It’s Tuesday which means that the Treehouse Show is back! In episode 88 of The Treehouse Show, Nick and Jason (@jseifer) talk about Gulp, Sketch 3, and Bud.

This Week’s Links

• gulp.js – the streaming build system

• What is new in Sketch 3  — Medium

• azer/bud

• qrohlf/trianglify

• sindresorhus/multiline

• How to Use steps() in CSS Animations – Designmodo

• PACE — Automatic page load progress bars

• Pesticide – Kill Your Css Layout Bugs

The post Gulp | Sketch 3 | Bud | The Treehouse Show Episode 88 appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

We are all accustomed to seeing sculptures of Jesus crucified on the cross… but how about asleep on a park bench?

A recently installed statue in the wealthy neighborhood of Davidson, N.C. depicting just that is raising holy heck.

There is no glistening robe, no halo, no arms stretched out to the sky above. 

This statue is a modest depiction: Jesus is huddled under a blanket laying on a park bench. Unless you look closely and see the crucifixion wounds on his feet, you could easily write him off as a typical homeless person. 

In fact, this statue is so realistic that a woman actually called the cops on this “homeless man.” 

The statue sparked controversy in the neighborhood as many call it an offensive and inaccurate depiction of Jesus.

One woman stated in reaction to the statue that,

“Jesus is not a vagrant, Jesus is not a helpless person who needs our help. We need someone who is capable of meeting our needs, not someone who is also needy.”

However, Rev. David Buck of St. Alban’s church claims that, 

“It gives authenticity to our church. This is a relatively affluent church, to be honest, and we need to be reminded ourselves that our faith expresses itself in active concern for the marginalized of society.”

Is this statue an offensive misrepresentation, or is it an accurate and refreshing depiction of prominent religious figure? 

Potomac Photonics

Potomac Photonics is the first advanced manufacturing company to join the BWTech Research and Technology Park at UMBC.

See the video here: http://video.baltimoresun.com/Potomac-Photonics-25875534?ndn.trackingGroup=91005&ndn.siteSection=sebaltimoresun&ndn.videoId=25875534&freewheel=91005&sitesection=sebaltimoresun&vid=25875534#.U1_T9qIUQ3M

When:

Fri May 16, 2014 6AM to 9AM

Where:

Santa's House (@ Catonsville Fire Station)754 Frederick Rd, Catonsville, MD 21228

What:

Participants in Bike to Work Day who stop by the event location will receive a free t-shirt, commuting guide, and a chance to win prizes. Coffee & refreshments provided. Simply bike to work, and stop by 754 Frederick Rd. Register here.

Why:

Bike to Work Day is a national event to encourage and celebrate bicycling to work and promote public awareness of bicycling and bicycle safety. Locally, it's a part of Maryland's Clean Commute Month in May. Register here.

Late Spring is the start of the ground-level ozone season, when we hear about Code Red and Orange Ozone Action Days. On these warm smoggy days, the air is dangerous to breathe – especially for the young and for the elderly. Emissions from single occupancy vehicles(driving alone) contribute approximately 20% of our region's dangerous ozone levels. Driving alone also results in increasingly congested roadways and parking issues. We can save money, protect the environment, stay in shape and have fun while biking.

Transportation accounts for 38% of UMBC's carbon footprint. In 2007, President Hrabowski committed to campus carbon neutrality.

How:

Resources onUMBC's sustainable transportation alternatives are listed at: http://sustainability.umbc.edu/transportation/

• Ride Transit
• Carpool Together
• Bike to Campus    
• Borrow a Free Bicycle
• Charge an Electric Vehicle
• Borrow a Zip Car

Who:

These sustainable transportation options have been developed and promoted by the following groups. If this topic is of interest to you, consider getting involved:

• UMBC Transportation Work Group (part of the Climate Change Task Force)
• UMBC Cycling Community
• UMBC Off Campus Student Services, Sustainable Transportation Outreach Intern
• UMBC Sustainability

(Stretch your CSS layout options with Flexbox. Flickr photo by Duncan Hull.)

