Programming

Programming

Visual Studio Code Tips

Posted on by djbrensinger

Every programmer has their favorite code editor. Your favorite editor may change as you hear about new ones. My new favorite is Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code is a code editor for Windows, Linux and Mac OS from Microsoft.

Visual Studio Code Tips
Photo by Sarah Pflug from Burst

With VS Code, I can open Markdown files for editing. Or write code for many programming languages like PHP, JavaScript or C#. A good code editor lets you customize it.

Customize VS Code

How do you make it work for you? The simplest way is to change the theme. Themes change the look and feel of the editor. VS Code lets you select themes from the marketplace or write your own.

When you first install Visual Studio Code, it won’t do everything that you need it to do. Extensions help you to get the features and functionality that you need. You can also use settings and customizations inside VS Code to make it support the way you work.

Visual Studio Code Tips and Tricks

When you are first getting started with VS Code, visit Visual Studio Code Tips and Tricks. This guide helps you to be productive and start using it quickly.

What else can Visual Studio Code do?

It can be challenging to know everything that VS Code can do. You can find out more by checking out VS Code Can Do That?! You’ll find a list of things that it can do. Like Prettier, Node.js Debugging, JSON Intellisense or search user settings.

Why use HTML and CSS over JavaScript?

Posted on by djbrensinger

When you build for the web, you have to make many different choices. What am I going to build? What tools are I going to use? The number of tools, frameworks and libraries available can be overwhelming.

Why use HTML and CSS Over JavaScript
Photo by Nicole De Khors from Burst

JavaScript is no exception. You have a wide variety of JavaScript frameworks or libraries to choice from. Should you use these technologies for every project? HTML and CSS can now do many things that you once needed JavaScript to do.

What is the Lean Web?

The Lean Web is a set of simple web development principles. Best practices for building the web with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Chris Ferdinandi who wrote the Lean Web encourages you to embrace the web as a platform. To let the browser to do what it does best.

Chris gave a talk on Lean Web at WordCamp LA 2020.


The Three Lean Web Principles

Principle 1. Embrace the Platform
Use HTML over JS, CSS over JS and use the browser for what it is good at. Does that mean you shouldn’t use new tools and technologies? No. You need to decide when you should use them and why.

Principle 2. Small & Modular
Look for small, focused tools that do one thing really well. Use APIs, native browser methods or alternative tools lie Svelte or Preact. Use utility-first CSS to prevent redundancy in your stylesheets.

Principle 3. The Web is for Everyone
Not all browsers support native features. You can use a polyfill to replicate the feature. As developers, we make choices that can break the web for some people. Chris suggest using the A11Y Project to make sure that everyone who wants to use your web applications can.

Summary

You don’t want to avoid using new tools, frameworks and techniques in favor of old ways of doing things. When you are building any project, you have to make choices on what to use. Sometimes, HTML and CSS is the better choice.

How do you fix problems in print CSS?

Posted on by djbrensinger

A print stylesheet allows you to print a webpage. Testing a print stylesheet can be challenging. You create print styles to manage how the page prints, but it still doesn’t look right. What do you do when you need to fix or find a problem that occurs when the page is printed?

How Do You Fix Problems In Print CSS
Photo by Fernando Arcos from Pexels

You have two options use the Print Preview or the browser’s developer tools.

Print Preview lets you see how your web page looks on the printed page. You can see which elements to hide like navigation bars, footers or certain images. It also helps you to identify simple problems. Problems like large text, too much space between elements and extra styling that may use too much ink.

What do you do when you can’t find the source of a problem? Use your browser. Chrome, FireFox and Safari allow you to display print styles directly in your browser. This option is great for seeing how your design looks without print the page out. You can use the inspector to diagnose issues with your CSS. It can help you identify design issues that need a print style either created or modified.

For example, I had an app that printed a receipt. It printed on two pages instead of one. First, I used the Print Preview to find out what elements to hide when printed. After that, I saw that it was still printing on two pages. I couldn’t see what was causing the issue.

I changed the Developer Tools to show the print CSS. When I used this option to view the receipt with the print styles, I found the source of the problem. The problem was in the footer. I started to look at the styles for it. The footer had a height of 10.75 ems. I experimented by turning off the height. It changed from printing on one page instead of two. To fix this issue, I added a new print style for the footer and made the height auto. When I looked in print preview, it printed an one page.

Completing a Pricing Plan Coding Challenge

Posted on by djbrensinger

I found Frontend Mentor where you can improve your front-end coding skills by building real projects. You can pick a challenge that appeals to you. Then, download the design documents, images and other assets that you need.

Pricing Plan Coding Challenge

Pricing Component With Toggle

The challenge I chose was the pricing component with toggle. It has three options: Basic, Professional and Master. You have to use a toggle switch to show the prices for Annually or Monthly.

How I Built It

I built it using HTML, Bootstrap and JavaScript. With Bootstrap, I had to override some of its styles to get rid of the column margin and create custom styles for the button.

I wrote JavaScript that watches for when the toggle is selected. When you open the page, it defaults to monthly pricing. If you select Annually, you see the Annual prices. When you select Monthly, it switches back to Monthly prices.

What I Learned

The style guide defined colors in HSL and included a linear gradient. The linear-gradient is a CSS function that allows you to create a transition between two or more colors along a straight line. You can choose the direction or angle of the transition. For two of the buttons and toggle, the gradient moves from left to right. The professional plan card moves from top to bottom.

I used two structural pseudo-classes in CSS to create the design. The :first-of-type and :last-of-type selectors allow you to target the first and last occurrence of an element in a container.

Bootstrap has a toggle switch available. It was not customizable with CSS. You have to compile custom Bootstrap in order to change how it looks. I found CSS toggle solution that works like the design. I modified it to work with my CSS.

Frontend Mentor asks developers to post their solutions to their site. If you get stuck on a project, you can look at their solution to see how they approached it.

You can see my version of the pricing plan with toggle.

6 Tips For Debugging Your Code

Posted on by djbrensinger

Why isn’t my code working? When you write code, that is a question you will be asking yourself frequently. To find the problem, you will need to debug your code. Here are a few strategies to help you find the bugs in your code.

6 Tips For Debugging Your Code
Image by JohnArtsz from Pixabay

When you code isn’t working, try creating a few print statements. A simple message like “Got here!” can tell you if your code is doing what you expect it to. Whether you send the message to your window, page or console.log, simple print statements can help you determine find problems.

Run your code after making a small change

Small changes are easier to find problems than in code that you spent all day writing. When you make a bunch of changes at once, it can be difficult to figure out which one is causing the error. You may be forced to undo everything that you did and put it back one item at a time until you find the error.

Read the error message

Most error messages tell you what the problem is and where to look.

Copy the error message and search online for an answer

Sometimes you get an error message that makes no sense to you. By copying it and entering it into your favorite search engine, you may find the solution. Someone may written about it on Stackoverflow.com or their own blog.

Comment out the code

When you didn’t know exactly where the problem is, comment out your code and rerun. If it works, uncomment a line of code and run it again. Keep repeating until you find the problem.

Read your code

When you can’t find the error, read your code. Forwards. Backwards and out load if you need to. It may be as simple as a typo. If your missing a semicolon or using the wrong character, your code may compile and still not work. Use your eyes to double check your code.

Talk to someone about the problem

Sometimes, explaining the problem to another person can help you figure out the problem. If you can’t find a person to talk to, you can use the a rubber duck or action figure instead.

More Debugging Tips and Tricks