Tom Walters

Category: Tutorials

  • Pass data from modal view back to parent in the iOS SDK

    I recently came across a problem using the newest version of XCode (4.4), in which we can use the fantastic Storyboards feature. The question was simple – how do I present a modal view, ask the user for some data, and then return that to the parent view? In the past it was a pretty…

  • Implement the WordPress Geolocation Plugin

    For a while now WordPress has had apps across the mobile spectrum, and a great feature of these is geolocation – great, but who wants to know where I’m blogging from right? Well recently I had to build a blog for someone travelling around the world, and it quickly became apparent that using the data…

  • Create a dynamic Twitter-search feed

    For years the ancient (and some would say instinctive) art of tweeting was restricted to the avian species of the sky, but recently a service has come about that allows us humans to partake in the practise. You might have heard of this little company, they call themselves Twitter, and have provided an extensive API…

  • Create a bullet-proof contact form

    Note: This article has been marked for a quality review and will soon be updated. Contact pages are usually one of the basic building blocks of any website, and while many simple feature an email address for spam bots to pick up and use, or even a handy ‘mailto’ link, the best ones feature a…

  • Prevent broken animations in jQuery

    Note: This article has been marked for a quality review and will soon be updated. I recently posted an article on Animating a Site’s Loading using jQuery – a handy technique to spice up any site. But an issue that became apparent using this technique, along with some other animation methods, is that sometimes user…

  • Importing hand-drawn art into Photoshop

    Using Photoshop to design websites it great – it allows for pixel-perfect designs that can then be styled to your hearts-content using all the powerful tools included in the application. But sometimes it’s nice to add a human touch, and have hand-drawn art in our designs. Now I personally don’t do this all too often,…

  • Animate a site’s loading

    Note: This article has been marked for a quality review and will soon be updated. There are a lot of things we can do as web designers to improve the UX of a site, much of the time subtle animations can be added to add a bit of finesse to a page, and a new…

  • Build an early sign-up mailing list system

    Note: This article has been marked for a quality review and will soon be updated. When you’ve got a great idea for a product its often hard to resist buying up the domain name for it, but what do you put there? A coming soon logo? A paragraph about what you’re making? How about allowing…

  • Spice up your Hyperlinks!

    Now the words ‘hyperlink’ and ‘sexy’ rarely frequent the same sentence in my household, but something which appears to have come into fashion lately (namely I’m using it ;)) is the fading in of the hover state on hyperlinks. So instead of simply specifying the :hover state in your CSS, you use JavaScript or CSS3…

  • Building a Confirmation Dialog in JavaScript

    Note: This article has been marked for a quality review and will soon be updated. A common feature of desktop applications is that when a user prompts a potentially destructive action, the program will display a confirmation dialog to ensure that the user doesn’t go and do something silly. To do this we will use…