CSS Tips and Tricks: Part 5 of 6

Vertical Content Alignment

In our introductory blog in this CSS series, we demonstrated display;none and its uses. The second installation provided an overview of CSS3, while the third discussed CSS Syntax. The fourth added a few more general tips and tricks to the arsenal, helping readers take full advantage of CSS and each one of its updates. Now, let’s get specific and talk more in depth about vertical content alignment, which can be a challenging element to working with CSS.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are normally used to make a document more presentable where a style sheet language is used so that it defines the look and formatting usually written in markup language. In most cases, you will find that CSS is used to style a variety of web pages as well as user interfaces that are written in HTML, XHTML and any other sort of XML document. You can simply learn some simple CSS tricks that will equip you with necessary CSS skills, thus ensuring that you are successful in producing a quality content page.

There are quite a number of CSS tricks that we can use to keep our websites cool and attractive. These tricks will help you to improve the quality of your web design since they are easy to implement while also being user-friendly. Below are some important tricks that you can use to align your content vertically, in order to ensure that the quality level of your website is high and, ultimately presentable at a glance.

Absolute positioning. One of the most important tricks that we will feature is the absolute positioning CSS trick for content alignment. In your document, you will realize that you have two <div>, one of them will be the container while the other will be the child element which simply refers to the content. You will be required to start with the container element where you will position it to be relative while the child element is positioned to absolute. This will allow you to freely place it across the container thus allowing you to proceed on easily. So that you will achieve aligning it vertically, you can shift the position of the child element from the top in that it lays half way the height of the container. Then pull it up by half of the width of the child element, thus ensuring that your alignment is fantastic.

Use of CSS3 Transform. This Cascading Style Sheet trick has always made it easy for you to put any of your content at the center. For example, if we have similar HTML structures as the preceding method whereby we have one parent and one element having a — 50% from the top. The use of CSS transform will ensure that there is also a translation of — 50%. For more detailed information on CSS3, please refer to our second CSS blog post on that very topic.

Padding. Another CSS trick that we can use to form illusion in vertical alignment is the use of padding. It is a simple step in that will require you to set the top and the bottom part equal to each other. This trick will be effective if you do not adjust your container in a fixed width, but simply set your width to auto.

Use Line Height. The line-height property will be effective if you want to align a text vertically when you have only one line of element within a container. You will be required to set the value of line-height to a value that is nearly the same as that of the container height.

These are some of the surefire CSS tricks that you can use to align your content vertically thus achieving a high-quality web content. Contact Extra Nerds for these tricks and be sure that you will succeed in your next web designing project.

Hopefully you have learned some helpful hints on CSS in this blog series. Stop back next week for our final installation which will help us to understand modern CSS typography and font styling.

CSS Tips and Tricks: Part 4 of 6

More CSS Tips and Tricks

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) came on the scene over 15 years ago and, on a very basic level, changed the way websites looked and acted. This dialect has continued to advance throughout the years and its various updates are intended to engage designers and developers in order to manufacture websites which are beautiful, effective, and increasingly lightweight. In our introductory blog in this CSS series, we demonstrated display:none; and its uses. The second installation provided an overview of CSS3, while the third discussed CSS Syntax. Before we move forward, let’s take a moment to add a few more general tips and tricks to our arsenal, helping you to take full advantage of CSS and each one of its updates.

Use a decent proofreader. You may be a coding master, but two heads are always than one, as they say. Being ready to approve and turn upward codes, the auto-complete element, and syntax highlighting won't just speed up your work, it will allow for more precision in your stylesheets.

Compress wherever possible. Use an effective compression device to cleave off the bytes from your CSS and JavaScript files wherever possible without deleting substance. This ensures that your website remains unencumbered and loads quickly. One approach to decrease undesirable bytes in your CSS files is to erase copy references, conflicts, and comments. Despite the fact that comments, for example, make it easier for someone else to maintain your files, they increase the record size significantly. It's better to just compose your codes and orchestrate them such that your files are promptly comprehensible. Also, store at any point you can in order to enhance loading times and preserve the bandwidth of your website visitors. It’s worth noting that enhanced loading times also improves the search engine optimization (SEO) prospects of a website and drives it up the Google ranks. You can enhance the execution of your website by using just a single stylesheet that slashes the quantity of HTTP requests.