Flexbox is a totally new set of CSS properties that allows designers to create flexible layouts. This is great news for responsive design because it dramatically reduces the complexity of fluid grids. Browser support for flexbox is finally here, so if you haven’t learned about flexbox yet, then it’s time to get started.

Flexbox is Ready

The web was originally conceived as a mechanism for exchanging scientific documents. Web technology has evolved a great deal since then, but we still rely on CSS properties that have their roots in digital publishing. Indeed, CSS layout and positioning are some of the most difficult concepts for web designers, regardless of experience. Designers rely on the use of CSS properties like float and clear, or CSS declarations like display: block; and display: inline; to control their designs. With display: flexbox; designers are now in control of the direction, alignment, and spacing of page elements.

Free trial on Treehouse: Do you want to improve your web design skills? Click here to try a free 14-day trial on Treehouse.

Flexbox is a remarkably intelligent solution to a long-standing convoluted problem. For the last few years, designers have been patiently waiting for browser support to catch up to the CSS Flexible Box Layout Module specification. Finally, the latest versions of all major browsers include flexbox support. (For more detailed information, see the browser support section below.)

Flexbox Example and Syntax

Flexbox and media queries make for a powerful combination. In the following example, I’ve recreated a simplified version of the Treehouse homepage header using a mobile-first flexbox approach. Open this pen in a new browser window and resize the window to see the header in action.

See the Pen Treehouse Flexbox Example by Nick Pettit (@nickpettit) on CodePen.

At first glance, it may not appear very special. However, if you look at the code, you’ll notice that this layout uses no position or float properties. It also doesn’t use any block or inline values for display.

I’ve separated the example CSS into the flexbox styles and then all the less relevant code that just makes it look nice. Here’s how each part of the flexbox styling is working in this example.

display: flex

The declaration display: flex; defines a “flex container” and its direct children automatically become “flex items.” A flex container has a main axis, which is the primary direction in which flex items are laid out. The cross axis is perpendicular to the main axis. Both the main axis and the cross axis have a set of properties that can control how flex items are placed in relation to one another.

This diagram from the W3C specification for flexbox describes how the main axis and cross axis relate to one another.

You can also nest flex containers inside one another, which I’ve done in the example code, since the display property is not automatically inherited. Both the .header and .nav classes have the display: flex; declaration applied. This is similar to how rows and columns in a CSS framework like Foundation can be nested.

flex-direction

One thing to note is that the main axis is the primary direction, and not necessarily the horizontal direction. The direction of a flex container can be changed with the flex-direction property. At mobile sizes, the navigation in the example becomes a 1-column list rather than horizontal links. This is accomplished in the example with the flex-direction: column; declaration.

Then, at larger sizes, the declaration flex-direction: row; is used to make the navigation horizontal again. The default value for flex-direction is row, so even if the flex-direction property wasn’t used at all, then the list elements would still appear horizontal.

flex

The flex property is applied to flex items. It’s a shorthand property that combines the flex-grow, flex-shrink, and flex-basis properties into one declaration. The flex-grow and flex-shrink properties both take a unitless value that defines how much space each element should take up in proportion to one another. By default, flex-grow is 0 and flex-shrink is 1, meaning that all the elements will be in proportion to one another. The flex-basis property defines the size of elements before extra space is distributed and its default value is auto.

The latter two properties are optional, so if we simply apply the declaration flex: 1; to the .nav class, it changes the flex-grow value to 1. The other flex item in the same flex container is the h1 element with the class .logo, and since flex-grow is 0 by default, the .nav will always take up more space than the .logo.

justify-content

If there’s space left over inside a flex container, either because the flex items have reached their maximum size or because they’re inflexible, then the justify-content property can define how the space should be used. In the example, the .header has the declaration justify-content: space-between; which means the first flex item will be at the start of the line, the last item will touch the end of the line, and anything between will be evenly distributed. On the nested .nav flex container, the declaration justify-content: space-around; is used to distribute the remaining space evenly around each navigation link.

See this diagram from the W3C to see how each of the justify-content properties behave.

This image from the W3C demonstrates how the various values for the justify-content property will behave.

