[MUSIC]

Hi everybody, I'm Nick Pettit.

>> And I'm Jason Seifer

>> And you're watching a very special live workshop where

we are going to be answering your questions by phone.

So if you call 407-545-swag >> 7924.

Yes, so 4 0 7 5 4 5.

>> 7 9 2 4.

>> Then you will get us on Skype, and

we will answer your questions about web design, web development.

>> Life.

>> Hair products and so much more.

>> Yeah.

>> So, >> Personal relationships.

>> Relationship advice, yeah.

>> Basically, you know, whatever you want.

It's kinda like, it's kinda like a little fireside chat.

>> Well, hi everybody.

I'm Nick [UNKNOWN].

I'm Jason.

[MUSIC]

>> Hello, you've got The Tree house Show with Jason and Nick.

How can I help you?

>> hi.

I was just, dialing [INAUDIBLE], of, the life, workshop.

>> Yeah.

>> Yep.

>> Yeah.

What can we help you with?

>> no.

I'm just, [INAUDIBLE] to see if I can [INAUDIBLE]

get some kind of video live stream directly, or.

Yeah, no.

We're, we're, we're live.

You're live on the air right now.

Do you have any questions about anything?

You know, life, web design, web development.

>> Hair products.

>> Yeah, whatever.

>> Oh, well, now that you I'm like well yeah, basically.

And it's well, I'm just wondering if if you're

willing to work on Drupal some time down the road.

Or Wordpress >> Yeah, Google and Wordpress.

Got it.

>> Drupal and Wordpress.

>> Oh, Drupal and Wordpress, sorry about that.

You're trying to learn Drupal and Wordpress.

>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Yeah, well we have courses on WordPress

at teamtreehouse.com which I recommend going to right now and subscribing.

>> [LAUGH]

>> Right, yeah, I have I have done that before.

>> Okay, you I mean you are already off to a great start.

How how is everything with you?

>> Well I'm brushing up my skills.

>> Yeah, you're working on your skills.

That's a good start.

Keep working on them.

Refine them.

Hone them.

>> Lag with the video and the conversation on the phone is lagging.

>> Oh, no, concentrate on the phone.

I mean maybe mute your computer's video and

audio so that you can concentrate on the phone.

Listen to the phone.

The phone is what gives you you know, instructions.

>> That's a good pro tip.

>> Listen listen to my voice.

>> Right that's right.

>> Well basically I have been working on the HP and design and

And WordPress I haven't worked before.

But it's an excellent platform.

>> WordPress is an excellent platform.

Lots of themes, lots of plug ins.

You can make, you know, wonderful websites.

>> Mm-hm.

>> Right.

Right.

Yeah, definitely.

>> In fact, I believe we just recently launched

a course on local WordPress development at at Treehouse.

>> Yeah, that's right.

I haven't tried it out.

But it looks looks very good.

Just because I've been doing other topics like HTML, CSS.

>> Very, very good.

PHP.

But yeah, but I, I think it's a, an excellent platform.

[UNKNOWN] And I was just wondering if PHP

has or Treehouse has this Nice

[INAUDIBLE] layouts on, other platforms, as far as WordPress.

Which, I, I haven't worked that much on Wordpress.

But I think [INAUDIBLE].

>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Yeah.

We, we ha-, we have wonderful courses on a variety of topics.

You can learn HTML, CSS.

Design, business, mobile from IOS to Android development and, and so much more.

So if if you don't have any other

questions, just wanna thank you very much for calling.

>> Oh, [UNKNOWN] thank you for taking my call.

[UNKNOWN]

>> Yeah, you're live, we're all live, we're all in this together.

>> We're living this right now.

>> Living this right now.

Alright, have a good one.

Thanks.

>> Bye.

>> All right.

Well, if you're just joining us, we are doing a

very special workshop today where we are taking your calls live.

>> Live.

You can message us at four-oh-seven-five-four-five swag.

>> Or that's four oh seven-five-four-five-seven-nine-two-four.

>> Right.

>> Right.

>> That is a skype number I bought today.

