10 Common Uses of Bootstrap

Bootstrap is a framework to help you design websites faster and easier. It includes HTML and CSS based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, tables, navigation, modals, image carousels, etc. It also gives you support for JavaScript plugins.  

To learn about the inner workings of Bootstrap, I contacted Stas Demchuk, Senior Software Engineer at: 8sph.com.

Here’s what you need to know:

1.      First of all, Bootstrap is the most popular framework for creating layouts. Here are some additional reasons to use Bootstrap:

• Bootstrap's responsive CSS adjusts to phones, tablets, and desktops
• Mobile-first styles are part of the framework
• Bootstrap is compatible with all modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera)

2. Bootstrap has a big community and friendly support. For resources visit:

• Check out the Bootstrap Blog.
• You can chat with Bootstrappers with IRC in the irc.freenode.net server, in the ##bootstrap channel.
• Have a look at what people are doing with Bootstrap at the Bootstrap Expo.

3. Bootstrap is easy to set up and create a working layout in less than an hour

They have a basic template available at http://getbootstrap.com/getting-started/#template and also a set of examples for different needs (http://getbootstrap.com/getting-started/#examples). You can just download the bootstrap repository, go to docs/examples folder, copy/paste the example you need and work on it.

4. You don't need to know HTML and CSS well to use bootstrap, it's a plus if you're a backend developer and need to do some UI changes.

5. It's fully customizable, I can choose which components I'd like to use and use variables file to get do even more color and behavior customization.

All you need to do is visit http://getbootstrap.com/customize/ , choose the plugins you need and click download. Bootstrap also provides a way to override its internal variables for advanced users, but they provide pretty decent defaults, so you shouldn't worry about this unless you need to.

6. When you update the version of Bootstrap, you won't see tons of errors because their core team cares about backwards compatibility.

7. Their documentation is great! Here are some resources to check out:

• Bootstrap 3 Tutorial
• Code Academy: Bootstrap
• Web Design Tutorials: Bootstrap

8. Bootstrap offers a lot of helper classes that make development of a responsive website easy and fast.

You can turn any fixed-width layout into a fluid one by simply changing your parent .container class to .container-fluid.

Bootstrap also has .visible-*-* classes to help you control the way your sections are displayed on tablets and mobile devices. Example:

<div class="visible-xs-block visible-sm-block"></div>

In this case, the div will be displayed as a section with display: block only on phones and tablets. It will be hidden on desktop.

9. Bootstrap’s components are well-adopted to the ecosystem of popular JS MVC Frameworks like Angular. Bootstrap provides several ways to include it into your project:

Using bower:

bower install bootstrap

Using npm:

npm install bootstrap

And just simply adding a script tag with the url to bootstrap source on CDN.

We also have ui-bootstrap for Angular.js and react-bootstrap for React. You can also install them via Bower and npm. And then, for example, to create a collapse element, you just need to create similar markup:

<div uib-collapse="isCollapsed">

<div class="well well-lg">

Content of the collapse

</div>

</div>

Instead of doing a lot of jquery configuration like you would normally.

10. Bootstrap resolves a lot of cross-browser issues and you don't need to worry about that most of the time.

Note: Bootstrap is designed to work with latest desktop and mobile browsers. This means that displays might be different in older browsers and might render differently, though according to the documentation, the displays should be fully functional.

Here are a couple of screen shots about browser compatibility.

This is a link to list of the browser bugs Bootstrap has to deal with.

This is a link to a list of browser support of CSS3 and HTML5 features.

Additional Notes

From time-to-time you'll probably want to print your layouts but you should know that printing can be tricky. Here are a couple of things to watch out for:

"As of Chrome v32 and regardless of margin settings, Chrome uses a viewport width significantly narrower than the physical paper size when resolving media queries while printing a webpage. This can result in Bootstrap's extra-small grid being unexpectedly activated when printing. See #12078 for some details."

For more information, check out this section on printing. 

The Android Stock Browser: "Android 4.1 (and some newer releases apparently) ship with the Browser app as the default web browser of choice (as opposed to Chrome). Unfortunately, the Browser app has lots of bugs and inconsistencies with CSS in general."

Box Sizing: Some 3rd party programs such as Google Maps and Google Custom Search Engine, create conflicts with Bootstrap. this is due to { box-sizing: border-box; }. For an in-depth read, check out the Getting Started page at GetBootStrap.com.

Thanks once again to Stas Demchuk, Senior Software Engineer at: 8sph.com.


