful for sharing code online. Useful for when you run in to a bit of trouble with some server-side code. Instead of pasting masses of lines inside a topic, paste your code in to pastebin and get someone to have a look at it for you http://jsonlint.com/ - JSON Validator http://paletton.com/ - Color Scheme Designer. See what colours complement each other etc. Useful stuff. http://www.lipsum.com/ - Lorem Ipsum - Useful for inserting dummy text in to your web pages. http://net.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/php/ - PHP tutorials, quizzes etc. They also do the same for JavaScript, HTML, CSS, WordPress, ASP.NET to name a few. Really good site.  
Javascript:
You Don't Know JavaScript - https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS JavaScript scene https://medium.com/javascript-scene Webpack Asset bundler https://webpack.js.org/ Jest, Automated tests for JavaScript https://facebook.github.io/jest/  
CSS:
http://css3generator.com/ - Generate CSS3. Box Shadow, Border Radius etc. http://border-radius.com/ - Generate border radius quickly! http://www.javascripter.net/faq/hextorgb.htm - HEX to RGB conversion. http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/ - CSS Reset Stylesheet. Resolve browser inconsistencies such as varying margins/padding. http://www.cssplay.co.uk - Lots of experiments with CSS, menus and layouts. CSS Wizardry: https://csswizardry.com/ Sass Guidelines https://sass-guidelin.es/  
Responsive Design:
http://www.getskeleton.com/ - Responsive Grid. Nebula - a framework built by WDF member, rbrtsmith: https://nebulaui.github.io/nebula/  
Server-Side Coding:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/php-database-access-are-you-doing-it-correctly/ - How to connect to a database using PDO http://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php - PHP manual for everything PHP!  
Form Validation (Client-Side):
https://jqueryvalidation.org/ - (My preferred method) Simple to use. Include the necessary jQuery and Validation.js files. Simple usage example, call the function using $('#myForm').validate(); and add a class="required" to fields you want to validate Also allows you to create custom messages and make the validation more advanced! I hope these are useful! If anyone has any others to share, please do
 
Lyndsey.

Hi guys,
 
I thought it would be cool to start a topic for people to share sites they find useful for their design/development processes. Here is a list of sites I find useful and/or use regularly:
 
General Stuff:
http://jsfiddle.net/ - Useful for JavaScript troubleshooting. Test your code and just play around with HTML/CSS and JavaScript. If you're looking for help with a piece of code, save your Fiddle and send it to someone else who can take a look at it You can also save revisions of your Fiddle to track your progress. http://pastebin.com/ - Useful for sharing code online. Useful for when you run in to a bit of trouble with some server-side code. Instead of pasting masses of lines inside a topic, paste your code in to pastebin and get someone to have a look at it for you http://jsonlint.com/ - JSON Validator http://paletton.com/ - Color Scheme Designer. See what colours complement each other etc. Useful stuff. http://www.lipsum.com/ - Lorem Ipsum - Useful for inserting dummy text in to your web pages. http://net.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/php/ - PHP tutorials, quizzes etc. They also do the same for JavaScript, HTML, CSS, WordPress, ASP.NET to name a few. Really good site.  
Javascript:
You Don't Know JavaScript - https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS JavaScript scene https://medium.com/javascript-scene Webpack Asset bundler https://webpack.js.org/ Jest, Automated tests for JavaScript https://facebook.github.io/jest/  
CSS:
http://css3generator.com/ - Generate CSS3. Box Shadow, Border Radius etc. http://border-radius.com/ - Generate border radius quickly! http://www.javascripter.net/faq/hextorgb.htm - HEX to RGB conversion. http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/ - CSS Reset Stylesheet. Resolve browser inconsistencies such as varying margins/padding. http://www.cssplay.co.uk - Lots of experiments with CSS, menus and layouts. CSS Wizardry: https://csswizardry.com/ Sass Guidelines https://sass-guidelin.es/  
Responsive Design:
http://www.getskeleton.com/ - Responsive Grid. Nebula - a framework built by WDF member, rbrtsmith: https://nebulaui.github.io/nebula/  
Server-Side Coding:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/php-database-access-are-you-doing-it-correctly/ - How to connect to a database using PDO http://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php - PHP manual for everything PHP!  
Form Validation (Client-Side):
https://jqueryvalidation.org/ - (My preferred method) Simple to use. Include the necessary jQuery and Validation.js files. Simple usage example, call the function using $('#myForm').validate(); and add a class="required" to fields you want to validate Also allows you to create custom messages and make the validation more advanced! I hope these are useful! If anyone has any others to share, please do
 
Lyndsey.