And we will take your calls live and answer any

questions that you might have about web design, web development or

>> Anything, pretty much anything

>> Like, hair products, et cetera.

We had to stop and start the stream there briefly but I think we're good now.

>> Ask some questions There in our phone call.

>> Oh, we have, we have questions there in our phone calls.

Okay, go ahead.

>> Okay.

>> Go ahead, caller.

>> Yeah.

We're good.

>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay

>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Yeah.

>> Yes.

>> Yeah, okay.

We're getting these questions slightly delayed, sort of live.

It's kind of live.

>> Yeah, kind of live.

I, I'm, it was it was worth the wait.

Molluck asks which is good to start app development, IOS or Android first?

>> Well I've done a little bit of iOS development at

this point and, I really like iOS a lot, although android

has gotten to be a much more mature platform in the

past couple years and it's Pretty good now, from what I understand.

I haven't done any android development personally, but I hear it's pretty good.

Ultimately, you're gonna need to support both platforms, really.

>> Okay.

>> I mean, if you're developing an app, like, let's

say you have a web app like Treehouse, for example, and

you released, you know, An iOS app, you probably want to

release an Android app as well, a companion app, you know?

So if you're doing an app for mobile,

you're gonna wanna target both platforms, so, yeah.

I'd, I'd just say learn both, really.

One isn't necessarily better than the other or

easier to learn than the other, they're just Different.

>> Yeah, and start with whichever one you want to.

I mean, you're not gonna make a mistake

starting with the iOS platform or the Android platform.

If your potential target audience has more customers on one platform.

You know, maybe Android is the way to go if they have more customers.

Or, if you wanna target certain features That

may be IOS locks down, start with Android.

Or you know if you, if you really like IOS start with that.

We cant really tell you which ones a better platform to start because

kinda need to know more about the project, the audience and things like that.

Next up Grace asks what language would you recommend for a mobile game?

>> So I've been doing a little bit of game development on the side and,

>> He's trying to kick the habit, but,

>> Yeah.

Can't stop.

I played so many video games that I'm just laying my own train tracks now.

Basically there's a couple of different options with building mobile games.

>> That should be your Twitter bio.

>> [LAUGH] You could.

You could go with an HTML 5 game, that's kind of a A more convoluted

but interesting route, because it involves a number of different technologies.

It's gonna be a lot of JavaScript.

And you know, you're gonna have some technical hurdles there.

If you want to go for maximum performance,

it's probably best to code directly on those platforms.

So you would code in Objective C, on iOS and you would code in JAVA on Android.

However, there are some other options, for example, if you use the Unity Game Engine,

you can actually compile to, a multitude of different platforms including iOS

and Android I think several other game engines including the Unreal Engine

supports that as well, so you can go ahead and launch to those different platforms.

And it varies in difficulty but the idea in a lot

of these crossed platform engines is that you build the code.

Once and then you just make small tweaks for

each platform to kinda make it work across different devices.

If your, if you've never built a mobile game

before I would actually recommend starting with Just one particular

platform, probably iOS in this case because they actually just

released a game engine with iOS 7 called Sprite Kit.

And in Sprite Kit, you can make simple 2D games, and it

manages a lot of the complexity of the game engine for you.

So it's it's pretty good.

And that way, you'll actually get experience directly on the platform.

So if you wanna go to a cross-platform solution You'll know

about the nuances of each platform, a little bit more, so-

>> So it's, it's really interesting that so many of those game

engines were released lately for a multitude of people to develop on.

Unity has always had basically a consumer or indie level version for a relatively

low subscription fee, and then, we were

talking recently about how Unreal came out.

okay, it looks like we have another, another live caller.

We're gonna answer this Hello, you got the,

you've got Treehouse live with Nick and Jason.

How can we help you?

>> There, there's no way this is live right now.

>> This, this is 100% live, right now.

What's your name?

>> It's totally real.

>> Larry.

>> Larry.

Nice to meet you, Larry.

>> What's up Larry?

>> I was just wondering what was going

on with Jason's little hair, hair thing Right here?

This?

