Some Fun Web Development Technologies

Well, I've missed my one post a week mark hardcore...more like one post every month (and even missing that sometimes). Oh well, such is life.

Thought it'd be good to talk about some projects I've been doing. I'm currently working on my capstone project, which can be as of 9/29/2012 can be viewed here

http://www.cse.msu.edu/~cse498/2012-08/projects/auto-owners/

Working with two really great guys on this one, its been pretty rough but its gone well so far. I've been mostly working on front end web development for it, and helping with the server and database work as needed. I've only ever dabbled with web development till now, plus a little work at Techsmith on some of their sites, so its been a bit of a learning curve. We've been utilizing jQuery mobile which can be found here

http://jquerymobile.com/

jQuery mobile is pretty awesome. You can make websites that look good on both mobile and desktop browsers pretty easily, and its been alot of fun. A really nice feature they have on their home page is a drag and drop window. Once you drag and drop elements in it, you can click on the element to make it show the HTML behind it. You can even build a page and export the HTML to your computer. Its been a great way to make pages quickly and prototype. I would strongly recommend it to anyone making a website that should support mobile.

Another utility we've been using alot is Ember.js. Its pretty new and lacking in documentation, but it lets you do some pretty neat things. It can be found here

http://emberjs.com/

Ember.js is a javascript library that essentially lets you do more object oriented coding for web development. With a protocol they refer to as handlebars, you can control all of the javascript right from your HTML. It's quite a learning curve to start using, which I am still definitely in the middle of. A really good break down of Ember.js and how to use it can be viewed here

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/html5/articles/flame-on-a-beginners-guide-to-emberjs.html

Sorry for the short post after not having one for so long. Gonna talk about some other (and actual game related) projects soon!

--daviD