Hi guys,
 
I thought it would be cool to start a topic for people to share sites they find useful for their design/development processes. Here is a list of sites I find useful and/or use regularly:
 
General Stuff:
http://jsfiddle.net/ - Useful for JavaScript troubleshooting. Test your code and just play around with HTML/CSS and JavaScript. If you're looking for help with a piece of code, save your Fiddle and send it to someone else who can take a look at it You can also save revisions of your Fiddle to track your progress. http://pastebin.com/ - Useful for sharing code online. Useful for when you run in to a bit of trouble with some server-side code. Instead of pasting masses of lines inside a topic, paste your code in to pastebin and get someone to have a look at it for you http://jsonlint.com/ - JSON Validator http://paletton.com/ - Color Scheme Designer. See what colours complement each other etc. Useful stuff. http://www.lipsum.com/ - Lorem Ipsum - Useful for inserting dummy text in to your web pages. http://net.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/php/ - PHP tutorials, quizzes etc. They also do the same for JavaScript, HTML, CSS, WordPress, ASP.NET to name a few. Really good site.  
Javascript:
You Don't Know JavaScript - https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS JavaScript scene https://medium.com/javascript-scene Webpack Asset bundler https://webpack.js.org/ Jest, Automated tests for JavaScript https://facebook.github.io/jest/  
CSS:
http://css3generator.com/ - Generate CSS3. Box Shadow, Border Radius etc. http://border-radius.com/ - Generate border radius quickly! http://www.javascripter.net/faq/hextorgb.htm - HEX to RGB conversion. http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/ - CSS Reset Stylesheet. Resolve browser inconsistencies such as varying margins/padding. http://www.cssplay.co.uk - Lots of experiments with CSS, menus and layouts. CSS Wizardry: https://csswizardry.com/ Sass Guidelines https://sass-guidelin.es/  
Responsive Design:
http://www.getskeleton.com/ - Responsive Grid. Nebula - a framework built by WDF member, rbrtsmith: https://nebulaui.github.io/nebula/  
Server-Side Coding:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/php-database-access-are-you-doing-it-correctly/ - How to connect to a database using PDO http://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php - PHP manual for everything PHP!  
Form Validation (Client-Side):
https://jqueryvalidation.org/ - (My preferred method) Simple to use. Include the necessary jQuery and Validation.js files. Simple usage example, call the function using $('#myForm').validate(); and add a class="required" to fields you want to validate Also allows you to create custom messages and make the validation more advanced! I hope these are useful! If anyone has any others to share, please do
 
Lyndsey.

To get my first job I created my own website and a few small demos that I thought would help demonstrate my ability as a developer.  I applied at many places and eventually landed an interview at a local agency.
I took in a folder showing annotated code samples of the demos I had created along with screenshots and explained my decision making process - I wanted to prove that I could build things like responsive navigations without relying on plugins and that I had a good understanding of the fundamentals.

Lots of projects and having great ideas for them doesn't matter, it's how they are executed.  We aren't paid to come up with project ideas, we're paid to execute ideas from clients and turn them into workable, user-friendly software that is free of bugs.  You want to demonstrate your ability to do that, and a few demos and maybe a single project is really all that is needed.

I also offered to work for free to gain some experience and because I simply love writing code - They we're hesitant to hire me initially but when I said that they could see my enthusiasm and offered me a project to prove my worth (They paid me for it BTW).  They required knowledge of Git which I hadn't even heard of so that weekend before I started I spent all of it learning Git basics.  I was hired full time in the middle of the next week because they could see my drive to learn and improve.

So it's not as simple as doing the online courses because lots of your competition are also doing that.  You have to go above and beyond those who are also applying with more experience - show them that within a few months you will be a greater asset that the guy who's got some experience but already thinks he knows it all.

