Category Archives: Tech topics
Managing Computer Assets
In an IT focused company you will tend to have a lot of computers, and other devices such as company phones, tablets, etc. Tracking these devices from an asset management standpoint is almost as hard as tracking them from an IT standpoint. On the one hand, management wants to know where in the world these devices are going, and on the other hand, IT wants to make sure what content or use these devices are seeing. There are a lot of different ways of handling both methods, but I like seamless integration so after some research, I settled on using Meraki’s System Manager. By simply installing a small agent program on each device tailored to our account, the device will register in my System Manager console, and provide me with a wealth of knowledge. (more…)
Family hierarchy in WordPress: Pages within pages
Creating Pages and Page templates can make all the difference in keeping things manageable for both you and the user. Pages are also really simple to apply templates to so that every Page can have its own unique flair. If you haven’t already tried out Page templates, feel free to roll back to our earlier post on the topic. (more…)
Theming Chrome Dev Tools
I love Sublime Text 2, it is by far my favorite text editor and although it comes with a decent theme, I find it to be a bit too much so I changed it, just as most developers choose to theme their text editors. So one day while inspecting a page in Chrome’s Dev Tools I got to thinking about how I wished there was a way to theme it, because I just don’t like a white background. (more…)
“this” in JavaScript: So many uses for a four letter word
One of the most confusing topics in JavaScript is the ‘this’ keyword. In high-level programming languages, such as Java, ‘this’ is referring to the current object instantiated by the class. In JavaScript ‘this’ normally refers to the object which owns the current method or function, but this depends on how the function is executed. (more…)
U/X: Five reasons your customers are leaving your e-Commerce store
What is U/X and should your user experience online vary greatly from the user experience you would get in a brick & mortar store? After attending a U/X class at General Assembly last month (www.generalassemb.ly ), I was able to look at U/X in new light that allowed me to draw significant parallels from both online shopping and shopping at an actual store and how the two encompass a lot of the same processes, but present them to the customer in much different ways.
Below are my top tips for making your users feel like VIPs, not like another email address with access to a credit card. (more…)
Sublime Text 2 advanced techniques [part 1]
Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest code editors around. It’s also stable and extendable, with a number of plugins that allow you to heavily customize your editor. We received a lot of interest on our previous blog post on Sublime Text 2, so we decided to write a follow-up with Sublime Text 2 advanced techniques. This is part one, for your reading pleasure!
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50 essential mobile apps [part 2]
We recently asked our Pixafy team which apps they use on a regular basis and received a ton of responses! Last week, we brought you part 1 of “50 Essential Mobile Apps.” Here’s part 2, with 25 additional essential mobile apps that Pixafy folks use on a regular basis: (more…)
Why social commerce will become the eCommerce standard
Pixafy is thrilled to introduce guest blogs to our site. If you love our posts and think you have a must-read topic to contribute, please drop us a line!
The following post is by Justin Butlion, Content and Social Marketing Manager at Yotpo.
Why social commerce will become the eCommerce standard
The eCommerce industry, like every other industry online, has been shaken up by the socialization of the web and the explosion in smart phone adoption across the world. The industry as a whole has benefited from the billion or so people that have connected online in the last 5 years but overall has been slow to integrate and leverage the numerous social tools and networks available. In this post I will focus on this hesitation and make an argument for why those that decide to adopt social commerce principles will be around to tell the story, and welcome in a new era, where social commerce becomes the eCommerce standard. (more…)
CSS subpixel rendering
Working on a responsive site a little while ago, I was running into a very strange problem where elements were refusing to line up.
I had a list of menu links (<a> tags wrapped in <li>’s) and above them I had <h3> tags labeling each section. All the widths I was using are % based. The <h3> tags were 100% of the wrapper, the <li>’s the same (and their wrapping <ul>’s), and the <a> tags were 90% width with 5% padding on the sides (90%+5%+5% = 100%) width <span>’s wrapping the inner text.
And yet somehow the <h3>’s were appearing a tiny bit longer than the <a> tags when testing on mobile! In fact they were exactly 0.5px off. That is really odd and I knew it had to do something with subpixel rendering: (more…)
Custom events in Magento
This year, I’ve been working extensively in Magento, which is a change of pace from the custom-coded, “from the ground up” projects I’d been doing previously. I was excited about entering this “brave new world” because with my background, I felt I could take quickly to find ways to extend Magento’s core functionality. One example that was brought to my attention was custom events. (more…)