And more…

This is just a small sample of the new flexbox properties. For more comprehensive information, see the resources section below.

Browser Support

In general, if you only need to support the latest browsers (such as a blog for web designers) then you’re safe to use flexbox. However, there are a few caveats that need to be addressed for slightly older browsers. For example, as of Safari 7.0 and mobile Safari 7.0, the -webkit- prefix is still required.

More importantly, there are multiple implementations of the flexbox syntax. Prior to the introduction of the modern syntax in the W3C spec, an unofficial syntax was supported by several legacy browsers. In addition, there’s an even older display: box syntax. There are also a few bugs to watch out for (even in modern browsers) that may or may not be minor, depending on the context of a project.

For specific information about browser support, see the Can I Use support table for flexbox. You may also want to read about how to support flexbox in legacy browsers.

One more note: It’s probably not a good idea to use flexbox for overall page layouts. Rendering content with flexbox causes horizontal misalignment and shifting as the page is loading, due to the way sizes need to be calculated. This can actually make the page load a bit slower in most instances. However, the grid layout module aims to further address page layout and browser support should arrive in the future.

Flexbox Resources

This article is only meant to spread awareness and excitement about the arrival of flexbox, and there’s a lot more to learn. If you’re thinking about using flexbox, here’s some essential reading:

• CSS Layout Techniques: In this Treehouse course, Guil Hernandez covers common layout and positioning methods, including flexbox.
• A Complete Guide to Flexbox | CSS-Tricks: If you want to know more about each element and property in the flexbox module, I recommend this guide from Chris Coyier.
• Flexbox in the real world: A fantastic blog post from Sean Fioritto about how to use flexbox responsibly to accommodate various browser traffic scenarios, including detailed code to help support legacy browsers if necessary.
• The Ultimate Flexbox Cheat Sheet: An excellent “cheat sheet” page (also from Sean Fioritto) about how to use various flexbox properties and values.
• CSS Flexible Box Layout Module | W3C: For extremely detailed technical information, read the W3C flexbox specification.
• Flexplorer: Amazing tool by Bennett Feely that allows you to quickly experiment with the various flexbox properties and values.

The post Flexbox: The Next Generation of CSS Layout Has Arrived appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Let's say you're using an RSS-to-Email service. They're pretty useful. Plenty of people like subscribing to content via email. You have a CMS that generates RSS from the content you create. An RSS-to-Email service can watch for new entries, format those new entries into an email, and send them out to a list of subscribers. MailChimp and Campaign Monitor both offer this service and I'm sure they aren't the only ones.

But how do you handle images within those email-generating entries? It can be a little tricky actually, because the HTML for images that works on the website might not be so great in email.

Here's an example. You write a blog post, and the content of that blog post spits out like this:

<p>Blah blah blah. Blog post about ponies. Here's a cool and hip pony:</p>
    
    <img src="http://cdn.ponies.what/pony.jpg" width="1200" height="800">
    
    <p>Isn't that the best pony of all?</p>

Notice the width and height attributes. That's not entirely uncommon. WordPress automatically adds them by default if you use the Media Uploader thingy.

Even if you remove them, that pony.jpg file is still 1200x800px big, and will render that way. That's no big deal, layout-wise, on the web, because we have CSS there. We can do the classic

article img {
      max-width: 100%;
      height: auto;
    }

to ensure the image doesn't break the bounds of the container it is in, or stretch it wider than appropriate. The fact that the image is that size is reasonable. That would be a @2x version of a content image in a 600px wide column, which is what is needed sometimes to make a raster image look nice and sharp.

We might even employ a responsive images technique, utilizing both JavaScript and CSS. Also a smart and reasonable thing you might want to do.

But we don't have either CSS or JavaScript available to us in emails. So that 1200x800px image is going to render at 1200x800px in an email layout. That's bad. Even on desktop, that's obnoxiously wide and hurts the ability to comfortably read the email as it can cause horizontal scrolling.

I used to use FeedBurner to provide email subscriptions on this site, and this is the kind of thing people would get.