>> Yeah, I think I've got a little bit of a delay, but ah-

>> Okay.

Are you talking about the little, little Jheri curl that's like right in the front?

>> Yeah, the the Jheri curl.

>> dude, all the time.

I, I have no control over this.

My hair is actually frighteningly wavy.

it's, it's very supple.

And I, I require a lot of products.

To, to get this, even to this managable state.

It.

>> He's, he's very sensitive about it.

>> Yeah, it's, it's completely unmanageable, normally.

However, it does make me feel very

powerful when I'm wearing my superman onesie.

>> [LAUGH] It,

it's looking much better now.

>> Thank you.

Thank you Larry.

That, right here.

That's, that's where I feel that.

>> Well you, you guys are doing a great job, I just wanted to.

>> You're, you're doing a great job, Larry.

And I hope you look in the mirror every day

and tell yourself that at least six times over and over.

>> Daily affirmations.

>> I will.

>> Okay, thanks for calling Larry.

>> Thanks Larry.

>> Thank you.

>> Bye.

I like Larry.

>> Hm, yeah.

Wonder what Larry's doing right now.

>> Probably in disbelief that he was able to get us on the show.

>> Yep.

I think that's why nobody had called.

[LAUGH] I think they don't believe that we're actually doing this right now.

In fact we don't either.

>> Yeah.

>> Anyway I think we had a couple of more text questions.

>> Yeah.

>> We can answer.

Till we get another caller.

>> Andrew well wait we got another caller.

>> Hey, hey look at this.

>> You've got the tree house live show with Jason and Nick.

What's going on?

>> Hey guys, how's it going?

>> Hey.

It's great.

How's it going with you?

>> I'm doing really well.

Thanks for.

>> What's your name?

>> My name's Matt.

>> Matt.

What's going on Matt?

>> So, Thanks for taking my call.

I got a question for you guys.

>> Okay.

>> I've been doing [UNKNOWN] for about a year and

I'm feeling, you know, pretty good with the basic coding stuff.

I'm working on a website that has a lot of instructional videos.

>> Right.

>> And I've noticed that most the browsers

will support MP4 video but Mozilla doesn't, so

I'm just trying to find a workaround or

player that might be the same across all platforms.

I've noticed that, different, movie formats from

Mozilla can be a lot lower quality.

>> Okay.

>> I just wondered if you guys had any input.

>> Well, there are definitely different options

that you have with something like that.

I know some of them are gonna be more paid products.

Something that I know people use a lot is JW player.

They're not sponsoring the show but they do have different versions where you can

either start with HTML5 up front, which is gonna use the native browser format.

And then it will also fall back to

a Flash movie for older browsers or unsupported versions.

>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Off hands, I don't know of Any, what do

we use, there's one we use on treehouse, I think it's mejs, or something like that?

>> Yeah, that's what I was trying to

figure out, I can't remember what we actually use

>> Yeah, it's, that's a great product though,

yeah, media element js, check that one out too.

>> Media Element js?

Yeah, and you can get to that at mediaelementjs.com.

>> Or mediaelementjs.com, I think that's how it's read, Jason.

>> Yeah, might be.

So it's got, you know, a lot, it's got

different plugins and for [UNKNOWN] HTML5 video and audio.

That's something that at this point in time, it's

probably best to let an external library handle for you.

Yeah, okay.

I've noticed, too.

[INAUDIBLE] ask as another quick follow up question...

>> Sure.

>> Cuz it might be solved in one of those players.

But I noticed when a Media Query takes place.

If the video is on automatic, like, autoplay.

And you wanna not have it display on the smaller screen.

That the video keep playing, even though the, you can't see it.

And there is no options in the CSS.

And there's all the options a natural the media.

And actual play options, so my guess is one of

these will probably have more control over that type of stuff.

>> More than likely, yeah.

I can't say for sure.

I've never encountered that specific issue.

Cool.

Well thanks for taking my call guys.

Appreciate it.

I'll check those out.

>> Thanks so much for calling.

>> Yeah.

Appreciate it.

Thanks guys.

