frontend

June 1, 2015

Implementing an Activity Indicator in AngularJS

Web developers looking to offer a native app feel to their sites’ visitors will most likely consider using the single page app (SPA) approach. SPAs allow for a snappy user experience because redrawing parts of the page does not necessarily require a request to be made to the server. That said, the need occasionally does arise to make API calls from the single page app, and in such cases the app should show some indication to let the user know that something is happening in the background.

October 6, 2014

Tracking Progress in Embedded Vimeo Videos

Urban Insight operates a highly successful on-demand video service, Planetizen Courses. The service keeps improving rapidly; it’s not uncommon for new features to appear on the site. One recent enhancement allows the system to keep track of progression in videos as they are being watched.

December 14, 2011

Serving Mobile from Drupal

Mobile devices are gaining incredible popularity when it comes to accessing web content. Web site owners and web developers are facing the challenge of having to serve all the needs of mobile users as well as web users. I have recently been given a chance to work on a Drupal site that serves web users and mobile users from one singe Drupal installation.

October 4, 2011

Static Maintenance Page During Drupal Upgrade

Drupal has a setting that allows you to put the site off-line, and show a maintenance message to the visitors. However, in order to determine that the site is in off-line mode and load the maintenance page, Drupal still needs to boot up to some extent, which involves loading several PHP files and connecting to the database. This may lead to the visitors seeing error messages, if the site is being tampered with while they try to access the site.