Source From :
http://www.htmlgoodies.com

A Guide to Using CSS Variables

Web designers accustomed to using CSS preprocessors are no strangers to CSS variables, but for those of us who are not, CSS variables are now officially part of the CSS specification. CSS variables, or more accurately, as they are called in the spec, CSS custom properties, can be useful for reducing repetition as well as for achieving runtime effects like theme switching. In this tutorial, we'll be learning how to use CSS custom properties in our web pages.

Declaring and Using CSS Variables

Variables should be declared within a CSS selector that defines its scope. For a global scope you can use the :root or body selector. The variable name must begin with two dashes (--) and is case sensitive, so "--main-color" and "--Main-Color" would define two different custom properties. Other than these two hard rules, the allowed syntax for custom properties is actually quite permissive. Nevertheless, you would be well advised to follow the standard language naming convention of CSS: use dashes to separate the words in the property name.

The following CSS rule declares a custom property of global scope named "--main-color", It has a value of "#06c":

:root {
  --main-color: #06c;
}

To reference the variable, use the var() function. It retrieves the custom property value, so that it may be assigned to the property (#06c in this case). So long as the custom property is defined somewhere in your stylesheet and has a scope that includes the target element(s), it should be available to the var function.

#header h1 {
  color: var(--main-color);
}

Variables and Cascade Rules

Custom properties cascade much in the same way as rules, so you can define the same property at different levels of specificity:

/* default color */
:root { --color: blue; }
div { --color: green; }
.myclass { --color: red; }
/* applies the --color property at all the above levels */
* { color: var(--color); }

Here is some HTML markup that shows the effects of the above rules:

<p>I inherited blue from the root element!</p>
<div>I got green set directly on me!</div>
<div class="myclass">
  While I got red set directly on me!
  <p>I'm red too, because of inheritance!</p>
</div>

...which is displayed as:

I inherited blue from the root element!

I got green set directly on me!

While I got red set directly on me!

I'm red too, because of inheritance!

More on the var() Function

We've already seen how to use the var() function to retrieve the value of a custom property. What I haven't mentioned is that the val() function accepts a variable number of parameters: fallback values to be used when the referenced custom property is invalid. Fallback values can be a comma separated list, which will be combined into a single value by the function. For example var(--font-stack, "Helvetica Neue", "Helvetica", "Arial", "sans-serif"); defines a fallback of "Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" once combined.

Shorthand values may also be stored in a variable. Just like regular CSS, properties such as margin and padding are not comma separated, so an appropriate fallback for padding would define them the same way:

/* definition */
div {
  --color: green;
  --pad: 10px 10px 20px 15px;
}

/* usage */
p { padding: var(--pad, 10px 10px 10px) };

The browser inspector confirms that the variable was successfully applied:

— Advertisement —

Combining var() with the call() Function

Very recently, I wrote about the CSS3 calc() function. It, like other CSS3 functions, may include variables in its expression. So, let's say that you wanted to apply a size factor to the font. You can't just append the measurement unit to the variable:

/* definition */
:root { --font-size-factor: 2.5; }

/* faulty application - WON'T WORK! */
div > p { font-size: var(--font-size-factor)em; }

However, if we multiply the --font-size-factor by one unit of measurement, we get a valid and usable result:

/* definition */
:root { --font-size-factor: 2.5; }

/* valid application! */
div > p {
  font-size: calc(var(--font-size-factor) * 1em);
}

Accessing Custom Properties in JavaScript

Thanks to the window.getComputedStyle() function, it's not only easier than ever to access CSS properties from your JavaScript code, but it also works for variables! Here's some code that fetches the --color property value of a DIV and displays it. Moreover, the CSS property value is reused to set the color of the property value to the very color that it describes!

var elem       = document.getElementById("alert"),
    theCSSprop = window.getComputedStyle(elem, null).getPropertyValue("--color").trim(),
    msgElt     = document.getElementById("computed_style");

msgElt.innerHTML = "The alert div's color is \"<span style='color:" + theCSSprop + "'>" + theCSSprop +'</span>".';

...which would output something along the lines of:

The alert div's color is "red".

You can also set the value of an existing one at runtime, using the setProperty() method of the CSSStyleDeclaration object. Here's some code that calls the function from a button click:

//HTML
<p><button id="change_doc_color" onclick="changeDocColor()">Change document color to green</button></p>

//JS
function changeDocColor() {
    elem.style.setProperty('--color', 'green');
}

Since setProperty() will accept any valid CSS code, the value string may include the var() function as well. That would allow us to predefine our color before using it, in order to perhaps reuse it elsewhere.