>> Cheers.

Thanks.

>> That was that was nice.

>> Uh-huh, yeah.

>> Okay James asks what jam would you recommend for multi-level access.

Now this is gonna be a Ruby and Rails question

and the jam that I would recommend is called pundit.

You can check that out on Get [INAUDIBLE].

See if I can pull up a link here.

That one has recently seen a little bit more development.

This is based on I think an older plug

in, and it gives you a really nice policy framework.

I think we can go ahead and cut to This tab if you want to, okay, so pundit

cherm is focussed around the idea of policy classes

where you can actually write the different policies and code.

So, if you look at this class that is a

post policy right here, You set the user and the posts.

And then you can define the abilities and code right in the class.

Then you go through and you can check this in the controller.

>> [SOUND] Okay, looks like we got another call.

Gonna answer that.

Hello, you've got the Treehouse Show with Jason and Nick.

We're live.

Hey guys.

>> Hey, how's it going?

What's your name?

>> My name's Rick.

>> Hi, Rick.

>> Hi, Rick.

>> So I got a question with regards to gamifying things.

What is your biggest lesson about achievements and gamifying that's come out

of that whole push that you guys did for the million points.

>> Mm-hm.

I'm wondering, you know, what's, what lessons did you learn,

and what did it take to really make it work?

>> People will do anything for internet points.

[LAUGH]

>> That's the, the short version, certainly.

>> Yeah, well, the long version is that we've, we've learned

quite a few things from the whole point system with Treehouse.

One of the major things that we learned is you probably never really want

to take points away from people because

that's really discouraging and they earned them.

Now this might not seem to bad up front you know,

like hey what's, in what sort of situation would somebody lose points.

Well at least in the scenario of Treehouse We have different tracks, right, now

with a platform that's always evolving such

as Ruby on Rails with different versions.

You know, eventually, we need to update content on the site.

So you go through a course, you earn a certain number of points.

And then, what happens if we have to update that, you know?

We move some videos, move some stages around.

>> Right.

We don't wanna take those points away just because we updated the material.

And, another thing that we have where we

could take points away is our forum, you know.

People can up-vote and down-vote, different answers and if somebody got a

ton of down-votes, we don't wanna discourage them by taking away points.

We kinda just wanna award points for.

>> Yeah.

>> The up-votes.

>> It's not Reddit.

Yeah, exactly.

So in terms of gamification though, from a larger standpoint, I actually wrote

a a blog about this over on the Treehouse blog, I'll try to see if I can find that.

But let's see.

There we go, yeah it's called Hit the Reset Button on

Gamification and I have it up on [UNKNOWN] Screen right now.

One of the things to keep in mind about games in

general is that it's really just a series of interesting choices.

You want your web app, even though it's not a

video game, to react to the choices that somebody makes.

So if they go for You know, good form answers, or if they go for

maybe, you know, some sort of course, you want the app to react somehow to that.

But does that kind of answer your question?

>> Very much so, thank you guys.

>> Yeah.

>> You're welcome.

>> Thanks so much.

>> Okay, I'll call again in about ten minutes.

>> Alright, we'll ,we'll talk to you then.

>> We'll be ready.

>> Yeah.

[INAUDIBLE] >> Hey.

>> Hey.

>> Alright we we we missed a call due to call waiting on on that last, on that

last call we don't have a queue or anything

like that this is a pretty bare bones system.

>> Just goin' with Skype here.

>> Yeah, so so go ahead, go ahead and call back you know, if if you wanna.

Let's see did we miss any questions in the meantime?

Svetlana asks what programming language is better to start with, Php or Ruby?

>> Well, obviously, it's gonna be Ruby,

right, cuz, cuz you're a Ruby programmer, right?

Just, I don't wanna upset your feelings.

>> Yeah, well it's a complicated question, because Treehouse teaches both.

>> Right.

>> but, really, whatever you wanna start with.

If there's something that, you wanna build and you see

a project in PHP that looks good, start with that.

Wanna start with Ruby?

Start with that.

I don't have a, a good answer for you.

