HTML All The Things - Web Development, Web Design, Small Business
The adventures of Matt Lawrence and Mike Karan through the world of web development, web design, and small business management. As web development agency owners for the better part of a decade, they’ve worked with all sorts of technologies, through the rise of responsive web design, the revolution of serverless computing, and the popularity gain of many no-code tools for small business owners. They commonly discuss foundational web development technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - including popular frameworks and tools such as Tailwind CSS, Svelte, WordPress, Vue, and more.
Episodes
Wednesday Apr 05, 2023
Full-Stack Struggles #1 - Can AI Teach Me Web Development?
Wednesday Apr 05, 2023
Wednesday Apr 05, 2023
Can an AI chat bot like ChatGPT teach a junior developer web development from scratch? What about an experienced web developer looking to update his skills on a new framework? In this premiere episode of Full-Stack Struggles, Matt documents his experience getting situated with Svelte. As a beginner, he found himself needing assistance quite often and instead of reaching for a blog post, or some documentation, he instead reached for an AI chat bot - namely Bing AI. With the recent advancements in AI technology (especially chat bots), they've been the talk of the internet with how useful they can be as an alternative to Googling and sifting through countless results. Was chatting with an AI enough to answer all of Matt's questions?
Show Notes: www.htmlallthethings.com/podcasts/full-stack-struggles-1-can-ai-teach-me-web-development
Thursday Mar 30, 2023
Teaching You How to React w/ Bob Ziroll
Thursday Mar 30, 2023
Thursday Mar 30, 2023
In this interview episode, Matt and Mike sat down with Bob Ziroll the head of education for Scrimba to discuss all things React, escaping your comfort zone, teaching courses, and much more! Bob Ziroll is known for his React courses on both Scrimba and freeCodeCamp, he also anticipates starting a YouTube channel sometime soon.
Show Notes: www.htmlallthethings.com/podcasts/teaching-you-how-to-react-w-bob-ziroll
Wednesday Mar 29, 2023
CSS Animations Can Make or Break a Site
Wednesday Mar 29, 2023
Wednesday Mar 29, 2023
CSS animations are somewhat of an advanced CSS topic that many people skip out on when they're developing their site's MVP, or first few versions. Further into its life though, CSS animations (and transitions for that matter) add a level of polish to a website that can subtly bring about a premium feel for its UI/UX. It's quite easy, however, to go overboard with animations and transitions to the point where they feel out of place, sometimes looking like they're just being done for the sake of another animation instead of complimenting the content on the page. This week, Matt and Mike discussed CSS animations and CSS transitions, discussing the good, bad, and the ugly when it comes to using them on your next project.
Show Notes: www.htmlallthethings.com/podcasts/css-animations-can-make-or-break-a-site
Wednesday Mar 22, 2023
Junior Developer’s Guide to Confusing Terms
Wednesday Mar 22, 2023
Wednesday Mar 22, 2023
The advanced technical nature of web development coupled with what seems like a completely new dictionary to memorize can easily overwhelm junior developers before they've completed their learning journey. There is a lot of technical jargon and technical terms that must be understood to read documentation and hold a conversation with developer colleagues. These terms include things like data structures, algorithms, syntax, and much more. This week, Matt and Mike try and help simplify these terms into easy-to-understand definitions, so you don't get bogged down in memorization.
Show Notes: www.htmlallthethings.com/podcasts/junior-developers-guide-to-confusing-terms
Wednesday Mar 15, 2023
You’ve Learned Enough CSS, Here’s What’s Next
Wednesday Mar 15, 2023
Wednesday Mar 15, 2023
CSS is a crucial skill for frontend developers to learn and eventually master, but it's flanked by other tools that many employers demand skills in. Bootstrap, TailwindCSS, and SASS are all tools that assist in the development of user interfaces, by augmenting and expanding what vanilla CSS already offers. With this in mind, it's easy for a junior developer to start questioning when to move their learning journey on from vanilla CSS to something that an employer may have interest in. Many times this question can result in analysis paralysis and over a long period of time, may result in CSS tutorial hell. This week, Matt and Mike discuss this transition from learning vanilla CSS to learning the next step that applies to your goals.
Show Notes: www.htmlallthethings.com/podcasts/youve-learned-enough-css-heres-whats-next
Wednesday Mar 08, 2023
JavaScript Fundamentals You Need to Know Before Learning React
Wednesday Mar 08, 2023
Wednesday Mar 08, 2023
Do you know enough JavaScript to move onto something else like React, or Svelte? How do you know if you'll be ready? This week, Matt and Mike discuss the vanilla JavaScript fundamentals you need to know before learning new tooling like React, or Svelte. We hope that this episode helps clear the air for any junior developers wondering if they should start the next step of their JavaScript learning journey, or if they still have more vanilla JS to learn.
Show Notes: www.htmlallthethings.com/podcasts/javascript-fundamentals-you-need-to-know-before-learning-react
Wednesday Mar 01, 2023
If You Can’t Code, Don’t Use WordPress
Wednesday Mar 01, 2023
Wednesday Mar 01, 2023
The popularity of WordPress partly comes from its ability to transform into virtually any website creation tool you need. From a membership site managing tool, to an inventory control system with ecommerce, the WordPress plugin offerings seem to be able to make anything happen - with low, to no-code. This is, however, as long as everything keeps working the way it should. With critical errors like the WordPress white screen of death threatening websites at almost every turn, we discuss why knowing how to code (or at least manage hosting files) is a critical skill that many WordPress users don't realize they need...until it's too late.
Show Notes: www.htmlallthethings.com/podcasts/if-you-cant-code-dont-use-wordpress
Wednesday Feb 22, 2023
Junior Developers NEED to Hear This
Wednesday Feb 22, 2023
Wednesday Feb 22, 2023
Tech layoffs are in full swing right now, with companies shrinking their teams for a variety of reasons. This is a stark contrast to the hiring spree that we experienced and grew used to during the chaos that was the COVID-19 pandemic. Does this mean that junior developers should pack up and find work elsewhere? Should people that are still learning web development leave the field entirely?
Wednesday Feb 15, 2023
Designing the Web for Vertical Video (Short-Form Content)
Wednesday Feb 15, 2023
Wednesday Feb 15, 2023
The most popular social media & video sharing websites out there now support (or are centered around) vertical video in the form of short-form content that commonly comes in under a minute in length. As the popularity of these short-form videos has taken off in recent years, we've seen this form factor escape smartphones, arriving on desktop computers and TVs. Unfortunately, this presents designers with a perplexing problem as vertical video (portrait aspect ratio) is not ideal for screens that are almost always landscape (widescreen). In this episode, Matt and Mike discuss the rise of vertical video (short-form content), discussing & debating on how it is shaping our user interfaces, and how it could even start shaping the hardware we use in the home.
Wednesday Feb 08, 2023
CSS Attribute Selectors & Custom Attributes
Wednesday Feb 08, 2023
Wednesday Feb 08, 2023
CSS attribute selectors are a lot more powerful than I thought! I wasn't aware that they could not only select elements based on the presence of an attribute, or the presence of an attribute with a specific value, but that they could also "filter" through that attribute value by placing specific parameters on them using just CSS. In this episode, Matt and Mike discuss these "advanced attribute selectors" and cap the episode off by discussing another powerful CSS feature - custom attributes, done the right way!
Show Notes: www.htmlallthethings.com/podcasts/css-attribute-selectors-custom-attributes