Technology Dissected and Discussed

Recently I faced the issue of trying to troubleshoot Kendo UI charts that stopped being able to freely pinch zoom with iPhones that were upgraded to iOS. It seems that the implementation of the Pointer Events API in Safari 13 is to blame. Testing the issue, I could not reproduce it on Android, neither on Chrome nor Firefox. Immediately after the release of iOS […]

When trying to get fine-grained control over your WordPress dependencies, aliasing assets like JavaScript and CSS can be useful. Whether you’re trying to simply create alternative handles for your resources, or you’re aiming to concatenate your asset pipeline, aliases are helpful to avoid breaking WordPress dependency management. Dependency Aliasing Support in the WordPress core Let’s explore how an alias is made. For both scripts […]

Slim Framework, true to its name, is an excellent PHP framework when other options seem too bloated, complex, or dependency heavy. The flexibility it offers to leverage functionality from any library you choose is one of its strengths. Unfortunately, documentation can be sparse on specific topics, with some examples using the older Slim 2, and others not discussed in conjunction with Slim. Here’s a guide to […]

With the broader accessibility of the web today, more people are able to author their own websites and pour their efforts into maintaining their web presence. Unfortunately, it is the popularity of ubiquitous publishing platforms that make them an easy target for malware injection and other malicious site-takeovers. If your site becomes compromised, remember to follow guidelines in order calmly and thoroughly access the […]

Today I tried to debug a WordPress cron task that a plugin was scheduling, was due to trigger, but would not run. I wasn’t sure whether my action callback was registered correctly, or encountering an error during execution, or whether the internal cron process was not working correctly. Every WordPress request can potentially trigger a cron job, if one is due to run. When […]

Have you encountered the error Please provide a custom field value after attempting to save a custom field in WordPress that has a non-blank value? WordPress gives this error even when you specify a value for your custom field/post meta, which is misleading. When does this happen, and why? The short answer for the exact cause examined here is due to protected meta keys. […]

WooCommerce setup should be easy. With the right plugins, it can be! WooCommerce is a powerful, easy to use, yet complicated to setup platform for hosting your own e-commerce store. Compared to more expensive solutions like IBM WebSphere, the barriers to entry are low, the pricing is right (free!), and the resources are oriented toward beginners. Many people may feel comfortable with the ongoing maintenance […]

This is the first of a recurring tech series chronicling the tasks I took on over the previous week at work. It is an opportunity for reflection, to keep track of the skills I have been honing, and to admire my own accomplishments and not-so-great moments alike. System Integration & Sync As two systems grow independently, the more they are likely to continue to […]

The problem with Website Animations CSS animations are exciting. With tools like Less and Sass to ease the pain of writing cross-browser prefixed animations and keyframes, it is pretty exciting to leverage them in your designs. While in the past it was popular to use jQuery for animations, and you may be guilty of this yourself, CSS animations make for a more performant method […]

CSS usually does a great job of separating content in the form of HTML from its presentation, yet some of the most common layout, positioning, and styling use cases are unintuitive or require changes to the markup like wrapper elements. This is intended to serve as a reference guide for those both those well-versed in crafting CSS as well as those who have never […]