They're both great languages and you should learn both.

>> I will say that when I was first

getting started, Ruby on Rails wasn't really established yet.

It wasn't a thing.

It was still, you know, very Small

community, and just getting its, its start.

And I first learned how to do backend web development using PHP, and I

thought that was actually a, kinda wonderful

experience, because it was very similar to the.

Instant gratification that you get with something like HTML

or CSS where once you have a php server running

you can just type in some php code directly into

a php file and see the result on the screen.

If you want to print out a variable or like a

really classic example is changing the copyright date at the bottom.

>> Right.

>> Of a webpage where you Just print out, you know, the current year,

and that way you don't have to update your html files when the year changes.

So I thought that was kind of a nice introduction to back end programming.

' Cause PHP is very robust and powerful.

You can take it way further than that, obviously, there's lots

of great frameworks, but I then started using Ruby On Rails.

I just found it to be a lot a lot cleaner, it made a lot more sense

to me personally but, I almost think at

this point it's kind of a personal preference thing.

Both languages are pretty mature and really good frameworks around them.

>> Yeah learn both but start with Ruby.

Alright looks like we got another call coming in.

You've got the tree house live with Jason and Nick, what can we do for you?

>> Yeah, hi Jason, hi Nick, my name is

Scott and I'm calling from Scotland from the UK.

>> Scott from Scotland >> That's easy to remember.

Yeah Scott from Scotland So, how, how are you doing?

>> I am doing ok.

>> Doing well, how are you?

>> Hanging in there.

>> Yeah yeah yeah I'm great, great.

[INAUDIBLE]

>> Yeah, definitely I agree.

>> Also [INAUDIBLE]

[INAUDIBLE]

>> Well I, I, I recommend uh,checking out Teentreehouse.com for her.

>> I mean, Treehouse is a great way to start.

Are you on Treehouse with her?

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Alright I think we're having some

technical difficulties with this call so I'm very

sorry that, sorry that i'm going to appear rude and click the hang up button.

>> Oh, nope, nope, nope hold on.

>> Op

>> Oh wait and you're back, and you're back, this things on.

Hello.

This is, it's a live show guys.

>> So did you have a question for us?

Yeah I was [UNKNOWN] help me just [UNKNOWN]

>> Mm-hm.

>> [UNKNOWN] a bit I can give her a shout out, her name's Kayla.

>> Well we'd like to give a shoutout to Kayla.

We're gon, we're gonna do that again in a little bit though.

[LAUGH] So that, so that you'll see it.

How about that?

>> Cool.

Thanks [UNKNOWN]

>> All right, thanks so much for calling, Scott from Scotland.

>> No problem.

Thanks, guys, thank you.

>> See you later.

>> Bye.

[SOUND] >> That was lovely.

>> That was lovely.

>> I enjoyed that quite a lot.

>> Alright, Scott asks, what programming language was teentreehouse.com written in?

That was written in an early version of BASIC,

and then recently ported over to Ruby on Rails.

>> Thank goodness for that.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah it was really tough.

>> It was a little faster, though, when we had the BASIC version running.

>> Yeah, it was pretty optimized.

We needed so many fewer servers.

No teamtreehouse.com is written in a mixture of ruby on

rails, no JS, basically all the cool programming languages you hear about.

They're all integrated in some way or another into Treehouse.

>> Our blog runs on WordPress, which of course

is built in PHP, so there is yet another language.

We, we use a lot of different languages to create Treehouse.

Basically we just try to use the best tool for the job, really.

>> Right.

You know, whatever it is that we're trying to accomplish, we do that.

We have, we have, an iPad app out.

Of course, that's written in objective C, for iOS, so be sure and check that out.

But that's yet another language that we use.

So it's really, a mixture of things.

>> Yeah.

Internal projects we have written in various languages.

It's pretty much whatever.

Is the best tool for the job.

Alright this is a question for Nick.

Grace asks what do you guys think about Adobe Dreamweaver for coding websites?

>> so, I'll be honest.

I started out making websites when I

was eleven years old using Microsoft Front Page.

