Anthony's Blog

    This article is my opinion on the subject of html entities vs. png or icon files in a web application. If you have been watching bootstrap and seen the beta version of bootstrap 4 you might have seen some of the examples using entities. Initial I thought this was an improvement and in a lot of ways still do. But now I have given it some thought about the longer term of solution. I still think font-awesome is a much better choice to go because of the ability to modify the styles or simply create custom ones in a svg.  I know entities are nothing new but just wanted to write out why I would use them in some cases and not others. Use case for  Entities       For one of my sites I actually used the up and down triangle entity.  I think it’s a good fit for one the ui-grid and other javascript libraries that require some kind of indicator of sorting. In this situation it’s really a grey area of whether the icon should be an icon or entity because in this use I'm not going to

   I believe this is an approach beneficial to any application for performance reason. If an application needs to be scalable but can remove the dynamic references there is a opportunity for improvement. With task runner or build process like gulp, grunt and asp.net mvc's bundle for example this is the same solution. What I'm point to is the things I want to create in javascript but don't necessarily need to be dynamic. For example Angular's template property with directives or component's and even routes. While I do like to use templateUrl in development for performances reason I want to include it in the statement as a template. If I'm trying to make the most of my code I need to inject directly but for validation or organizational reasons I want to point it dynamically.    This isn't a new problem in the computer science field but I think a lot of web developers will agree to injecting regardless if its development. It makes the code a little less mana

    If you ask me what my development style is like? I would have to describe it as a form of top-down view with a model view approach. I've been describing my approach to build web application this way for a few years. Every now and then I encountered a developers who will agree with this approach. I guess you can just take the definition from wiki page but really I have my own way of marketing it.     "Throw everything away thing and get ready to start fresh. That's just how it is with every new javascript framework and I think it’s safe to say if it not middle-tier or backend code get ready to rebuild it. This is actually an awesome thing and you need to believe it because forcing development to the backend or middle tier every time something new comes along isn't realistic. Besides why not have the biggest impact on an application's lifecycle with the least amount of work!?"     This is how I marketed my approach it probably could use some work for s

Introduction This post is just to document my experiences with Orchard CMS and to list some of the resources that I used while developing a orchard module. I will go back through later and clean this post up but for now here is the code that I created with a previous employer. Github Resources sadomovalex's blog: Hide content type fields in Orchard CMS Orchard Project - View Discussion orchardcms - Orchard CMS: Right way to get field value from view? - Stack Overflow orchardcms - Orchard CMS module that uses HTTP session state - Stack Overflow Dynamically switching the theme in Orchard - Tales from the Evil Empire Let’s Install an Orchard “Module” | Ponderings - Various Topical  Thoughts by Brad Kingsley Custom Orchard Module that Plays HTML5 Video with Flash Fallback - Orchard CMS Development Accessing and rendering shapes - Orchard Documentation Packaging and sharing themes - Orchard Documentation Creating custom content type

    "Sandbox Methodology" is a term I like to use to describe environments that have zero rules in place against the quick and the dirty practices when it comes to designing an application or implementing one. The term comes from of course sandbox and what most developers are used to with development practices. In a sandbox you have a place where you can experiment with all your work before it faces the harsh world of usability. However in reality, this environment is miss used and becomes a playground for project managers or basically anyone in management to see how far you are in the implementation. Or it’s used to build out requirements, "let the developer figure out what I want to be build playground". Long name, terrible results… You might be familiar with other methodologies but this is one you will definitely regret using.     It could be said this approach is more of a waterfall methodology and employers will call it Agile. Chances are it’s a horrible me

    These are the notes for using npm behind a company firewall and a windows roaming account. With the help of a former colleague these are the steps I have used. Most of my issues with a company firewall have been with a package not being downloaded or installed properly. ​​Install Node: NPM is bundled w/ Node https://nodejs.org/download/​ Set your local proxy settings: ​run: setx HTTPS_PROXY http://YOUR-PROXADDRESS/ run: setx HTTP_PROXY http://YOUR-PROXYADDRESS/ ​ Configure local NPM directories: run: npm config set prefix C:\Local\npm --global​ run: npm config set cache C:\Local\npm-cache --global​ Configure PATH so that we can execute the node binaries via command line run: setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\Local\npm"​ If none of these steps resolve the issue my final solution is to install the package directly from github itself which all you need to do is list the git repo inside package.json. Failed to install tar-2.2.1: 403 e

    Do you want https without all the cost! I know I do which is why I have converted most of my site to firebase or to azure. However for a lot of my apps I don't intial think they will be big enough for me to justify a high cost starting out. After you have purchased your custom domain, go to firebase hosting and publish the hosting site from the examples provide by firebase. You can create your own or just use the website firebase created. Once the firebase hosting files are uploaded, you should see the dialog to add a custom domain. Run through the process of verifying that you own the domain, and get to set three in the setup process. Step three is the most important part of this process. The recommended way for this is using a cname, however I couldn't get it to work with the cnames. Instead use " Custom resource records" inside your Google Domain profile, inside there save the old ip address and update them to the new ip address provide by firebase. For

    When you're building an internal web app I think about some of the business solutions I  can create inside a company that might shrink the workload for my co-workers. Its awesome to see this happen but it only works where it makes sense, so below is some of these features I've easily used by general users. Hotkeys - are power ways to help your users get what they want faster, and overlooked in my opinion. Since users are in house users can make requests on what the would like to see. I don't like use the excuse that your users are "dumb" especially in house. This is an argument I hear a lot and it bugs me. For example if the app looks like a excel sheet one would think it behaves like one, so include those hotkey! Below is a hotkey I look to use a lot with my users on a search page looking to you the typeahead feature I created. Instead I popup with the search automatically and return the results since it a common action. Another good example to look at is