Envato is a pretty well-known company among us webby types. Among their 8 million blogs and other sites, they also run a number of marketplaces where authors can sell their templates, graphics, videos, code snippets, etc etc to a huge pool of buyers for a certain amount of commission. After optimistically signing up to Theme Forest dreaming of becoming a top WordPress theme seller a few months ago, I finally got around to uploading my first item last week.
You know how it is. Some days you just wake up and want to try something new.
I’ve used Photoshop and the more unfashionable (yet tons better for designing websites) Fireworks but the only experience I’d really had of Illustrator was once upon a time when I downloaded some free vector art and opened it up to change part of it from pink to green. The time was right to learn. (more…)
For a while now I’ve been aware that the one major gap in my knowledge is all things Javascript. Yeah, I’ve edited the odd script to do what I want but it’s usually been more trial and error than actually having a clue. Well, not any more!
This amazing series of screencasts turned out to be exactly what I needed. jQuery for Absolute Beginners is exactly that. At no point did I feel that the host assumed a higher standard of knowledge from me, which tends to be a problem when trying to find tutorials on a new subject, and he even based episodes on questions from past commenters who were confused about something or had a specific example they wanted to duplicate.
Best of all each episode is short and to the point, so you won’t feel overloaded with new knowledge. I did the first 8 in one day and then played around a bit on my own to let things sink in, but you could do the whole series at once or an episode a day depending on how you prefer to learn.
After the first few episodes I was able to understand and modify a downloaded jQuery plugin that had seemed like gibberish earlier that day, and I’m a slow learner. The series is a few months old as I write this, so I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the author’s website (though it’s apparently not updated very often). I can honestly say I’ve never found a tutorial on this subject that was explained so clearly and by someone so patient, and I’d definitely recommend these to anyone who wants to dip a toe into the confusing world of this jQuery we’ve been hearing so much about.