>> [LAUGH] I'm so judging you right now.

>> I dragged out the table tool and just dragged out a table, and I realized

That was a really great way for me to lay out text and images on a web page.

Of course, that's considered bad practice now and I

don't think Microsoft Frontpage even is a thing anymore.

Who knows, maybe it is.

I, I don't know.

Google it.

But but then I graduated to Dreamweaver, so It was like a, a half step up.

But not really.

Generally those kinds of wissy wig applications by,

are kind of looked down upon by professional developers.

A lot of people have very strong preferences for text editors.

Like Vim or Sublime.

Adam, or, of course, work spaces from Treehouse.

>> Mm.

>> so.

The reason for that, is, a lot of those [UNKNOWN] or what you see is what you

get programs will write a lot of code for you that's, may or may not be good code.

And sometimes it can be difficult to kind of modify that for your own purposes.

So generally I don't see it used professionally much at all actually.

>> Me neither.

I haven't seen Dreamweaver used in, in quite some time.

I would say.

To learn to code websites by hand.

And then if you like Dreamweaver after that, continue to use it.

Or maybe play around with it at first just to

get something up and running until you get more power.

>> Yeah.

>> Once again this is a, live, call in show.

If you'd like to talk to us, you can call 407-545-SWAG.

Once again, that's 407 545-7924, if you'd like to talk to Nick and myself, live.

>> It is April Fool's day, but we will really pick up.

>> At some point.

>> Mm.

>> Zachary asks, what factors do you consider

when choosing a back end for your web application?

Really, I think about what the application needs

to do, and I think about you know what

frameworks are going to allow me to do

that, so you know that's just something really simple.

I might use a very bare bones rubric framework or maybe just do

it in straight up PHP or whatever again cuz it's just that instant gratification.

But if it's something more robust, yeah, you might go with Ruby on Rails or

you might go with no JS, it really depends on what you need to do.

>> Yeah, the functionality of the application is what's really

gonna drive your decision when choosing a back end framework.

No JS example, if you need to do some real time communications between.

The client and the server no JS might be the right choice.

Regular old crud app.

You know, create, read, update, destroy.

That's a great fit for rails application.

But an even bigger thing to consider is what

is right for a team you will be working with.

>> That's a good point.

>> If you have a large application that's already written in PHP,

Maybe choosing Ruby on Rails to rewrite it is not the best idea.

And the same goes for vice versa.

So.

>> In fact, that was the case at Facebook, they started writing

Facebook in PHP and they used PHP for a long time and

at that point, you know, they had so many human resources invested

into PHP that It would be impossible for them to switch languages.

So what they did was they actually rewrote PHP and made their own

languages, and their own frameworks so that

it would work with their existing team.

Which is a, kind of a crazy endeavor, but Facebook is

a big enough company that they could do something like that.

>> Yeah, that, So really pick the right tool for the job.

>> Mm-hm.

>> Matt Spill asks, did Nick just say wussy wig?

I thought it was pronounced, wizzy wig.

Matt spill is wrong.

He also has no forum on which to respond to that.

>> Omar asks, how does Javascript server side rendering work?

I know it's kind of stupid, but.

Is there any way that we can use Server Side with JQuery?

>> So Java Script server side rendering is an interesting

topic there not completely sure what, Omar means in this context.

But for server side rendering generally what that means is,

the server is going to render the HTML that it

is sending back to the browser rtather than sending back

an object, such as, JSON data to be rendered client-side.

So, you know, let's say you are generating an

unordered list, with the host of the Treehouse show.

The server responds with Nick and Jason.

If you're using a client side library, it's going

to generate the unordered list and then a list item.

Using the json that comes back with our names, it's

gonna go through, generate domain elements in the client web browser.

If you do this server side, that works gonna be done on the server.

Then the rendered HTML will be pushed to the client.

Now, you can use jQuery in

some node.js applications, there's definitely plugins available,

pretty sure there are grunt and [UNKNOWN] libraries for getting all of that working.

so, yeah, generally, you know, it depends

on the application, client side rendering's gonna be.

