Here is another great article on web development on the iPad. This stood out to me as I had the same thing occur the other day:
Not all is rosebuds and blue skies though, as Coda has quite a few issues that make it less than ideal for all circumstances. First, the app is very prone to crashing. I’ve had quite a few crashes that I just can’t explain. The app will simply stop responding at random points while I’m typing and not respond until I force quit and restart the app.
I built the website for Ergo Web Tools in Coda after designing it in Graphic. Every once in a while the app would lock up while I was typing and never catch up. I’d have to force quit the app and relaunch it. What’s nice is that Coda remembers your place in a “site” when you come back, but the bad news is if you were running any process in a Terminal tab, it doesn’t restart.
I develop on a Digital Ocean droplet where I have Sass, Grunt, and more tools installed for easy access. So I have to, when Coda decides to lock up, restart my “sass --watch” command. When this happens a dozen times over a couple hours of coding, it is rather frustrating.
Over the next week I’ll likely be sharing a bit more of my design/dev process and some requests that I’d have for the developers behind the apps I’ve been using. iOS has made huge strides over the last few years and doing “real work” is becoming even more plausable.
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At some point, the difference vanishes. Most people never did “real work”, by whatever metric, on their computer; they were happy to browse web pages, send emails, Skype friends, whatever. Yet the redoubt of “real work” is defended valiantly, perhaps by those whose jobs depend not on the work, but on the tools used for it – the PC. It’s very notable how often those defending the “real work” divide are also systems administrators of some sort. It’s as if, like the London cabbie, they felt their employment was in peril, while everyone else adapts around them.
For myself, I ask “What do I need to be able to do my job?” LAMP environment? I set up a Digital Ocean droplet that I can SSH/SFTP into. Sass and Grunt? All set up on the droplet. FTP client and code editor? Coda for iPad is fantastic. But I’m a front-end developer, so the browser is a key tool in my toolbox. I need a web inspector to see what styles are applied to an element. I need a way to test responsive websites across many sizes. I need a JavaScript console to look for errors and help with debugging. There are a few apps for viewing the source of a page, but that doesn’t quite scratch my itch. There are a few apps with a simple console, but none of them really work well with the iPad’s big screen. They all seem built for iPhone and enbiggened for iPad.
So what is a front-end web developer to do? Before Thanksgiving I started doing a lot of research and over Thanksgiving weekend (which was nice and extended for me) I started to build something special.
I call it Web Tools. Keep it simple, right? To start (1.0), Web Tools has a scalable web view that allows you to test any width you want and a web inspector to allow you to easily drill down through the DOM tree and see what styles are applied to each element. And this is just the start. More great features are coming to Web Tools in the coming months, including a powerful JavaScript console.
Building websites on the iPad, even an iPad mini like mine, is a joy when you have the right tools. So I am working to bring desktop-level tools to the iPad to remove excuses. As Twitter says, it’s the #yearofticci.
Web Tools launched today and can be had for a $5.99 introductory price. Head over to the App Store andbuy a copy!
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CNN calls CDC chicken for not addressing "gun violence", missing that they very much do address it. But of gun-related deaths, homicides make up ~33% and suicides make up ~63%. So ~96% of gun-related deaths are intentional. Sorry, but you aren't going to stop someone intent on killing someone else or themselves. Of the other ~4% of gun-related deaths, ~1.5% are accidental discharge and ~1% lacked a proven intent.
The number of accidental gun deaths has been on the decline for a century and now represents less than 1% of unintentional deaths.
So why is the CDC so chicken to talk about gun violence? Because outside of intentional gun deaths and injuries, there isn't much to talk about. But even with all gun-related deaths totaled, it is only ~6% of the number of deaths caused by tobacco, according to CDC studies released in April of 2015. So the CDC has other priorities, CNN. Namely, those responsible for more deaths in America. Because while 99.99999% of Americans know that putting a gun in their mouth can lead to death, apparently many still don’t care about tobacco doing the same.
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BREAKING: NRA's Wayne LaPierre responds to President Obama's gun control push in Chicago.
Posted by National Rifle Association on Tuesday, October 27, 2015
I published this on Facebook two years ago. At times I look back at what I have written and question my wording, other times I look back and see a fire that I never want to lose. This is a fire I never want to lose.
