A Touch of Technology

Writings from Alex


  • How to Test and Why it Matters

    Monday April 13, 2020

    Tests can sometimes be an after-thought for developers, but what is holding these developers back from implementing tests? Is it a fast-paced startup culture that is constantly demanding of features and deadlines? Is it their natural human resistance to learn something new? 1 Or maybe the developer is just more interested in visual progress and doesn’t see that kind of success in testing? Earlier this month I asked developers why. The answers weren’t much...
  • Fast-track to Solid Ember Foundations

    Sunday February 9, 2020

    This quick run through will get you setup with a new ember app, using pods structure, TailwindCSS, and PostCSS in no time, flat. Everything is TL;DR. Bonus PurgeCSS setup. Enjoy! Initialization ember new {name} This initializes the directory and all dependencies for getting started. cd {name} yarn install Will install dependencies for application. Newer versions of ember-cli should use yarn by default, but in older versions you may...
  • Just Beginning: JSON API with Phoenix 1.3

    Thursday September 21, 2017

    I can’t remember the last time I dabbled with Phoenix. Whenever it was, I was messing with channels and all the real time goodness. This year at Elixir Conf I heard about a lot of new changes in Phoenix from Chris McCord and sure enough, when I sat down to create a Phoenix JSON API, most of the tutorials and examples I found were outdated. Phoenix 1.3 was released in July and...
  • Inline SVG with Ember-Concurrency

    Thursday March 30, 2017

    Warning: This was created with older versions of Ember.js and is likely no longer relevant. Please tread lightly when referencing this article. SVG is a vector graphic that scales well and is great for vibrant user interfaces. This post doesn’t go into SVG per se, but there is a great article on SVG and it’s application in Web Development over at CSS Tricks. SVG and Ember make for an exciting pair....
  • Video: Pieces of Ember

    Friday August 5, 2016

    Warning: This was created with older versions of Ember.js and related libraries, and is likely no longer relevant. Please tread lightly when referencing this article. At the July monthly SanDiego.js event I gave a quick lightning talk about the different pieces of Ember that can be used outside of the Ember ecosystem. As a follow up, I am also doing a three part series on the topic through the
  • Scope jQuery Selection

    Wednesday February 17, 2016

    Warning: You probably shouldn’t be using jQuery any more, this is an old article. Please tread with caution when referencing this article. Here is a simple and effective way to pass different jQuery contexts around for manipulation in client packages. Recently I was presented with the issue of instantiating multiple iframes within a single page, all of which would have a small package loaded inside them to run and manipulate itself....
  • Ember Facebook Components

    Tuesday December 16, 2014

    Warning: This was created with older versions of Ember.js and is likely no longer relevant. Please tread lightly when referencing this article. Getting Facebook integrated into an existing website may sound daunting but using the Facebook UI API and Ember together was entirely too easy. Ember-CLI has a directory called initializers that are loaded at app start up. This proves useful for things such as Google Analytics or Facebook SDK initialization....
  • Ember-CLI, Sass, and Bootstrap

    Tuesday October 14, 2014

    Warning: Ember-CLI is still undergoing heavy construction. All of the posts I have read through are often soon out-dated, as this could likely be. Please note the versions I am using to make sure this is the resource you are looking for. This post is a response to a comment from the Ember.js Wysiwyg Summernote post. Working with vendor libraries and ES6 modules and a build system like Broccoli should be...
  • Ember.js Theme for Reveal.js

    Friday October 10, 2014

    In the process of working on my presentation for QConSF I pulled out some styling from the official Ember.js website and created a theme for Reveal.js out of it. I really enjoy using Reveal.js for my presentations because it allows me to display code side-by-side with working or interactive examples. It also allows me to easily embed media and work in a format that I am familiar...
  • Warning: This was created with older versions of Ember.js and is likely no longer relevant. Please tread lightly when referencing this article. Recently I was tasked in creating a large photo plotting tool. Part of this was the ability to preview a zoomed in portion of the full image to ensure the plotted point was in an accurate position. There are two components I’ll be talking about here that are using data...
  • Video: Fake It Til You Make It

    Thursday June 5, 2014

    Warning: This was created with older versions of Pretender and is likely no longer relevant. Please tread lightly when referencing this article. For the July 2014 SanDiego.js speaker Meetup I gave a lightning talk on Pretender, a mock server microlibrary written by @trek. Its much lighter than its counterparts and easy to get up and running with fast. In my opinion, the server DSL looks similar to express. All of...
  • Ember.js Ace Editor Component

    Tuesday April 22, 2014

    Warning: This was created with older versions of Ember.js and is likely no longer relevant. Please tread lightly when referencing this article. A few weeks ago there was a need to interface directly with raw json from the server. I immediately jumped on the chance to make an Ace Editor component for Ember.js. I have been wanting to work with Ace for a while now and as expeted, getting setup with...
  • Warning: This was created with older versions of Ember.js and is likely no longer relevant. Please tread lightly when referencing this article. Users love wysiwyg editors. Summernote has been my favorite to work with as a developer yet. Getting it hooked up as an Ember component was simple and fun, and the end result was rather nice. Ember Wysiwyg Component The Component All this does is wrap...
  • Warning: This was created with older versions of Ember.js and is likely no longer relevant. Please tread lightly when referencing this article. I realized this week I have ‘officially’ been paid to make Ember.js apps for 13 months now. That is a long time considering the infancy of Ember.js. One of the first things I did that was fun and exciting was making a color picker, using Spectrum, that kept the hex,...
  • Hello, Bunny

    Tuesday March 4, 2014

    I am finally getting around to setting up my own blog. I feel that far too often I find myself working on something that would be useful to reference or that may make someone else’s developing life a bit easier. My hesitation has been partly due to time commitment as well as quality of posts but I’ve accepted I won’t get better at posting unless I try. As an introduction post I don’t want to...