Increase the meaningfulness of your stylesheets. You can do this in a number of ways, but the simplest is to include white spaces. While this technique will inevitably increase the size of your CSS files slightly, you can ensure that the intelligibility will also enhance manifold times. Make sure that you keep the code format consistent. Another nifty way to ease the maintenance of your stylesheet is to eliminate inline codes. Also, keep the CSS record names simple so that you know at a glance the contents of each document.

Disable CSS to investigate. All browsers have assembled debuggers. Take in the hot keys to initiate these tools. In any case, if you can't spot the glitch even after cautious scrutiny, verify that you disable CSS or evacuate every one of the styles before bringing them back, each one in turn, to simulate the glitch.

Check your codes on all the significant browsers. This is likely the simplest of all CSS tips and yet so many programmers tend to ignore it. Try not to use a browser emulator to check code. Rather, check your codes on the genuine browser or a virtualized version. And don’t forget to keep an eye on all the major browsers - Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari.

The aforementioned five CSS tips and tricks should, in a perfect world, be strictly adhered to as best practices as they make easier the lives of developers, website administrators, Google spiders, and website visitors.

Hopefully you’re finding these tips and tricks helpful and we’ll have some more for you next week in our fifth installation of this six-part series. While we touched on vertical content alignment in our CSS3 blog, we’re going to delve deeper into that conversation in next week , so stop back and check it out.

CSS Tips and Tricks: Part 3 of 6

The Benefits of Using CSS Syntax for Web Design

In the first blog in this series we talked about display:none:, what it does, why it's useful, and how to use it. And then we followed that up with an outline of CSS3. Now we want to talk about CSS Syntax.

Those who are in the initial stages of creating a website for their business tend to be concerned with how to best utilize both their funds and their time. Luckily, there is a wonderfully effective method of web design that will enable a person to save their money and conserve their time. This is the relatively still unknown CSS Syntax and, in what seems like the blink of an eye, it is becoming a highly popular and incredibly effective choice for the ultimate objective of economic and user-friendly web design. The overall benefits are simply fantastic and that is what so many web designers, and visitors of the websites which use it, love about it.

So, What Exactly is CSS Syntax?

CSS is becoming widely known as a language which is incorporated to provide the essential detail of a given website’s markup language, HTML or XHTML. The function of HTML is to enable fonts, the website’s complete layout and the various colors and tones integrated throughout. One particular benefit which is it produces is a separation of the varied content within the document. The content itself is almost always written in HTML format or a markup language which is considered similar.

Reliable Flexibility. When you utilize CSS Syntax, changes and alterations to your website can be done in a breeze regardless of the number of pages on which the changes need to be made. The larger the website, the more a person will automatically see how effective and undeniably efficient CSS Syntax is for web design. Another great aspect is that it will ensure that all of the other pages will receive the same changes as directed, at the same time, consistently.

Reduces Bandwidth. When CSS Syntax separates the content of the website from the language used to produce the website’s design, a user will immediately see the great reduction in the size of the file transfer. The document will then be properly stored externally and, at that point, it will be accessed for every single visit from then on. By reducing the amount of bandwidth used, it will free up extra space for a quicker loading time, which could very well play a role in saving money for the user.

Enables Efficiency for the Search Engines. The special technique that CSS Syntax uses is called “clean coding” and what this means is that the various search engines which offer an individual’s website won’t have any issues reading the content. Plus, CSS Syntax will keep from allowing more of the content as opposed to the code because everybody is well aware of how vital the content is to the overall success of a webpage.

Wonderfully compatible with the Browser. Even though compatibility with websites and the browser are progressing every day, CSS Syntax will be able to induce more compatibility between the user’s website and the browser itself. This will help visitors in viewing a website the exact way that the web designer intended it to be viewed.

Regardless of the fact that it is still considered relatively unknown, CSS Syntax and the production value that it brings to users is truly astounding. So much so that its unknown status is bound to quickly change and, soon enough, it will be the number one source for benefiting great web design to its maximum potential. Next week we’ll highlight some additional CSS tricks and tips so stay tuned!