It's not a problem isolated to FeedBurner. I switched to MailChimp for this service more recently. It's not their "fault", but huge images break their email layouts as well. Here's a classic example where you click "Display images below" in Gmail to reveal images and by doing so you kinda break the layout:

So we're going to need to fix this at the HTML level.

Altering the HTML

We're going to need to:

1. If the <img> has width/height attributes, remove them
2. Add a new width attribute with a friendly value

So these:

<img src="image.jpg" width="1200" height="800">
    
    <img src="image.png" alt="image">

Become:

<img src="image.jpg" width="320">
    
    <img src="image.png" width="320" alt="image">

Simple enough of a plan, but how do you actually do it?

One way is to put Email-friendly with attributes on the <img> in the content to begin with, and allow the image to be bigger with CSS on your site if needed.

Another way is to create a special feed that parses the content and alters the attributes on the <img>s as needed. I'm a fan of this way, because then it gives you a place to make other special alterations intended for email-only.

Solving in WordPress

Russell Heimlich helped me with this in this forum thread. Thanks Russell!

You'll need a create a new RSS feed in WordPress just for this. Fortunately WordPress makes this easy with add_feed(). For your functions.php file, or a custom plugin:

function css_tricks_custom_feeds() {
      add_feed('email', 'get_me_the_email_feed_template');
    }
    add_action('init', 'css_tricks_custom_feeds');

The email string creates a new feed with the slug email, so there is now a new feed URL at:

http://css-tricks.com/feed/email/

The get_me_the_email_feed_template string references a callback function:

function get_me_the_email_feed_template() {
      add_filter('the_content_feed', 'css_tricks_super_awesome_feed_image_magic');
      include(ABSPATH . '/wp-includes/feed-rss2.php' );
    }

Which references a filter function. This filter function does the magic of altering the HTML in a post.

function css_tricks_super_awesome_feed_image_magic($content) {
      // Weirdness we need to add to strip the doctype with later.
      $content = '<div>' . $content . '</div>';
      $doc = new DOMDocument();
      $doc->LoadHTML($content);
      $images = $doc->getElementsByTagName('img');
      foreach ($images as $image) {
        $image->removeAttribute('height');
        $image->setAttribute('width', '320');
      }
      // Strip weird DOCTYPE that DOMDocument() adds in
      $content = substr($doc->saveXML($doc->getElementsByTagName('div')->item(0)), 5, -6);
      return $content;
    }

This really did feel magical to me. I had no idea PHP had the native ability to query a chunk of HTML like it was the DOM and adjust attributes and stuff, like JavaScript can. But it does. Shows what I know.

Note that if the image you are inserting into the RSS entry is via something like the_post_thumbnail (the "featured image") feature in WordPress, you're already doing something special to get that into the feed, so you'd use the_post_thumbnail('medium'); instead of the_post_thumbnail('large'); or whatever.

Use the new feed

Now that this new feed exists, you can point the RSS-to-email service at it. For CSS-Tricks, I'm using MailChimp and it slurps in that feed:

MailChimp also does it's best, via media queries in the email, to make the template small screen friendly:

And it works!

I should say, it works in mobile email clients that support media queries. Which does not support GMail apps on iOS or Android, which is unfortunate.

Mobile first?

Given how often email is read on small screen devices, it's tempting to make the email template a good width for small screens, and only stretch it for large screens. If you go with a wide fixed width, even if you adjust with a media query, non supporting browsers will have a bad time:

I spoke a bit with Fabio Carneiro, the master of emails for MailChimp, who has some ideas about mobile-first emails that will work with apps that don't support media queries.

I'll update this when we can get that going. I'd also like to try setting width="100%" on images so that they just fit the container rather than the width="320" thing I'm doing now. I was just kinda afraid the 100% would still stretch the container where 320 for sure won't. Needs more testing.

I've had some luck with a <table> based design where there is no fixed width, but only max and min...

<!-- main content-wrapping table -->
    <table style="min-width: 320px; max-width: 600px;">
    
    </table>

But I can't 100% vouch for that yet.

Dealing with Content Images in Email is a post from CSS-Tricks