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Category: Coding

This category covers client-side and server-side programming languages, back-end issues as well as CMS such as WordPress or Drupal. Experts and professionals reveal their coding tips, tricks and ideas.

Popular tags in this category: AJAX, CSS, JavaScript, WordPress, Templates, Themes, Scripts.

10 Advanced PHP Tips To Improve Your Programming

10 Advanced PHP Tips To Improve Your Programming

Update (25.03.2009): this article contains some factual errors. Please read the rebuttal of this article instead of this article. PHP programming has climbed rapidly since its humble beginnings in 1995. Since then, PHP has become the most popular programming language for Web applications. Many popular websites are powered by PHP, and ...

Read more... | 178 Comments
12 Principles For Keeping Your Code Clean

12 Principles For Keeping Your Code Clean

Beautiful HTML is the foundation of a beautiful website. When I teach people about CSS, I always begin by telling them that good CSS can only exist with equally good HTML markup. A house is only as strong as its foundation, right? The advantages of clean, semantic HTML are many, ...

Read more... | 224 Comments
Textpattern Developer’s Toolbox

Textpattern Developer’s Toolbox

Textpattern is a PHP-based open-source content management system that is popular with both bloggers and website owners. The system is flexible and can be used for a very wide variety of purposes. Like other open-source CMS options, such as WordPress and Drupal, Textpattern has a strong online community with plenty ...

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ExpressionEngine Developer’s Toolbox

ExpressionEngine Developer’s Toolbox

While open-source CMS options like WordPress get a lot of attention from bloggers and designers, ExpressionEngine is a powerful, robust choice that many designers and clients would find more suitable to their needs. And as with the other CMS options, there are plenty of online resources for designers and developers ...

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Drupal Developer’s Toolbox

Drupal Developer’s Toolbox

After publishing the recent WordPress Developer’s Toolbox, there were several Drupal developers calling out for equal coverage. In this post you will find a thorough collection of all kinds of resources that will aid designers and developers working with Drupal-powered websites. This collection is intended to ...

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jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices

jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices

When used correctly, jQuery can help you make your website more interactive, interesting and exciting. This article will share some best practices and examples for using the popular Javascript framework to create unobtrusive, accessible DOM scripting effects. The article will explore what constitutes best practices with regard to Javascript ...

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WordPress Developer’s Toolbox

WordPress Developer’s Toolbox

Web designers and developers are getting an increasing number of requests from clients for custom theme development, and a growing number of designers are also building their own themes to distribute for free or to sell as premium themes. With all of the WordPress development that is going on, there ...

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75 (Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques

75 (Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques

Developers and designers are using more and more JavaScript in modern designs. Sometimes this can be a hindrance to the user and take away from the simplicity of the design, and other times it can add greatly to the user’s experience. The key is a) adding the right amount of ...

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30 Free High Quality Wordpress Themes

30 Free High Quality Wordpress Themes

Free professional WordPress themes always come in handy. Whether you are looking for some design inspiration or professional coding solutions — in both cases you can learn a lot, you can apply them and you can build customized designs upon them without reinventing the wheel all the time.In this article ...

Read more... | 103 Comments
7 Principles Of Clean And Optimized CSS Code

7 Principles Of Clean And Optimized CSS Code

Some of you may remember the days when 30KB was the recommended maximum size of a web page, a value which included HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images. I find with every new project with even the slightest bit of complexity, it's not long before that 30 KB ideal ...

Read more... | 115 Comments
Top 10 CSS Table Designs

Top 10 CSS Table Designs

By R. Christie Tables have got to be one of the most difficult objects to style in the Web, thanks to the cryptic markup, the amount of detail we have to take care of, and lack of browser compatibility. A lot of time could be wasted on a single table although ...

Read more... | 290 Comments
5 Useful Coding Solutions For Designers and Developers

5 Useful Coding Solutions For Designers and Developers

Often creative and truly remarkable design solutions remain unknown because we, designers, simply overlook them. Being busy with our own projects, we sometimes try to grasp the intuition behind (probably) complex and cluttered code of other designers to understand how they manage to implement particular design ideas. In fact, by ...

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Smashing Freefont and Wordpress-Theme

Smashing Freefont and Wordpress-Theme

As our Smashing First Anniversary celebration ends, we’d like to wrap up our event with two further presents for each and every one of our readers. In August we’ve asked Jos Buivenga, a Dutch typo-designer who has created professional freefont Delicious to design a special typeface dedicated to the Smashing ...

Read more... | 368 Comments
100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes

100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes

High-quality WordPress themes always come in handy. Whether you are looking for some design inspiration or professional coding solutions — in both cases you can learn a lot, you can apply them and you can build customized designs upon them without reinventing the wheel all the time. In this article we ...