CSS Tips and Tricks: Part 2 of 6

What is CSS3?

Disclaimer: This series of CSS Tips and Tricks will assume you have at least an intermediate level understanding of HTML and CSS.

In the first installation, we outlined display:none; - what it is, why to use it, and how to use it. Next, we’re going to talk about Cascading Style Sheets 3 (CSS3).

CSS3 is a wonderful computer language that can be used to give a better shape to your website. Though the CSS3 language is not terribly complicated, certain new advanced features can be confusing. If you’re not familiar with said features then you may find CSS3 a bit difficult, but let’s see if we can help. If you would like to be a CSS3 specialist or even if you just want to be more familiar with it, here are some tips that can help you to reach your goal.

How centering in CSS can help you to understand CSS3 transformation. Some people find it difficult to deal with centering items in CSS. In fact, they cannot track the centering problem of a web design. This is a very simple procedure and one can easily track this with a little help. Usually, designers try to use perfect positioning so that the elements will be rightly centered, but if you want to choose vertical centering, it’s better to go for CSS3 transform.

Container drive is required for providing an absolute position. However, vertical centering can also be achieved by auto-adjusting through the use of CSS3 transform. You just need to follow some procedures:

                          Go to the div. container, keeping the position relative

                          then go to the div container p, keeping the margin 0

                          make the position absolute, keeping the top 50 %

                          and then go for CSS3 transform

This works exceptionally well for animation since CSS transform is able to apply several visual effects to the elements such as rotate, move, and skew, among others.

Get acquainted with CSS3 specificity. Not everyone is acquainted with the word specificity. This is a basic idea and anyone who wants to be a CSS3 expert must need to be acquainted with this word. Specificity makes the browser choose the appropriate property values to an element and gets them applied through the browser. But the problem of the specificity is that it limits CSS rules to some elements only.

To resolve the problem, you just need to know some specificity rules. For example, ID selectors contain more specificity than attributive selectors. Rules getting more specific selectors will enjoy greater specificity, and override previous and conflicting rules. If you’re still facing specificity problems, then make sure that you are not using the important declaration button and give more effort to use fewer selectors for styling an element and place your style in LVHA order.

Prefer HSL over RGB. Most of the people choose the old RGB hex tag system for the specification of the colors. In the first impression, it looks good as it is specified with different colors like black, red, and blue separately. This RGB system is fine if you’re not working with color controls that require complementary and contrasting shades with similar saturations. In that situation, you'll want to choose HSL in order to get several conversions. And the process will be easy since CSS3 supports HSL color specificity.

Hopefully this has provided a little help to anyone who wants to start using CSS3. Stop back next week for a discussion on the benefits of using CSS syntax for web design.

The five qualities of a good project manager

Before we wrap up this project management series, let’s review that which we’ve learned so far. The introductory blog, P is for Project, outlined five important attributes, the Five Ps if you will, of project management – prepared, precise, proactive, perseverance, and perpetual learning. The subsequent installations expounded upon each of these. When considered individually, these characteristics  are incredibly important in their own right, but they are also related and interconnected. This final post addresses the final piece of the puzzle, the importance of learning perpetually.

P is for Perpetual Learning

It goes without saying that, as we move through life, we are continuously learning and growing and adapting in both our personal and professional lives. This is also critical in project management.  Despite the fact that most projects have similarities and common threads, each is also unique. Even projects which look similar on the surface, with the same objective, are rarely identical in planning or implementation. In order to stay current, relevant, and effective, PMs must be learning constantly.

Project Managers must not only have the essential industry-independent skills, but they must also quickly be able to gain a working knowledge of the particular industry in which their current project resides. For example, if one is managing a software development project, they will want to know something about programming concepts. Now, to be clear, PMs don’t need to be experts in every field. Can you imagine? The intricate level knowledge can be left to the team members who are doing the technical work and are highly educated in their respective fields. PMs however, do need to have a basic understanding and a foundation of information so that they are able to communicate and facilitate conversations between the client and the technical side as well as the ability to understand that conversation and maintain the confidence of the client. So how can one perpetually learn and obtain the basic knowledge that they need to lead a successful project when the topic at hand is unfamiliar?