//CSS
:root { --color: blue; --new-color: green; }

//JS
function changeDocColor() {
    elem.style.setProperty('--color', 'var(--new-color)');
}

Conclusion

A word of caution, not all browsers support CSS variables at this time. Most notably, Internet Explorer, Opera Mini, and the Android browser don't recognize them.

Want to try any of today's examples? they're all up on CodePen.

Source From:

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/html5/css/a-guide-to-using-css-variables.html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HTML_NL_WDU_20160530_STR2L1&dni=329824948&rni=165800258#fbid=nXrbyvVM_0m

25 Free Online Courses To Equip You With Valuable Skills

Now that the inspirational sparkle of the new year has worn off, you may be falling back into your old routines and habits. Statistically, you probably are. One way to jolt yourself out of a run is to engage in learning new skills. Last year I’ve had the privilege to do research, interview and report on some of today’s most successful people and they all have one thing in common. They are continually learning. Whether it’s reading books, going to seminars, or taking courses, continuously expanding your mind is a fundamental key to success.

If you didn’t love school, don’t worry. Today’s online options have come so far, you can listen on your commute, download everything to your smartphone, or take an entire class via watching short digestible online videos for free.

1. Programming for Everybody

You’ve probably seen or heard the headlines claiming “everybody needs to learn how to code.” If you agree, this University of Michigan course from Coursera is a great option.

2. How To Make iPhone Apps

This course from Udemy teaches how to finally create that app idea you have. If you are very computer savvy, take five hours and you’ll be ready to submit your first app to the App Store by the end of the day.

3. Introduction to Graphic Design

We live in a visual world. Just like some people argue that everyone should know the basics of coding, others feel we should all learn the basics of good design. This beginner course from Udemy teaches the basic principles of design and the theory behind creating attention-grabbing visuals.

4. Beginners Adobe Photoshop

Once you learn the basics of great design, you’re going to want to start designing! This tutorial for beginners from Adobe KnowHow teaches the fundamentals of a, if not the, vital graphic design program. Also a good course idea for beginning photographers.

5. Internet Marketing for Smart People

If you want to up your marketing game, Copyblogger is a great resource. This class teaches you how to systematically implement effective marketing campaigns. You also get instant access to 14 value-packed ebooks on SEO, copywriting, keywords and more.

6. Diploma in Social Media Marketing

This course from ALISON goes beyond how to use the platforms and teaches the ins and outs of affiliate marketing, email marketing, blogging, social platforms and increasing site traffic.

7. Social Media 101

Want a social media overview? This is a two-minute-a-day class from Buffer to teach you the basics of social media. Learn how to use each platform, how to create a tone for your brand, and how to understand analytics.

8. Become a Networking Master

If you’re intimidated by networking events, meetings and conferences, you’re not alone. Progress your career or your business with this course from The Muse which teaches you how to network, communicate and give a clear elevator pitch to anyone and everyone.

9. Introduction to Public Speaking

Public speaking skills can improve your performance in meetings, calls, and of course on the stage. This edX class from the University of Washington will help you become more effective and confident on debating, presenting and persuading.

10. Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills

Negotiation is not just essential for business owners crafting contracts. If you want to secure yourself a higher salary, better benefits, or that coveted office with a window, start with this course from the University of Michigan from Coursera.

11. Competitive Strategy

Getting ahead and staying ahead is a science. This more advanced course from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München by Coursera will teach you the basic tools of game theory in order to dissect strategy and gain competitive advantages.

12. How to Finally Start Your Side Project

Many successful businesses started as a side hustle. This class offered by career experts at The Muse will walk you through how to focus and bring your ideas into the world, while still working your 9-to-5.

13. How to Start a Startup

Entrepreneurship is the new black. Stand out from other startups with knowledge on user growth, fundraising, operations, and more. This Stanford lecture by Sam Altman features leaders from successful companies like PayPal, LinkedIn, and Airbnb.

14. 21 Critical Lessons for Entrepreneurs

In the middle of starting your own business? This is a short course from Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar. He teaches rookie entrepreneurs key lessons based on his first-hand experience vetting ideas, raising money from investors, scaling a business, and more.

15. Scaling Operations: Linking Strategy and Execution

If you’re filled with a million ideas but can’t seem to bring any of them to life, check out this course from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University offered by Coursera. It will show you how to correctly build an idea into an actual, stable and scalable operation.

16. The Passive Income Business Plan

If you’ve looked into entrepreneurship, you’ve probably heard of passive income. It sounds too good to be true, is it? This basic introduction to online business from Udemy covers helpful information for entrepreneurs who are considering starting an online business but don’t know how to.

