DEV Community: mattymaloney

WordPress Development Tracks

mattymaloney — Tue, 11 Aug 2020 23:51:30 +0000

This is what I started with. What other training do you recommend for soon-to-be WordPress developer pros?

Junior Track on Lynda
https://www.lynda.com/learning-paths/Web/become-a-junior-wordpress-developer

Advanced Track on Lynda
https://www.lynda.com/learning-paths/Web/become-an-advanced-wordpress-developer

Tonya Mork
https://knowthecode.io/

Simple, Readable Fonts Available Via CDN

mattymaloney — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 22:38:49 +0000

Fonts to consider for super-readable latin alphabet copy.

Raleway

New to me, and I like it. But I'll need to look at it for a month before I can decide to use it. Sans-serif, but the q and l both have fine serifs, and the M does not have that long center like Helvetica M. Speaking of comparison to Helvetica, the em height is better, leading to less oblong letters. I'm not a fan of the W.
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Raleway

Roboto

By now a classic. Heavier than Raleway. Cleaner and more traditional?? than Raleway.
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto

Helvetica

Wonderfully easy to read letter-to-letter, word-to-word. Unfortunately, from a broader viewpoint, e.g. looking at the whole screen, Helvetica text just doesn't have the calm appeal I'm looking for. When I see it, I always want tampermonkey again so I can have it replaced on the fly.
https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/helvetica

Rooney

Probably the only serif font that will make this list. But I will probably only use it for sites with less copy.
https://www.janfromm.de/typefaces/rooney/overview/
https://www.janfromm.de/typefaces/rooney/std/

Verdana Pro

Verdana was king of "modern" for years. I find it a bit tiresome now, and it takes up space that I'd rather leave empty. However, I just noticed Verdana Pro today, and maybe that's the happy Verdana that uses the space I want to give it. Probably Windows only, or only for machines with Microsoft Office installed.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/verdana-pro

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Quicksand
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Ubuntu
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Karla
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato
https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/futura

Other Font Resources

Identifont

For searching and comparing fonts.
http://www.identifont.com/index.html

Microsoft's Font List

Not a list of web fonts.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/

Playing with CSS clip-path polygon()

mattymaloney — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 22:12:31 +0000

While reviewing material to take the Comptia Network+ and Security+ exams, I saw the TCP/IP and OSI network models side by side. Distractible as I am, I immediately thought this might be a good time to play with CSS clip-paths.

For more information on multi-shape clip-paths, see https://24ways.org/2018/clip-paths-know-no-bounds/.

I think I can make improvements to the invisible polygons I chose for "move to next shape". However, after experimenting with what I thought were ideal invisible shapes designed to move to the starting point of the next polygon, I realized that it doesn't seem to matter what coordinates I choose for the invisible polygons. I'm confused about that. Please leave a comment if you can help me understand this.

C# Primer Resources

mattymaloney — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 07:21:10 +0000

For interview preparation, these are the 4 primary resources I used to rekindle "experience" from my near-zero experience with C#.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/

https://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/0201729555/samplechapter/lippmanch01.pdf

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tutorials/with-visual-studio-code

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/get-started/tutorial-console-cpp?view=vs-2019

Options for Minimal CSS

mattymaloney — Fri, 15 May 2020 04:09:42 +0000

In search of modern CSS libraries useful as a starting point. I'm less interested in an actual CSS framework, because in my experience years ago, the frameworks are generally bloated, difficult to troubleshoot, and sometimes tricky to override reliably without using !important.

Normaliz was always my normal go-to (after roaming through various css resets) when I want to start with "nothing". As far as I can see right now, nothing better has come along, and normalize.css is apparently still quite sufficient.
http://necolas.github.io/normalize.css/

PureCSS has a relatively small footprint, when compared with other CSS frameworks. Based on normalize.css. 3.7kb gzipped.
https://purecss.io/

Milligram. I can't quickly form a significant opinion on it, but it's worth looking at. Also based on normalize.css. 2kb gzipped.
https://milligram.io/
https://github.com/milligram/milligram

Mini.css is clearly interesting. Exciting actually. Build your flavor gives us the default values and opportunity to change them before downloading a custom "flavor".
https://minicss.org/
https://minicss.org/flavors

Skeleton CSS. Boilerplate, so it says in the tagline.
http://getskeleton.com/

Bulma definitely doesn't count as minimal, but I'm inclined to give it a closer look when I get a chance.
https://bulma.io/

Code Sandbox / Developer Playground Options

mattymaloney — Thu, 14 May 2020 04:30:33 +0000

I'm often annoyed with codepen.io (sorry codepen peeps; love ya though!). Looking for alternatives...

Flems

Interesting and uses unpkg.com for dependencies. Not sure how that works until I try it...
https://flems.io/

JSFiddle

It's grown a lot since the old days, but still feels a little back-woods to me.
https://jsfiddle.net/

CodeSandbox

This may become my new goto.
https://codesandbox.io/

rainbow9.org

Just noting it here because I miss it.

AWS Cloud9

This is more of a full-fledged development environment.
https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/
https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloud9/home/product

Repl.it

I used this years ago when learning Scheme. Looks like it's evolved to include tutorials and a community feel.
https://repl.it/

Practice Board

New to me, but omg this looks like one of the originals!
https://www.practiceboard.com/

Outpan

Seems like a hot spot for me to publish quickie apps. Although I must say many of the apps here do not look like quickies. As their tagline says: awesome apps in your browser.
https://www.outpan.com/

Glitch

Collaborative development sandbox.
https://glitch.com/

Update 2020 June 29

Just saw this one here on dev.to. Nice work!!
https://dev.to/chr15m/i-built-an-online-code-editor-3aj5

Update 2020 May 18

Snack

I didn't know it was possible, but snack has iOS, Android, and browser previews for React Native code. e.g. This demo from Formik. Do other playgrounds have this option?

Look for more alternatives...

Several more alternatives nicely organized with pros, cons, and screenshots.
https://www.slant.co/options/5535/alternatives/~codepen-alternatives