Google it. These days, it’s not nearly as difficult as it used to be to research just about any topic you can name. Do you remember the days of libraries, card catalogs, and gilded-page encyclopedia sets?  Well, these days we have access to the most fantastic learning opportunity in history: the internet. Now many of us still love libraries, the smell of books and the tangible quiet is a source of much nostalgia and we’d never stoop to insult their efficacy. In fact, if you prefer a little more of an old school approach, the local library is the place for you. But for those of us who have busy schedules and maybe appreciate quicker access to information, there’s always your friendly neighborhood search engine. For folks newer to internet research, there are several websites with tips and tricks on how to refine your search to maximize your productive time.

Pay attention to the expert. In addition to doing your homework, it is important to listen intelligently when interacting with the client during the initial stages of the project and attempt to internalize some of the concepts and jargon. Speak regularly to the member(s) of your team with the necessary technical expertise and request frequent updates. It’s important that more than one person of the technical team be involved. Multiple trusted points of view are extremely valuable.

Lessons learned. As any project draws to a close, it’s not a bad idea to review the process and everything that you learned. Regardless of success or failure, you will learn something. What worked well with the project? What would you have done differently? What did you learn about a particular niche industry that you didn’t know before? Documenting your thoughts could be exceedingly valuable to reference in the future. It could be several years, but it’s always possible that a similar project could present itself.  And, if a client was happy with your work, they could be returning to you with another project. If enough time has lapsed though, it is entirely possible that you have forgotten all that you learned. If you have notes to which you can refer, it could jog your memory and save much time in not duplicating your research from the past. Perpetual learning is a good practice in life. In project management, it is essential.

The PM role requires skill and planning, an ability to forecast and adapt, communication, confidence, attention to detail, organization, and both the desire and ability to coach as well as to learn.  All of these concepts play a part in the Five Ps – prepared, precise, proactive, perseverance, and perpetual learning. We hope that this series has been helpful in providing a foundation for successful project managers. Just remember: it can be done and you can be the one to do it.

The five qualities of a good project manager

So let’s recap that which we’ve discussed so far. In the introductory blog in this series, we outlined five important attributes, the Five Ps if you will, of project management– prepared, precise, proactive, perseverance, and perpetual learning. The subsequent installations expounded upon these in P is for Prepared, P is for Precise, and P is for Proactive. Each of these characteristics is so important in its own right, but they are also interconnected and I hope that is becoming clear as we move forward. Let’s talk about the next critical element of project management: perseverance.

P is for Perseverance

This concept is a bit more difficult to address as it tends to be slightly more abstract.  There are tools and techniques available, as we’ve demonstrated, to help keep one prepared, precise, and even proactive. But what’s out there to aid with perseverance?  It really is more of an inherent quality, but that’s not to say that it can’t be taught or learned (luckily for us or this would be a fairly short blog post). Author and Program Manager Richard Newton, calls perseverance the “underestimated skill of the successful”.  That’s so true. Very few successes have resulted from managers ignoring or mishandling the inevitable problems which arise during the course of any given project.  One of the responsibilities of a project manager then, is to instill in their team an unwavering commitment to their project and having the perseverance to turn mistakes or unanticipated problems into opportunities. While there aren’t as many tangible tools to aid with perseverance, here are a couple of thoughts to keep in mind.

Avoid creating unnecessary problems, keep things in perspective. It can be easy to feel like you’re losing control and that can cause one to feel like throwing in the towel. In most cases, however, simply giving up isn’t really a viable option. Try taking a break, or a day off if that’s possible, to get some distance and perspective and then get back in the game. Spinning those wheels, so to speak, is only going to make the situation more difficult. When you begin missing milestone and deadlines it only adds to the stress and then, well, then the downward spiral continues. Don’t over think. Don’t invent problems. Don’t make it harder on yourself.

Strengthen your resolve, focus on the goal. Don’t get dragged down by an unhappy client or by a project set back. If you experience an impediment, let it feed your flame rather than extinguish it. Remind yourself of your goal and adjust your plan if necessary.  If you must adapt your plan, look for new opportunities. Some of the greatest innovations were born from an accident when one was pursuing a completely different outcome. Listen to your inner voice and learn from your mistakes. You may find that your ability to overcome obstacles will actually serve to build your confidence in yourself and motivate you to continue forward. And that’s exactly how you’re going to persevere.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who could be the poster child for surmounting obstacles, advised that “when you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” Perseverance is not about avoiding problems, it’s about overcoming them. Hopefully we’ve provided you with a way of thinking which may inspire you to do just that. Check back next week when we conclude this blog series and discuss the final topic in our project management series: perpetual learning.

