Previously, I have created a maze generating code while learning Python. Later I enhanced it with animation and marking special cells. All of it was done in rush, to solve the problem. Now I spent some time improving the quality of the code by encapsulating code into classes, using “private” methods and fields and separating concerns. The exact steps I took can be viewed in the GitHub repository or read here.
…I used to create many graphs, usually the kind of dependency/hierarchy (see the previous post about Programming paradigms in JavaScript).
A long time ago I discovered a perfect tool for a developer to create and maintain various graphs – Graphviz. You can download it and use offline, but there are also online interpreters for quick experiments, for example:
…I once had a desire to provide a list of shortcuts on the home page for my blog’s new users. I didn’t like the default WordPress’ blog page to be just a list of posts. I didn’t think that sidebar widgets grouping posts by date, category or tag would be helpful enough to grasp the versatility of the topics I cover here. I wanted to display a clear list of links with what a user can read about.
…I use the Backup and Sync from Google application that allows synchronizing all or a part of Google Drive cloud with a local folder. It also allows creating hot backup of selected folders. It monitors files in those folders and any change initiates immediate synchronization with the cloud. All folders from one computer are grouped into that machine name, and you can have multiple computers backed up (well, parts of them, it is not a full backup).
…I mentioned StackBlitz in the post about online code editors. This service allows for creating i.a. running Angular applications. Once I wanted to execute unit tests written in Jasmine inside it, and I hit a lot of troubles. Finally, I managed to resolve them all.
…Bookmarklets are an “ancient” idea to execute custom scripts on arbitrary pages. I haven’t really heard people using it nowadays, but there still seem to be present several interesting scripts to improve browsing. A few years ago I created several scripts to add custom formatting and features to Jira board and issue pages and recently I created an “add-on” to Trello and I discovered some bookmarklets created by others, which I list below.
…I had an ingenious idea to show a clutterless view of a Trello board. Sometimes it is beneficial to have an overview of card names without all the details like labels, assignments, photos, dates, custom fields, and so on.
For instance, instead of displaying a board with tens of cards with labels, due dates and custom fields like this:
…I am using a free theme that provides only one widgets area – a sidebar. In its paid version, though, there is also another widget area – footer. The theme displays a copyright message in the footer and provides no method (in the free version) to change or remove it.
Currently, I would like to change the copyright message and add a link to the Privacy Policy page. In the future maybe I will want to put something else. So I could have either hardcoded the text and link into my theme or I could create an extensible solution.
I decided I would add a new widget area in the footer. The contents of it could be configured using WordPress’ Theme Customization feature (Appearance > Customize > Widgets).
…I can’t live without two tools: Excel and Trello. There are some WordPress plugins that help manage the editorial calendar and publishing workflow (CoSchedule at $80 a month, PublishPress at $77 a year), but… they cost a lot!
On the other hand, I don’t say Trello is the best place to keep posts’ workflow, because you have to duplicate some information between WordPress and Trello. In my case, it’s the title, link, basic category and some statuses.
…I wanted to create a child WordPress theme. All online tutorials were as simple as create two files and add several lines of code:
To my surprise – it didn’t work. To be more specific, it almost worked, but the child theme did not look exactly the same as the parent – some margins, fonts and colors were different. After several experiments, it became apparent that these problems were caused by Bootstrap being loaded after the parent’s style.css file.
Let’s see what exactly is happening to the parent and child stylesheets.
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