The town I grew up in was tolerant in a way I don't see often today. We accepted that others had different views than ours, even if we didn't accept their views. It didn't matter who needed help, my family would pitch in to help. That is the Christian way.
I was never taught to ask if someone was homosexual, adulterous, a liar, or anything else. I was taught to love my neighbor and my enemy. In fact, I didn't know of a single homosexual in my graduating class until friending them on Facebook and seeing it in their posts. Charlie was among my friends, Gordon someone I admired, and Dani was a sassy girl that humored me. Things that they did never mattered to us in my hometown. Not once.
I had a black sister since before I can remember. She wasn't my actual sister, just one of many that we adopted. I can honestly say that it never hit me until sometime in high school that she was different. The thing is, she wasn't. She was no different. Her skin may have been darker than mine, but it never mattered to me or my family. Not once.
Things are different today. The media is louder. More in our faces. Maybe I never realized the controlling voices of the floating heads before I was outside my li'l piece of the Midwest. They cry hate and bigot left and right. Words I never understood until the floating heads showed me what they meant.
Intolerance, they echoed, but not at those that caused problems, not at those that hurt people, not at those that called homosexuals faggots, not at those that called blacks niggers. No, they screamed it at Christians that said that Jesus was the way, that we all need Him that made us.
These people are the lovers that still stop and help a stranger. These are those with compassion enough to drop their privileged lives in America to travel to Cambodia, Croatia, and Bulgaria to help the widows and the orphans, building homes and spreading Hope.
The talking heads bring them into the spotlight and give them the Litmus test: Do you believe homosexuality is a sin? They don't care about anything else. And once the answer they already have is given, they shred them for being intolerant, bigotrous, and hateful. It's followed by every media channel echoing the same decree.
This is not America. This America scares me.
I shudder at night, fearing that if I speak my faith in the wrong corner that I will lose my job, my livelihood, or worse. But I will never say of my Lord "I don't know Him." I fear my Lord over all else.
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"Sketch on the Mac costs $99, and we wouldn’t dare ask someone to pay $99 without having seen or tried it first," Omvlee said in a recent interview with The Verge. "So to be sold through the App Store, we would have to dramatically lower the price, and then, since we’re a niche app, we wouldn’t have the volume to make up for it."
The Verge
Lot’s of great points that unfortunately have been repeated over and over in the last 5 years of iPad. If Apple’s intent is for this to replace desktop and laptop computers for many people, developers have to take the risk on the platform.
When the likes of Microsoft, Adobe, and even Apple are releasing software for free on iPad, the bar is set too low for prices. When developers cannot offer a free trial or paid upgrades, the only option is to price super low and make up for the cost in volume. But “pro” apps are typically a niche market. Developers cannot make a living from selling apps for $5.
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When you live with a device, you learn what works and what doesn’t work. What is needed and what isn’t. For most developers, the iPhone is on them all the time. For many, the iPad isn’t. Because of this, I believe many iPad apps are lacking.
Most iPad apps are just scaled up iPhone apps. Between Auto-Layout, Size Classes, and more, Apple has made it nearly effortless for app developers to make an iPhone app that “just works” on iPad. But this isn’t always pretty. Just look at Twitter on iPad. One column, centered in the middle of the screen. Then look at Tweetbot. A custom two-column layout, tab bar on the left and even some basic keyboard shortcuts.
Developers need to spend time with their medium. Web developers that spend a lot of time on the web get more experience by seeing what others are doing and how. iPhone developers see the latest tricks, trends, and standards by simply using their phones. This same care needs to be applied to iPad. Live with your app and see what works.
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Stellar review of the Apple Pencil by Horace.
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I love this straight shooting from Matt Heerema.
If a head of state asks “Christian, how do you feel about housing Syrian refugees?”, our answer ought to be “I will gladly lay down my life for theirs!”
And he is right. But he goes on:
If you are a head of state, however, you must worry about a vast array of things, including the safety of your citizens, the integrity of your economy, the security of your borders…
This is what many are not understanding right now: the separation between what I should do and what my government should do. While the people might offer to take in refugees, our government needs to be thinking first and foremost about the safety of it’s citizens. It has been shown that between one and three of the Paris attackers snuck in with Syrian refugees. No one is suggesting that all Syrian refugees are terrorists, just that the government needs to make sure before we let them into the U.S. when ISIS is already threatening to attack us in similar fashion.
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