As for moving to senior positions it depends on many factors, I was lucky in that the front-end role didn't really exist at my first job - I basically created it on the back of the other devs there preferring not to write CSS/Sass so we came to an arrangement.  A year later they hired two developers and had regular interns so I became their lead front-end dev based on that and I'd also significantly improved.  In other more established firms this may take longer, you may need to job hop.

My next job at Sainsbury's I applied for the lead position but I was offered the role of "developer" so not even senior - although the salary package was good so I took it.  Soon after starting I realised I had dodged a bullet by not being offered the senior/lead role - because now because the project complexity and ability of my co-workers was in a different league.  I would have been well out of my depth.  However that made for an amazing learning experience.

18 months later I didn't see much scope for promotions so I had to leave to land the title of "senior developer" - job hopping is often a quick way to advance your career but obviously comes with risk.  That role didn't work out as planned and I decided to move into contracting - which is where I'm at now on a contract at BSkyB working with some exceptionally talented people.  Contracting pays close to double what you'd get as a perm employee, however it comes with it's own risks and drawbacks and that is something beyond the scope of this thread.

I took inspiration from Harry Robert's career.  He managed to accelerate his career at an alarming rate and I just had the plan that if I can do half as good as he does then I'd be in a really good place - and I believe this is something anybody on here could do if that's a goal they want to go for.

I hope this gives you some ideas on how you can move forward.  Don't be put off by rejections - I've had many that I've not touched on here, just move onto the next.

I'd look at using React for something like this, it's far better suited to building out something like this.  Problem is you won't want to be pulling in scripts like you are there you'll be wanting to use JavaScript modules and a bundler to make it work for the web.

But essentially you want to filter out certain bits of data from a JSON data structure using built in array and object methods, you could then write unit tests against this to verify that it works.

Even though your method above works - it's essentially a hack and you're just mutating the DOM rather than filtering the data before injecting it.

I've been into web design since I was 13 (I'm 29 later this year) and completely self taught, I went from just messing about with HTML and CSS as a teenager to learning PHP and MySQL in my late teens and in the past few years teaching myself Javascript, and OOP PHP, but until just a couple of months ago, I didn't actually have a job in the field I love.
After I left college in 2009 I got a job in marketing, but got made redundant just under a year later and struggled to get another job, I was wanting to turn my hobby of web design into a career, after a couple of years of suffering depression, applying for jobs and never hearing back, boredom after leaving college, I eventually lost touch with web design and when I finally came back into it a couple of years later in 2013 I was miles behind, I didn't know a thing about responsiveness, mobile first, the methods I'd always used were out of date, software no longer seen as industry standard, so I spent a few months learning to get back in the game, taught myself responsiveness and mobile first even if it seemed backwards to start with, I started looking for work around my local area, but due to lack of experience and not being able to drive most of the jobs were a good hour to an hour and a half away on public transport, and despite getting a few interviews, I never got a job.
In the end, after encouragement from my family and partner I decided to go self employed, and I learned loads even if in the end it didn't pay off, over the course of 2 and half years I had about 10 customers, sure on pay day it was more money then I'd ever seen before, but in between that I was living on tax credits from the government, fortunately I still lived at home at this point or with my future in-laws.
Fast forward to this past November, me and my fiancee were talking about how we want to get our own place, but one of us would need a full time job, and logically it made sense for me to look for work, as from both of our self employment ventures, I was more likely to get into work, and my business learnt less than hers.
After spending a week or so putting a brand new up to date CV together, and making a portfolio website showcasing my work I started applying for jobs, in the first week I applied for a dozen around where I'm living now plus a couple further afield, and heard back from one, a market leading company based in Manchester, its actually one I didn't expect to hear from, but I had a telephone interview, followed by a Skype interview, then a face to face interview was arranged for the week before Christmas, unfortunately due to an accident on the M6 I never got there, but fortunately they rearranged it for the first week of 2018.
I went to the interview, and it went well, but a week later I got an email saying I was unsuccessful, and after talking to them over the phone it was lack of experience that let me down.
Later that day I applied for half a dozen more jobs, and that afternoon I got a telephone from one of the recruitment agencies I applied for just over an hour before asking for more information, and he arranged an interview with the company the following week.
I went to the interview, and I should add I applied for a front end role, and it went really well, and they were very impressed with the work I'd done through self employment, after getting home I contacted the recruitment agency about my thoughts on the interview and how well it seemed to go, and he said the feedback he'd recieved and been the same, they were very impressed, and they'd asked if I'd be open to a PHP developer role rather than front end, it'd be for more money, I said I only applied for front end as I wasn't sure my PHP would be up to spec, but I'd be open for it.
I had an interview with the PHP team leader the week after (now about 10 days after I first applied for the job), which went really well, and by the time I'd got back home I'd been offered the job, this was a Thursday, and I would be starting the  coming Monday.
I've now been here just under 2 months, earning more money than I've ever seen before, I've learnt so much (More OOP, Gulp, Automatic deployment to name a few which I've put into practice on the website I made for my fiancee's business) and wouldn't change a thing for the world.
Bit of a long post, but I hope it helps, even for someone who has always loved web design I originally found getting my foot in the hard till I went self employed and started doing work commercially and learning more, rather than random short lived projects for myself.
The job I applied for in Manchester might have been more money than I'm getting now, but honestly I feel better here, its a lot closer to home than Manchester, its only a 20 minute train ride (Its right near the station) rather than an hour or more on the M6 in rush hour traffic, and I've already started saving for when me and my fiancee can get our own place, I loved self employment, but I loved being employed, doing something I love every day, even more.