Read more... | 365 Comments
53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without

53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without

CSS is important. And it is being used more and more often. Cascading Style Sheets offer many advantages you don’t have in table-layouts – and first of all a strict separation between layout, or design of the page, and the information, presented on the page. Thus the design of pages ...

Read more... | 336 Comments
Top 10 CSS Table Designs

Top 10 CSS Table Designs

By R. Christie Tables have got to be one of the most difficult objects to style in the Web, thanks to the cryptic markup, the amount of detail we have to take care of, and lack of browser compatibility. A lot of time could be wasted on a single table although ...

Read more... | 290 Comments
CSS Differences in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

CSS Differences in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

One of the most bizarre statistical facts in relation to browser use has to be the virtual widespread numbers that currently exist in the use of Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8. As of this writing, Internet Explorer holds about a 65% market share combined across all their currently ...

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Zen Coding: A Speedy Way To Write HTML/CSS Code

Zen Coding: A Speedy Way To Write HTML/CSS Code

In this post we present a new speedy way of writing HTML code using CSS-like selector syntax — a handy set of tools for high-speed HTML and CSS coding. It was developed by our author Sergey Chikuyonok and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. How much time do you spend ...

Read more... | 232 Comments
12 Principles For Keeping Your Code Clean

12 Principles For Keeping Your Code Clean

Beautiful HTML is the foundation of a beautiful website. When I teach people about CSS, I always begin by telling them that good CSS can only exist with equally good HTML markup. A house is only as strong as its foundation, right? The advantages of clean, semantic HTML are many, ...

Read more... | 224 Comments
10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS

10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS

Choosing a content management system can be tricky. Without a clearly defined set of requirements, you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. What then should you look for in a CMS? I have written about content management systems before. I have highlighted the their hidden costs, ...

Read more... | 214 Comments
Table Layouts vs. Div Layouts: From Hell to… Hell?

Table Layouts vs. Div Layouts: From Hell to… Hell?

Over the last several years, developers have moved from table-based website structures to div-based structures. Hey, that’s great. But wait! Do developers know the reasons for moving to div-based structures, and do they know how to? Often it seems that people are moving away from table hell only to wind ...

Read more... | 212 Comments
Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started

Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started

CSS has become the standard for building websites in today’s industry. Whether you are a hardcore developer or designer, you should be familiar with it. CSS is the bridge between programming and design, and any Web professional must have some general knowledge of it. If you are getting your feet ...

Read more... | 200 Comments
50 Extremely Useful PHP Tools

50 Extremely Useful PHP Tools

By Jacob Gube PHP is one of the most widely used open-source server-side scripting languages that exist today. With over 20 million indexed domains using PHP, including major websites like Facebook, Digg and WordPress, there are good reasons why many Web developers prefer it to other server-side scripting languages, such as Python ...

Read more... | 191 Comments
The Big PHP IDE Test: Why Use One And Which To Choose

The Big PHP IDE Test: Why Use One And Which To Choose

Everyone wants to be more productive, make fewer mistakes and write good code. Of course, that all depends on you, but in most cases integrated development environments (IDEs) can help you achieve those goals more easily. Unfortunately, choosing the right IDE is very difficult because a lot needs to be ...

Read more... | 178 Comments
10 Advanced PHP Tips To Improve Your Programming

10 Advanced PHP Tips To Improve Your Programming

Update (25.03.2009): this article contains some factual errors. Please read the rebuttal of this article instead of this article. PHP programming has climbed rapidly since its humble beginnings in 1995. Since then, PHP has become the most popular programming language for Web applications. Many popular websites are powered by PHP, and ...

Read more... | 178 Comments
100 Amazing Free Wordpress Themes for 2009

100 Amazing Free Wordpress Themes for 2009

In January last year (2008), we put together a list of 100 Excellent Free Wordpress Themes, over a year has passed and Wordpress development has progressed very fast and gained even more in popularity. We felt it was the right time to put together an updated post and offer our ...

Read more... | 174 Comments
70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding

70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding

CSS isn’t always easy to deal with. Depending on your skills and your experience, CSS coding can sometimes become a nightmare, particularly if you aren’t sure which selectors are actually being applied to document elements. An easy way to minimize the complexity of the code is as useful as not-so-well-known ...

Read more... | 170 Comments
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  • Re: Site Credit Beneftis

    Thanks guys, pretty much dead on with all of your posts. Correct it pretty much only benefits us which is why we were searching for reasons if any on the clients side.…

  • Re: centering a

    addmargin:0 auto;to the #bottom_header in your CSS, this will center the bottom_header inside the contact_wrap…

  • centering a

    Hi there,I've been working on my site for a day now and I can't seem to figure out how to center a box. PLease advised.the link is.

  • Re: Real-estate website design

    i would go with a line height of 1.5 em

  • Re: Real-estate website design

    Better like this?

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