The five qualities of a good project manager

In the introductory blog in this series, we outlined five important attributes, the Five Ps if you will, of project management– prepared, precise, proactive, perseverance, and perpetual learning. The next installation expounded upon the first in P is for Prepared followed by P is for Precise. So, now let’s move on to talk about being proactive and the implications for project managers.

P is for Proactive

The word proactive is an adjective that means creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened. Simple enough concept, right? Even logical. And yet, proactivity is more rare than it should be. The world would probably be a much nicer place in which to live if we didn’t wait for chaos to ensue before we addressed an issue.  But, that’s a conversation for another time. For now, let’s just talk about our little corner of the business universe, the world of project management.

So, what does it mean for project managers to be proactive? TechRepublic identifies three kinds of project managers. The first is the accidental PM who comes up through the ranks and maybe understands the types of projects that they are managing, can build a work plan, and can assign work to other team members, but they don't have the project management discipline that comes from experience. The second type is good and understands that successful project management requires one to oversee issues, scope, communication, and  risk, but they don’t really embrace the idea that their approach really needs to be a proactive one in order to be effective. The third kind of PM, the one that we all want at the epicenter of our structure, is someone who has made the mental transition to apply his or her discipline on a proactive and ongoing basis.

The good PM understands the basic responsibilities of a project manager. The proactive PM has internalized these responsibilities and integrates them into the scope of the project work. Proactive PMs don't perform their duties simply because they're required. They perform their responsibilities because they fundamentally understand that these processes greatly increase the possibility of success. So, how do you go from being good to being proactive, you ask? Here are some tips.

Clearly define the project. This should be done in advance of the project commencement so that everyone on the team understands exactly the work that is to be done and their role in ensuring success.

Communication and customer engagement. A proactive PM doesn’t just do the bare minimum by providing occasional status reports, but takes it a step further and manages communication, anticipating the various needs of the client. Utilizing a communication plan can be really helpful. You can download a free template at Project Management Docs if you don't have one of your own.

Time control. Even if you manage risk, plan ahead to provide yourself with the time you’ll need to address unanticipated problems.  Mind Tools calls it “buffer time”, which is a nice segue way into the next point…

Risk management. Being proactive means trying to recognize risk factors from the very beginning of a project and utilizing a process by which to address all major problems as they occur. And inevitably problems will arise, people. They just will. Even if one is great at managing risk, that buffer time mentioned above is critical.

Review Processes. In the blog installation on precision we provided an overview of some techniques, such as the Critical Path Analysis (a fancy term for a project flow chart) that can help PMs to visualize their project and aid in efficient management and process determination. There are also free online project management interfaces, such as Asana, which can provide an organizational chart and process configuration if you do not already have one in place.

Quality solution. All effective PMs determine in advance the client’s expectations for quality and develops a plan to make sure that the level of quality will be met. It almost becomes a matter of pride for some PMs and that’s when the chief knows they have a keeper.

Last, but in no way least, budget management. Proactive budget management is so important and yet commonly overlooked. Even just using a simple spreadsheet as a forecasting tool may end up saving the day!

Project management can feel like a harrowing job to assume, but it can be done. And it can be done well. As an Extra Nerd, I have the pleasure of working daily with an extremely effective project manager, as a matter of fact. In the technology industry – and in many other industries, for that matter – you will find fewer more valuable members of your team than a proactive project manager.

That being said, another of the integral characteristics of a great project manager is perseverance so stop back next week for another post as we continue to dissect project management and, hopefully, provide PMs with a foundation for success!

