Advice and Opinions

Handy SASS Mixin for Bootstrap 4 Interpolates High and Low Style Values

Here's a quick SASS mixin for developers using Bootstrap 4.  Note that it only works for styles with a single value. The Motivation.... I was inspired to write this because I was working on a new custom WordPress theme where I had design mockups for Desktop and Mobile, which is great!  The challenge was there was really a big difference between the Desktop and Mobile versions.  The Desktop mockup depicted a screen width of 1920px, and the mobile version was for a width of 375px. The execution was really going to call for a LOT of interstitial styles, so I wanted a handy way to take the well-defined high and low values, and let it fill in the middle bits for me automatically. Equal Interval Interpolation (quick and dirty) @mixin interpolate-style( $style, $smallest, $largest ) { $interval: ( $largest - $smallest ) / ( length($grid-breakpoints) - 2 ); $idx: -1; #{$style}: $smallest; @each $key, $breakpoint in $grid-breakpoints { // skip the first two keys @if $idx > 0 { @include media-breakpoint-up($key) { #{$style}: $smallest + ( $idx * $interval ); } } $idx: $idx + 1; } }   It takes the high and low values for a style, and defines the middle ones for you, breaking them into equal intervals. By equal interval, we mean the algorithm assumes the differences between each value should be equal.  For example, if your highest value is 160px and lowest is 40px, and you want 4 values (including the given high and low), they would be assigned at 40px intervals: 40px (given lowest) 80px 120px 160px (given highest) Note that we are ignoring the lowest value, since in my case, I didn't want the styles to start [...]

By |2020-02-29T14:11:54-08:00June 3rd, 2019|Categories: Advice and Opinions, Tip of the Day, Tutorials|Tags: , |0 Comments

Improve SEO with Schema Markup

Want to improve your Search Engine Ranking? Try adding schema markup to your site. It helps search engines place your content into context, and helping search engines understand your content is generally going to boost your SEO. As a bonus, since they understand your site better, search engines may display additional information about the page, and that will make your result stand out and be more attractive. If your page ranks highly, and the search engine decides to highlight your page, the markup will help it decide how to present it. When I talk about placing your content into context, I mean you can specify things like... This is my company's logo This is my company's physical address This is my contact form These are products or services I sell This is the main navigation menu for my site If you're a theme coder, I recommend you start incorporating schema markup into your themes. If you're not, here's a great WordPress plugin to help get you started: https://wordpress.org/plugins/schema/. Here is where you go to learn more about Schema markup: https://schema.org/ In the attached example, you see how schema markup in JSON_LD format is used to self-describe an Avengers Endgame movie review: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-rev…/avengers-endgame.

By |2019-05-17T08:40:08-07:00May 3rd, 2019|Categories: Advice and Opinions, Tip of the Day, WordPress|0 Comments

Adding Links Inside of Images: Image Maps vs. CSS Alternatives

The question came up today about whether to use Image Maps or other alternatives to add links inside of images.  I did a little research on the subject, and thought it would be handy to share what I found along with my own thoughts. A Quick Q&A Summary Should I use image maps?  Yes!... when it makes sense to. When should I use image maps? When your images won't change size When your link needs to be a complex shape, and not just a box When you're dealing with raster images like jpg photographs When should I NOT image maps? When your image is responsive and changes size When you're dividing the image into parts: slice it, and use image links When you want special styling or behavior When you're starting with a vector image, and can implement it as SVG What should I remember when using image maps? Always add descriptive alt tags to your area tags Add Title attributes to area tags to provide tooltips to users Include text links somewhere on the page corresponding to the image map links Order the areas from left to right, and top to bottom for screen readers, and tabbing Some Discussion Image maps have been around since the dawn of time (which in this case means 1997 with HTML 3.2), so people sometimes dismiss them as arcane.  However, they're still fully supported in HTML5, and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. Having said that, there are certainly some things they can't do, and should be implemented thoughtfully to be accessible to visitors using screen readers.  Of course you know Google's going to have something to say about it, so you'll want to implement them properly to [...]

By |2022-08-27T15:35:55-07:00June 13th, 2015|Categories: Advice and Opinions, Tutorials|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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