17. Diploma in Project Management

If you want to become a department head, speed up the growth of your business, or simply become more efficient, you need to master project management. This course from ALISON offers an overview of project management methodology, tools, project life cycles and case studies.

18. The Secret Sauce of Great Writing

The more I study success, the more I realize that good writing is everything. No matter which career you’re in, whether you’re writing an email, a presentation, a script, or a storyboard. This course from Udemy teaches you to enhance your business writing.

19. Writing on Contemporary Issues

Want to get your op-ed featured on NYTimes.com? This course is an introduction from MIT on writing attention-grabbing prose for online audience with a clear and unique personal voice.

20. Chinese Language: Learn Basic Mandarin

This is another skill that is often recommended, especially if you want to climb up the ladder of international business. This beginner course from edX is free, but you can add a MandarinX Verified Certificate for $50.

21. Spanish I

Like Mandarin, many recommend adding Spanish to your resume. This is a beginner course from MIT that teaches Spanish through a quality drama-filled story.

22. Sports Psychology – The Winning Mindset

If you want to win in business, your career, or just in life, think like a winning athlete. Dr Cliff Mallet offers practical strategies in this Olympic.org course that will ensure you approach your next goal with the right mindset.

23. The Science of Happiness

Who doesn’t want to be happier? The first class from University of California, Berkeley, offered by edX, will teach you science-based principles and practices for a happy and more fulfilling life.

24. Practical Ethics

If you ever look around at the world today and think “I don’t know what I believe anymore” this course will help you figure out just that. Examine your ethical beliefs with this Princeton class offered by Coursera.

25. Guided Meditations

There’s a reason many successful people meditate and practice mindfulness. Figure out those reasons in this introductory class from UCLA, taught by Diana Winston.

Source :

http://www.techgig.com/tech-news/

17 Apps And Websites That Can Change Your Life

With over 1.5 million apps available on the app store alone, it can be confusing to determine which ones you should download and which ones you should ignore. There’s just too much noise out there today.

Not only are there more apps than we can fathom, but there’s only so much time and mindspace we have to consume all of them. This is why it’s increasingly important to filter out the apps and websites that will have the biggest impact in our lives, with the least amount of effort.

This post is dedicated to delivering that value. Here are 17 apps and websites that can change your life.

1. Headspace

Need a peace of mind? Facing stress or anxiety? Or maybe there’s just not enough time of the day to smell the roses.

Headspace may be the answer for you busy bees. With only 10 minutes of your time, this app will guide you through a simple, yet powerful, meditation practice that is guaranteed to help you smile more, sleep better, and love better.

Don’t have 10 minutes?

You may need this more than you think. As the popular Zen proverb goes, “You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day — unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.”

2. Codeacademy

Coding has become so in demand these days that understanding the basics of coding — such as HTML, CSS, or Javascript — is as standard as knowing how to use Microsoft Powerpoint.

Lucky for us, there are great websites like Codeacademy that are 100% free and are able to guide you through each step of the way — even if you start from scratch. They include practical projects that you can build to apply what you’ve learned, and give you immediate feedback to correct your mistakes. Talk about immersion!

3. Rype

Have you heard of Netflix? Well, think of this as Netflix for language lessons.

Rype offers unlimited one-on-one lessons (in Spanish only right now), live online classes, and premium video lessons, for a simple membership fee.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn Spanish (I’m looking at those of you who live in hispanic-dominant cities) to take your career to the next level, build a deeper relationship with friends or family, or for travel purposes, this is your opportunity.

Booking a lesson takes less than 15 seconds, and lack of time will never be an excuse for you again. Take a look.

If you want to dip your feet into the pool, Rype also offers free live Spanish classes that you can attend. Check out the upcoming live classes.

4. Uber

This app probably needs no introduction.

Despite some sketchy and questionable lawsuits that Uber has been through, you can’t question the convenience and value that this app provides. Whether it’s providing a side hustle for struggling artists and entrepreneurs, or saving us all a major hassle of calling a cab, Uber is a game changer.

5. F.lux

If you’re like me, then you probably spend a majority of your day staring at a screen, whether it’s your desktop, tablet, or mobile. Eye strain is one of the most common problems we face, and F.lux has solved this issue.

This free widget adjusts the lighting of your screen, depending on the time you set in the preferences, so you’re no longer staring at a flashlight pointing towards your face. Say goodbye to tired-looking eyes!