Nerdy Newsletter: July, 2015

Client Highlight: Nice & Neat

Extra Nerds has worked with Nice & Neat on several projects and we appreciate their confidence in our work. For over 12 years, our client has been locally owned and operated in Athens, Ohio. During that time, they have developed a long-standing reputation built on their reliable service. They've made it their mission to make our community clean and healthy, one job at a time. And we like to lend a hand by keeping their website updated and offering technical support as it's needed. Our local, smaller clients are just as important to us as our larger, national clients. It's important for companies, as they grow, to remember their roots and we value the ongoing relationship we have with Nice & Neat.

Meet a Nerd

Angel Arnaudov, one of our .NET Nerds, has over 7 years of .NET / SQL experience, working almost exclusively with the Microsoft  technologies. He graduated from St. Kliment Ohridski University in Bitola, Macedonia from the department of Applied Computer Science and has vast international experience working for companies in both Europe and the United States.

Angel is constantly learning and working to stay current in the industry, lately investing significant amounts of time on several applications such as AngularJS, Knockout JS, and MongoDB as well as keeping up with .Net applications. He also has a great deal of knowledge of HTML, CSS, Jquery, and Bootstrap.

When not being a Nerd, Angel enjoys reading, cooking new dishes, and spending time with family and friends, as well as being a dedicated marathon runner. He has completed several full- and half-marathons and two triathlons! His personal lifetime goal is to complete 50 full-marathons.  We wish him luck with that, not that he needs it and we consider ourselves lucky to have such a knowledgeable, diverse, and driven self-professed geek on our team!

Industry News

Web Design Trends of 2015
An interesting question showed up on Quora recently. What will be the biggest web design trends in 2015? At Extra Nerds, we like to monitor these kinds of discussions not only because we are nerds, but also because it's important for us to stay on top of what's changing in the world of web design and development. And, we figured you might be interested too since, if you're reading this blog entry right now, you may be interested in making sure your website is on the bleeding edge. The rest of this post can be read here.

What's the 'F' Pattern and Why Does your Website Need it?
Let's face it. You have about 3 seconds to impress your website visitors before they get distracted by those cute little kittens over on YouTube. For your website to be successful, you need to capture their attention right away. More importantly, you need to keep their attention long enough to convey your message, pique their curiosity, and perhaps even convert them into a paying customer via a successful call to action. It's a tall order. Thankfully, the folks over at The Next Web have summarized some pretty interested research for us on eye movement and how users quickly scan your website content. An unsurprising pattern has emerged called the "The F pattern". To learn more on this topic, check out one of our earlier blog posts.

The Understated Importance of Monitoring your Website.
Having a website is not a "set it and forget it" endeavor. These days, with dynamic content, hackers, social media links, and rapidly changing technology and competition, it's important to constantly monitor your website to make sure it's at peak performance and delivering content your visitors find useful. Ultimately, you want to convert website visitors into paying customers, and so it's vital that your website is available, loads quickly, and is serving useful, directed content to your visitors as intuitively as possible. You can find the rest of this post here if you'd like to keep reading.

Become a Nerd

Extra Nerds is always looking for folks to add to our team. Do you have interest in becoming a part-time developer with a background in .NET and SQL Server? Our preference is for someone with knowledge of MVC, Entity Framework, and WebAPI. Javascript and CSS experience is a plus. Check out our website and if you're interested in joining our team then give Sid McFarland a call at 740-249-2200.

Extra Rewards

Be sure to take advantage of the Extra Nerds Referral Program. For every person or company you refer to Extra Nerds, you receive 1 FREE hour of development from one of our specialists. Not a bad deal, right? Spread the love!

The five qualities of a good project manager

In the introductory blog in this series, we outlined five important attributes, the Five Ps if you will, of project management– prepared, precise, proactive, perseverance, and perpetual learning. The next installation expounded upon the first in P is for Prepared. Next, let’s talk about precision.

P is for Precise

As the person who is almost solely responsible for ensuring the success of a project, precision is critical for a project manager. Keeping track of all of the nuanced details can be challenging and it’s not uncommon for PMs to use external tools to help. For example, one could purchase a membership to the Project Management Institute  where you have access to templates, forms, and checklists galore as well as a fairly comprehensive support structure.