Hi guys,
 
I thought it would be cool to start a topic for people to share sites they find useful for their design/development processes. Here is a list of sites I find useful and/or use regularly:
 
General Stuff:
http://jsfiddle.net/ - Useful for JavaScript troubleshooting. Test your code and just play around with HTML/CSS and JavaScript. If you're looking for help with a piece of code, save your Fiddle and send it to someone else who can take a look at it You can also save revisions of your Fiddle to track your progress. http://pastebin.com/ - Useful for sharing code online. Useful for when you run in to a bit of trouble with some server-side code. Instead of pasting masses of lines inside a topic, paste your code in to pastebin and get someone to have a look at it for you http://jsonlint.com/ - JSON Validator http://paletton.com/ - Color Scheme Designer. See what colours complement each other etc. Useful stuff. http://www.lipsum.com/ - Lorem Ipsum - Useful for inserting dummy text in to your web pages. http://net.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/php/ - PHP tutorials, quizzes etc. They also do the same for JavaScript, HTML, CSS, WordPress, ASP.NET to name a few. Really good site.  
Javascript:
You Don't Know JavaScript - https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS JavaScript scene https://medium.com/javascript-scene Webpack Asset bundler https://webpack.js.org/ Jest, Automated tests for JavaScript https://facebook.github.io/jest/  
CSS:
http://css3generator.com/ - Generate CSS3. Box Shadow, Border Radius etc. http://border-radius.com/ - Generate border radius quickly! http://www.javascripter.net/faq/hextorgb.htm - HEX to RGB conversion. http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/ - CSS Reset Stylesheet. Resolve browser inconsistencies such as varying margins/padding. http://www.cssplay.co.uk - Lots of experiments with CSS, menus and layouts. CSS Wizardry: https://csswizardry.com/ Sass Guidelines https://sass-guidelin.es/  
Responsive Design:
http://www.getskeleton.com/ - Responsive Grid. Nebula - a framework built by WDF member, rbrtsmith: https://nebulaui.github.io/nebula/  
Server-Side Coding:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/php-database-access-are-you-doing-it-correctly/ - How to connect to a database using PDO http://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php - PHP manual for everything PHP!  
Form Validation (Client-Side):
https://jqueryvalidation.org/ - (My preferred method) Simple to use. Include the necessary jQuery and Validation.js files. Simple usage example, call the function using $('#myForm').validate(); and add a class="required" to fields you want to validate Also allows you to create custom messages and make the validation more advanced! I hope these are useful! If anyone has any others to share, please do
 
Lyndsey.

I tend to go on YouTube and search for a chill out playlist, something relaxing and interesting enough that it keeps me working but doesn't distract me from the task at hand.
 