6. Spritz

When Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were asked what superpower would they want to have, in two different interviews, they both said the ability to read faster. While superpowers may not exist, Spritz can be the next best thing.

This app scans the web page you’re on and displays single words to you in a speed of your choosing. It takes some time to get used to, as our eyes are accustomed to scanning a page from left to right, but with a little bit of patience, you may have just discovered your first superpower

7. TED

TED, which stands for Technology, Education, and Design, requires no introduction. This global event attracts some of the finest leaders across the world, from Tony Robbins, to Bill Gates, to North Korean refugees. Real people, heartfelt stories, and eye-opening insights are shared on stage.

The best part is that you don’t need to pay $5,000 for a ticket to watch these talks — they’re all available for you to see online for free.

8. Scribd

Speaking of knowledge, if TED sparked your attention, then Scribd will be another popular choice.

Similar to Rype, Scribd is the Netflix for Ebooks. With a simple monthly payment, you can get read as many books as you would like in their library, where they have hundreds of thousands of books available.

9. CreativeLIVE

Want to learn from the best for free? CreativeLIVE is your answer.

This one-of-a-kind business model provides free live classes online that you can tune into, and if you want the full recording, you can purchase it for a one-time fee.

CreativeLIVE has attracted world-class entrepreneurs, Pulitzer Prize winners, and New York Times Bestselling authors to teach topics like photography, business, marketing, and more.

10. Two Foods

As the saying goes, “we are what we eat.” Every day we make dozens of decisions on what we eat, and therefore what we become. We can decide to save money and eat healthier by waiting an additional 30 minutes to cook at home, or we can pass by the nearest McDonalds.

While some choices are easy when it comes to determining what’s healthier, some are hard. This is where Two Foods comes in.

This simple website allows you to type in the two different food you are debating, and they provide you with the nutritional information for each dish.

11. Wunderlist

It seems that as the day goes by, the bigger our to-do list seems to get. Sometimes we don’t have the time to write it down or organize it into different categories.

Wunderlist solves this problem. This free app allows you to create multiple to-do lists and categorize your different to-do’s. For example, I have one for my business, my personal, my upcoming book, my goals, and more.

12. Memrise

Memorizing things can be hard. Memrise provides an easy solution to make memorizing things fun through gamification.

For example, if you’re learning a new language, learning the most common words is key to picking up the language fast. You can use Memrise to quickly run through the words you want to learn and retain them through memorization techniques.

This can also apply to anything you want to remember, whether it’s the periodic table, parts of the human body, or countries.

13. Mint.com

One of the biggest tasks we tend to procrastinate on is our personal finances. Who’s with me?

Mint aims to solve this procrastination. By integrating our bank accounts into this website, it analyzes our spending, income, and budget in one place for us to see.

You can also set personal budgets for different categories — rent, travel, food, entertainment — and make sure you don’t go over it by tracking it all on Mint. My personal favorite is to be able to see all my spending for the month in a visual pie chart.

4. Kiva

So often, we think that we need to be amass large quantities of wealth before we give back. This couldn’t be further than the truth.

Most of us can spare a $25 loan to an entrepreneur who is making a difference across the world. And here’s the thing, it’s not a donation that you don’t get back, it’s a loan!

As described on Kiva’s website, here’s how it works:

1. Choose a borrower
2. Make a loan
3. Get repaid
4. Repeat!

15. Quora

Ever had a crazy question that you were curious to know the answer to?

Chances are, you can find the question and answer on Quora. Unlike most Q & A forums, Quora has managed to attract the best of the best, giving you real answers from real people.

For example, if you want to know what it’s like to work at Facebook, someone from Facebook can give you a direct answer. No BS, no fluff.

Quora has additional uses that go beyond than beating your curiousity. Entrepreneurs can use it to acquire potential customers, and anyone can use it to build an audience. What you do with the website is up to you!

16. Investopedia

Ask an average person on the street and they can tell you more about what’s happening with the Kardashians than they can tell you about their personal finances or what’s happening in the global markets.

Investopedia is the “Webster Dictionary for Investors.” Now you don’t need to be a stock investor to gain benefit from Investopedia. It can useful for general learning about finance, understanding how the markets work, and discovering how you can make or save more money at the end of the day.

17. Epicurious

This is the last app on our list. Ask someone in the streets on the top 10 skills they look for in a partner, and most will answer “the ability to cook.”

Epicurious helps you become sexier with simple yet diverse recipe ideas on healthy dishes and meals you can cook from your own kitchen. Give it a go

Source :

 http://www.techgig.com/tech-news