Some would rather a free option, of course, and there are some great ones out there. The following sites provide a framework for PMs to utilize for a structure within which to operate and communicate.  One that seems to be present on many PM lists and a favorite in the field is Asana, which is a collaboration tool and multi-project hybrid task and management site. Similar sites are Evernote, Trello, ProjectManager.com, and Teamwork.com. Each has their own style and organizational structure, so it would be prudent to explore various site interfaces to identify the one which is most appealing to you or most suitable for your particular projects.

Most project managers have honed various techniques in order to stay organized, communicative, and on task. Frequently these include lengthy checklists or giant white board diagrams with colored post it notes (which sounds primitive, but can be useful if you are a more visual person and have the space). A common favorite for the more complex project is that which is called a Critical Path Analysis (CPA, also called a Critical Path Method or CPM) which is, in reality, just an impressive way to say flow chart. This is a logical and effective method as the format is linear, essentially a timeline. CPA diagrams are excellent for displaying each interdependent factor as well as demonstrating how they overlap and coincide with others. Mind Tools provides a step-by-step process using the CPA technique.

When we speak of precision, it’s not just the precision of the project manager that is important. One of the responsibilities of a PM is to be able to recognize the various strengths and weaknesses of team members. To this end, it may be helpful to have a skills inventory for each of their people. Along side the list of each person’s technical expertise, it is useful to have a directory of their more abstract qualities, such as creativity, vision, or, you got it, precision and attention to detail.  This is a valuable team member to have and a PM may utilize their ability by having them conduct a website audit, for example, in the beginning stages of a website project, or maybe have them aspart of the quality assurance process in the final stages of a project, or maybe even ask them to analyze and report metrics. Regardless of your project, be sure the use the person with an eye for detail and innate precision wisely.

In the next blog in this series, we’ll talk about the importance of being proactive and what that means for a project manager, so stay tuned!

AngularJS and Bootstrap CSS: Why Angular is a Good Buy For Your Team

As we discussed in the introductory blog in this series, AngularJS is an open source web application framework which is maintained by Google and a group or community of corporations and individual developers. It was developed to address the numerous challenges that developers and organizations face when developing single page or static applications.

So, just a quick review of the Angular series to date before we conclude, we’ve talked about why developers like to use it and how it works well for an array of website building projects, for single page applications, and especially when paired with Web API. In this Final blog in this series, let’s bring it all together.

As many developers will tell you, HTML is very good when you are declaring static documents but it fails miserably once you try declaring dynamic views in a web application. AngularJS comes in quite handy in this regard because it does allow developers to extend HTML vocabulary into an application, in the end giving you an environment that’s quick to develop, easy to read, and very expressive.

In simple terms, it is a set of tools specifically meant to help you and your team to build the framework that’s most suited to the application which you and your team are developing. It is not only fully extensible, but it also works extremely well with libraries from other development platforms. As a matter of fact, every feature of Angular can either be replaced or modified to suit the unique development workflow your team may be employing.

The framework is also well organized and does provide developers with a structure that guides them through the process of building a complete application; from designing the user interface to writing the required business logic to carrying out thorough and up-to-date testing of the application before deploying it and anything in between. 

It is worth noting that, with Angular, it's easy to create reusable components. This has the major advantage of allowing developers to separately focus on either how the application looks or focus on what the application does. This is possible because the components will allow developers to hide all those complex structures and behaviors unique to the application being developed. The framework basically decouples the server side of an application from the application side, in the process; it does allow your team of developers to work in parallel. This has the added advantage of saving time and allowing the team to re-use either side. 

With current applications, localization is very important. It is imperative for any app to be readily available in all locations. AngularJS achieves this by availing features which gives the developer the appropriate building blocks to ensure your application is availed in all required locales. 

One of the major benefits of this framework is that if you have already invested in other technologies then there is no need to worry because AngularJS does work pretty well with all kinds of different technologies. It is possible to add as much or as little as you desire to an existing page within a very short time. The main difference with other alternative frameworks is that they usually require full commitment or entire overhaul of the page.

It is also worth noting that this framework was designed, from the ground up, to be testable. It does this by basically considering the process of application testing to be as important as the process of application writing, this is because the code used in structured in such a way that makes testing not only simple to perform but also more accurate.

So, we hope that you've enjoyed and learned something about AngularJS by way of this series. It can be a very good friend to you developers out there. Now go forth and create!