Author: Tom (Page 241 of 433)

My Suite of Apps: Boom2

December 26, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that those us who grew up on Winamp had the luxury using every time we launched the application was the equalizer.

This was quickly one of those things that was easy to take for granted because as soon as you launched another audio player, you’d either find something that was subpar or you’d find nothing at all.

These days, as much as I love working on a Mac, it’s still hard to believe that one of the largest pieces of audio software on the planet – iTunes – doesn’t ship with an equalizer.

I don’t know why this is – perhaps it’s because it’s built into “everything just works” ethos, but for those who care about squeezing every bit of sound quality out of their speakers knows, the sound works but it’s not as nice as it could be.

Enter Boom2.
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Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

As is the case with many, Christmas is my favorite time of year. I know that thing in the world don’t stop turning, and things in the world don’t stop happening, but for those who are fortunate to have family and friends close by, it’s a great experience to be able to spend the day with them.

How Would You Teach Yourself WordPress?

December 24, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

With tomorrow being arguably one of the largest holidays in the world, I thought that it might be a decent change of pace of the posts and offer up something a little bit shorter and a little more open ended in hopes of getting some feedback from the rest of you WordPress designers, developers, bloggers, and other users.

So here’s the deal: Back when you first became acquainted with WordPress, you started at ground zero. We all did.

Sure, there might have been a few things that we knew – like how blogging work, or how HTML and PHP worked together, but we weren’t necessarily familiar with WordPress templating nor the WordPress API (or any part of the API for that matter). Continue reading

Tabbed Navigation in WordPress Themes

December 23, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the neater trends that we’re seeing in WordPress themes is that we’re able to introduce tabbed content into a single page when leveraging front-end frameworks – like Bootstrap or Foundation – so you can load up all of the content in a single request and not have to use outdated elements like iframe.

For example, say that you have an index template like this:

The template includes the usual header information
There’s a content area that’s composed of tabbed navigation (where each tab is a menu item)
When the user clicks on a menu item, it brings the corresponding content to the activate state and hides the other content
It then includes whatever other widgetized areas and footer content necessary for completing the page

It’s pretty cool when it’s executed correctly. Though I’m not saying I have the definitive way to go about doing this in WordPress, here’s what I’ve found to be most effective.

On The Productivity of Distributed Teams

December 22, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

For the past year or so, I’ve been working with Eric Dye on revamping a theme that he’s been selling for sometime. The gist of the theme is content for another post, but one of the things that has been the most important, in my opinion, in our collaboration is making sure that we’re balancing our discussions via text and chat with voice and/or video calls.

This is me “collaborating.”

This is also true for how I balance my time with Envato, and how I balance my time with my team at Pressware. Some of the time, we use tools like Slack to stay in touch, other times we use tools like Google Hangouts or Skype or conference calls via cell phones to have our voice chats.

The point that I’m trying to make is that for as much of a fan as I am of distributed teams, and as much as I believe that they can – and do – work (though I think it requires a certain personality type to make it work successfully), I think it’s important for those who are considering doing any kind of remote work to distinguish when it’s best to chat – which is using text – when it’s best to use voice which is obviously using the phone or something similar – and when it’s best to use a hybrid such as Hangouts or Skype.

My Suite of Apps: Boom2

Merry Christmas!

How Would You Teach Yourself WordPress?

Tabbed Navigation in WordPress Themes

On The Productivity of Distributed Teams

Current Projects