A piggy bank of commands, fixes, succinct reviews, some mini articles and technical opinions from a (mostly) Perl developer.

Database schema management systems

A list:

Some icons for webpages

A list:

CSS/Layout basics

CSS/styling ideas for developers with little front-end design experience:

  • use Bootstrap
  • get someone with experience to do the graphical design, then implement it using CSS
  • turn a list into a grid of links with JQuery
  • If you want to build something from scratch, the basic principles as I have come to understand them are:
    • (1) decide on an element type, e.g.
      • <span> for in-line elements (in a horizontal line),
      • <div> for a vertical line of elements,
      • <ul> for a list, etc.
    • (2) fiddle with the CSS attributes like: float, clear, overflow, border, padding to make it look like you want.
    • (3) use javascript if anything needs to appear/disappear based on user interaction.
      • But I usually start with a framework layout like Bootstrap, add pre-made Javascript libraries for widgets and only do the above steps for any little tweaks needed.
  • The current state of the art is the "CSS Grid" layout (for 2D grids).
  • Enlightenment and inspiration: CSS Zen Garden
    • examples of the same content transformed with CSS to appear totally different
  • Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) has a good CSS reference
  • CSS tricks has useful guides
  • Quirks Mode tells you which browsers support which features.