9 TIPS TO HELP YOU IMPRESS YOUR INTERVIEWER

As of December 2, 2013,

Table For Two UMBC chapter

was established !!

We have been established for the purpose of serving as a local chapter of

TABLE FOR TWO, which is a 501(c)(3) registered non­profit organization promoting health in both the developing and developed countries. As a local chapter, we promote health for UMBC students, raise awareness or spread knowledge about food­imbalance, and gain TFT patrons and partners in the UMBC community.

Please join us to do whatever you want to do to improve food imbalance (over-nourishment and under-nourishment)

An excellent feature of SVG is that you can define a shape (or set of shapes) once, and then use it multiple times throughout a page. You can even apply different fills and filters and whatnot to the different versions. SVG templating, if you will.

Let's see if we can put that to good use by creating some tabs.

I learned this was possible through Oleg Solomka's article on Codrops. Clever stuff!

It works like this:

1. Define the shape (could be a circle or rect or polygon or any of the shapes, or a group of them wrapped in a <g>).
2. Give that shape an ID.
3. Hide that shape.
4. Use the shape where needed with <use>.

That looks like this in HTML:

<!-- TEMPLATE -->
    <svg width="100px" height="100px" viewBox="0 0 100 100" class="visually-hidden">
      <circle id="template" cx="50" cy="50" r="50">
    </svg>
      
    <!-- USE TEMPLATE SEVERAL TIMES -->
    <svg viewBox="0 0 100 100" class="circle circle-1">
      <use xlink:href="#template">
    </svg>
      
    <svg viewBox="0 0 100 100" class="circle circle-2">
      <use xlink:href="#template">
    </svg>
      
    <svg viewBox="0 0 100 100" class="circle circle-3">
      <use xlink:href="#template">
    </svg>

You can then reference those different uses of the template individually and do whatever you like to them. For instance use SVG gradient fills or SVG filters or whatever.

Demo:

See the Pen Basic SVG Templating by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen

Creating Tabs

I just got some paperwork back from a lawyer and of course it's all tabbed out with that classic file folder design.

That kind of shape has been attempted before with CSS. Round out tabs deals with the tapering of the shape down into the rest of the folder. Slanted tabs deals with the angled sides. But neither of them are perfect, it would be difficult or impossible to combine them, and, while clever, they are a bit "hacky" with the use of generated content and such.

Wouldn't it be easier to just draw the dang shape as a vector and use it? Absolutely, that's perfect SVG territory. And better, we can just use a template to define it once and use it over and over. That allows us to change the color and such without have to request a new asset, as well as look sharp no matter what size we end up using it at.

You could easily draw that shape in any vector drawing tool and snag the SVG code for it. If you need help with that, this article should be useful.

I went poking about stock photography sites to find some, just for fun, and I found some at Shutterstock that were about what I was trying to go for. I downloaded them and snagged the shape out of there.

Boiled down is basically this:

<svg>
      <path id="tab-shape" d="M116.486,29.036c-23.582-8-14.821-29-42.018-29h-62.4C5.441,0.036,0,5.376,0,12.003v28.033h122v-11H116.486
    			z">
    </svg>

The HTML

Since we would likely call tabs navigation and navigation is lists, here is what we would end up with:

<nav role="navigation" class="main-navigation">
      <ul>
        <li class="tab-1 active">
          <a href="#home">
            <span>Home</span>
            <svg viewBox="0 0 122 40">
               <use xlink:href="#tab-shape"></use>
            </svg>
          </a>
        </li>
        <li class="tab-2">
          <a href="#about">
            <span>About</span>
            <svg viewBox="0 0 122 40">
              <use xlink:href="#tab-shape"></use>
            </svg>
          </a>
        </li>
    
        <!-- etc. as many tabs as you'd like -->
    
      </ul>
    </nav>

We need to use <svg> in the markup there because that's how this works. We wrap it in an <a> because we intended to have the tabs be clickable/tappable links. We need the <span> because we intend to position the <svg> and text right on top of each other, with the text on top.

The CSS

We can use one of the wrapping elements as a positioning context. We'll absolutely position both the <span> and <svg> and give the <span> a higher z-index.