Movie soundtracks also work for me, listening to themes and soundtracks to some of my favourite films. Some faves are Hans Zimmer - Time (inception) & Injection and Steve Jablonsky (The Island/Transformers soundtracks). They help me concentrate.
 
I'm similar to you Andy, I love all music, but the up-beat stuff just doesn't work for me whilst working!

I've moved into the world of contracting.  I'm now contracting at BSkyB as a JavaScript developer, coming over to Sky has exposed me to technologies such as GraphQL, Lerna and some really advanced Redux usage.  I'm spending a lot of my time refactoring tests - moving from Mocha over to Jest, replacing tests that are asserting against implementation details to instead test expected behaviour of public APIs.  All fun stuff.

I've also been spending time in my Nebula framework, especially around React and the demo page that has a real-time code view, kind of like Story Book that has had me spending a lot of time figuring out why some regexes were not working - this however was made much easier thanks to having a good testing strategy

Welcome Jack

You can use data-* attributes to achieve this in a much more compact way. This is an example:
<!-- data-ref corresponds to the target form to be displayed --> <input id="windowFront" class="js-radio-button" name="window" value="Front" type="radio" data-form="#damageChips"> <!-- target form to be displayed when the radio is changed --> <div id="damageChips" class="form-section js-form-section"> ... </div> // jQuery var $radioButtons = $('.js-radio-button'); var $forms = $('.js-form-section'); $radioButtons.change(function() { var $this = $(this); var targetForm = $this.data('form'); $forms.hide(); $(targetForm).show(); }); Fiddle demo: https://jsfiddle.net/usjoL467/4/

Welcome Jack

resolve: { modules: ['src', 'node_modules'], extensions: ['.js', '.jsx', '.scss'], }, One neat thing with the resolve config that you can pass is `modules`. This will allow you to import directly from a path within your modules.
 
So say you were in my-project/src/components/header/title.jsx...
 
// to import a utility we could do import myUtility from '../../utils/myUtility // OR import myUtility from 'utils/myUtility' It's pretty handy, especially as a project grows and a component might have to be moved elsewhere - it means you then wont have to go updating all the paths for relative imports.

Welcome Jack

An interesting repo here covering a full stack development app in Javascript: Backend, frontend, infrastructure & deployment. It gives a good overview of the whole stack.
While doesn't go into great deal into any of the concepts I think it's a solid introduction to the most modern tools used in JS application development.
https://github.com/verekia/js-stack-from-scratch
 
Only part that seems to be missing is a database layer, but it looks as though the Author is planning to add this soon.

Yeah, but for example if I was personally teaching and mentoring somebody who had no exposure to JavaScript I would teach them with ES6 first. It's just that there's not many good courses out there at the moment that teach people this way.
is a good talk discussing this very topic.

Interesting article on functional setState

there's differing opinions on this, but If I were teaching a newcomer to JavaScript I would be using ES6 right from the beginning. It is an update to the language so like learning any new language start from the basics.
 
Unfortunately a lot of the ES6 courses assume a level of experience with JavaScript so that makes following my suggestion quite difficult for somebody in your position so I would actually recommend here you learn ES5 first and then come and use one of the ES6 courses. Wes Bos has some good courses so https://es6.io/ is well worth checking out.
 
Feel free to post any questions you might have in the general JavaScript topic regarding ES6 and we'll be happy to explain!

The documentation is easy to follow, which helps.
 
Also, I've been finding the test-first approach OK so far. Writing the test before the implementation means I'm writing less code and it's so much nicer to read. Although, I'm not sure if this is more related to functional programming as I've recently been learning a lot about it and have been trying to implement the methodologies as much as possible.
 
JavaScript is so awesome right now, though!

If you're looking for a path to front-end learning, I think this is quite useful:
 
https://frontendmasters.gitbooks.io/front-end-handbook-2017/content/

Add the current branch name to terminal
 
Works really well.

For what it's worth, the issue in your original code is because you're trying to use template strings inside single quotes. Template strings should be wrapped in back-ticks:
module.exports = { entry: `${srcDir}/app.js` } https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Template_literals

It's in your <head> tag near the carousel css:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/owl.carousel.css"><

https://mobile.twitter.com/

The new Twitter for mobile is built with React and the backend has been changed to Node and Express. Interesting times.