Author Rachel McCollin

February 27, 2014 — iframe is one of the few HTML elements that don’t play nice with responsive layouts. You may need to use it when embedding content from external sources such as YouTube, so in this article, Rachel McCollin will show you how to make embedded content responsive using CSS. For those occasions when non-coders will be embedding video on your website and you don’t want to rely on them adding extra markup, she’ll also look at a solution that uses JavaScript instead of CSS. Read more…

April 8, 2013 — The first time Rachel McCollin had to move a WordPress installation, she spent hours searching online for information on the various aspects of the process, and eventually wrote herself a checklist — which she still uses. Here’s a step-by-step guide to moving a WordPress website! Read more…

March 13, 2013 — If you’re starting out building WordPress themes or want to develop a system for building them more efficiently or robustly, how do you decide which approach to take? In this article, Rachel McCollin will briefly describe how WordPress themes work and then look at some of the different approaches to developing them. Read more…

March 5, 2013 — The purists out there may be throwing their hands up in horror — a WYSIWYG interface! Letting users alter themes themselves! Well, yes, there is a risk on that. But the Customizer means that if you’re developing custom themes for client websites, you have a whole new set of tools to play with. The theme customizer allows users to tweak theme settings using a WYSIWYG interface and customise a theme so it includes pretty much anything they want. Read more…

December 10, 2012 — The latest version of Safari doesn’t make such great strides as the previous update did, but there are some tools in there which will be of use or interest to developers. These include: File upload, Web audio, CSS images, and more. Read more…

June 28, 2012 — Most of us are pretty familiar with responsive Web design by now. Basically, it uses a combination of a fluid layout and media queries to alter the design and layout of a website to fit different screen sizes. There are other considerations, too. For example, a lot of work has been done on responsive images, ensuring not only that images fit in a small-screen layout, but that the files downloaded to mobile devices are smaller, too. Read more…

June 14, 2012 — It’s been a couple of years now since the concept of responsive design took the Web design world by storm, and more and more websites are going responsive. But there are still some barriers and potential problems, not the least of these being the challenge of reducing the size of files that you’re sending to mobile devices. Read more…

May 24, 2012 — “Mobile Web design.” Unless you’ve been hiding under a bush for the last 18 months, you’ll know that it’s one of the hottest topics in the industry at the moment. Barely a week goes by without new tips being unveiled to help us hone our skills in making websites work as well — and as fast — as possible on mobile devices. Read more…