Presented in SCSS here, as the nesting makes it nicer to read:

.main-navigation {
      overflow: hidden;
      position: relative;
      padding: 0 0 0 1rem; /* push tabs back to right */
      ul {
        list-style: none;
        padding: 0;
      }
      li {
        float: left;
        width: 12rem;
        height: 5rem;
        margin: 0 0 0 -1rem; /* pull to left to overlap tabs */
        position: relative;
        &.active {
          z-index: 6; /* active one on top */
        }
      }
      a {
        position: relative;
        display: inline-block;
        width: 100%;
        height: 100%;
      }
      svg {
        width: 120%; /* tab shape should stick out past clickable box */
        height: 100%;
        position: absolute;
        top: 0;
        left: 0;
        z-index: 1;
        pointer-events: none; /* SVG eats clicks weird */
      }
      span {
        position: relative;
        padding: 1rem 0 0 3.3rem; /* position the text */
        z-index: 2;
        display: inline-block;
        width: 100%;
        height: 100%;
      }
    }

Now to change each tab's appearance, you can reference them by class name and change the fill. We also need them in reverse z-index order so the first one is on top instead of the last, which is easy enough to do by explicitly declaring them.

.tab-1 {
        z-index: 4;
        svg {
          fill: red; 
        }
      }
    .tab-2 {
        z-index: 3;
        svg {
          fill: orange; 
        }
      }

The Demo

See the Pen SVG Tabs by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen

There is some JavaScript in there to activate the different tabs, which is at essence just changing a class name.

You might notice the tabs also have slight gradients to them. The interesting connection here is that you can declare that SVG gradient in the same <svg> as the original template shape, then fill a templated shape just by referencing the filter by ID.

<linearGradient id="tab-1-bg" x1="0%" y1="0%" x2="0%" y2="65%">
      <stop offset="0%" style="stop-color: rgba(136, 195, 229, 1.0);" />
      <stop offset="100%" style="stop-color: rgba(118, 160, 192, 1.0);" />
    </linearGradient>

.tab-1 {
      svg {
        fill: url(#tab-1-bg); 
      }
    }

So basically you can think of your filters as templates as well, re-using them at will. Play around with the demo a bit too. There are some commented-out parts in there dealing with shadow primarily that you might like. What would be really cool is to make them flexy where tab size changes bigger and smaller as there is room available (the text as well) and then ditch them entirely when it's impartially small and swap out for a mobile navigation solution.

SVG Tabs (Using an SVG Shape as Template) is a post from CSS-Tricks

With yesterday’s announcement about the general availability of its Compute Engine, Google has rounded its service-rich computing Cloud Platform into a full-on competitor to the elite and powerful handful of existing providers.

Behind every notable online service or app, from Netflix to Angry Birds to Snapchat, is that set of backend processes requiring gobs (mega-gobs, peta-gobs) of digital storage and computing power. Until relatively recently, this required a tech startup to quickly come up with millions of dollars to build and test the systems that could accommodate growing user demand.

Amazon, having invested their tremendous resources to support their own retail enterprise, was the first to turn that infrastructure into a publicly available, cloud-based set of products and services. While they remain the biggest provider, other players have entered the field, including Microsoft and IBM.

With yesterday’s release, Google has lowered the price of some services and are probably playing to their strengths by exceeding the industry’s benchmark performance guarantees (“Monthly Uptime Percentage to Customer of at least 99.95%,” according to the Google Compute Engine Service Level Agreement). One way they plan to keep their promises is with their new, built-in live-migration technology: interruptions owing to scheduled maintenance will never happen.

Tech watchers insist that the offering hasn’t completely arrived, due in part to the need for better integration between the different products. Still, with their deep pockets, as well as the equipment and experience they’ve amassed to deliver their pervasive and heavily-used email, search and video services, the potential is very promising.

Google’s Cloud Platform could give its competitors a run for their money, sparking more innovation as they vie for the market. And while the number of companies offering cloud computing services isn’t likely to ever get very big, having one more solid option is welcome news.

For a more indepth look at Google’s entry into the cloud computing industry, see Quentin Hardy’s great piece in the New York Times. Check out the Google Cloud Platform blog for a detailed post about the Compute Engine General Availability status and features.

Do you use Amazon’s cloud service? Would you consider switching to Google? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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