Kind of the preferred method these days.

>> Mmm-hm, yeah it's gonna be pretty challenging, otherwise.

>> Yeah, unless you use rails, their doing a lot of server side stuff these days.

>> Shameless plug.

>> Yeah.

Alex asks, typical college grads would use an internship to get their.

"Foot in the door" for a job.

After using Treehouse, would you recommend internships, or is it

better to look for jobs or work on personal projects?

<< Ooh, that's a.

<< Yes.

<< Yes to all.

<< All of the above.

Do all of that.

<< That's, that's a really good, question.

So, right now, it's a hotly debated topic, right?

Should you go to college?

Or, should you, just try to educate yourself, either by, trying to do client

work using a service like Treehouse, etcerera

and just [NOISE] jump into the industry immediately?

>> Oh, I missed.

We just missed a call.

>> Uh-oh.

>> I'ma try calling back.

>> We will, we will get back to that question.

>> Thank you for calling the city of [UNKNOWN].

Please say the first and last name of

the person, department, or service you wish to reach.

You can also enter an extension number if known.

To speak with a customer service representative, say service.

This is Nick and Jason from the Treehouse Live show.

>> I didn't get that.

>> Nick and Jason from the Treehouse Live show.

>> Sorry.

I'm not sure I understood what you said.

>> We're just talking, we're talking about-

>> Your call is being transferred to the operator for assistance.

>> Okay.

>> Okay I think that was that was a wrong number.

>> Yeah.

Didn't work out.

Kinda sad.

But anyway yeah, it's a highly debated topic should you go to college or not?

I would actually err on the side of of not going to

college if you want to get a job in web design development.

If you just want to do freelance immediately go ahead and jump right into

it, especially if you already have some skills in that area if you've, you know.

Already built up some experience.

>> The more experience you have, the better off you'll be at

the end of the day when you really do start applying for jobs.

>> Exactly.

A lot of companies do pay attention to college degrees

and that's still a value that's very important to them.

A lot of other companies, though, don't really hold that in high esteem.

At all.

And, they really look at experience above all else.

So, for example, if you're applying to a design or development position at

Treehouse, you know we're gonna wanna look

at your portfolio, code you've written etc.

And actually see what you can do right

now regardless of how you gleaned that experience.

Once again, this is a live call in show.

Oh, here, here we are!

>> Here we go.

>> Hi.

You've got Nick and Jason from, from Treehouse.

We're talking to you live.

>> Hi, guys.

>> Hey.

>> How's it going?

>> It's Rick.

>> Hey, Rick.

How are you?

>> Hey, Rick.

>> We missed you.

>> Yeah.

I missed you too.

We're do you guys see things developing as far as mobile platforms and

Teaching, you know, MOOC kind of things with videos in third world countries.

>> Well, as they get more access to

technology, they will have more access to Treehouse.

>> Right.

I mean, that's, that's an interesting question.

I can't really speak to, the latter portion of your question, about.

It's spreading to third world countries.

But what I will say is that, you know, we want to change the world.

At Trials, we want to spread Trials as much as possible.

And, you know, right now, we're an English only site but,

obviously, we'd want to Try to expand that at some point in the future.

We don't have anything to announce at this time.

But you know, we want to get it in as many places as we can, so that's something that

we'll have to address at some point and it's probably

something that every Online education outlet we'll have to address.

There's gonna be various strategies to do that.

Again, I can't speak specifically for Treehouse.

But, you know?

It's gonna spread in a number of different ways.

On, you, you mentioned mobile devices.

I mean, that's probably a really great route to go.

Because, Often in a lot of countries that's a more popular

consumption device then an actual computer so paying attention to mobile will be.

Pretty important as a piece of that, but does that kind

of answer your question or is that kind of a non answer?

>> Well I, I think you kinda highlighted

it, but i'm wondering you know, what kind of

things are you guys starting to put into

place to kind of roll over into that model.

We're not really allowed to comment

on future developments for Treehouse, unfortunately.

>> There's nothing concrete at this time, anyway.

I mean, it's just something that we're talking about internally and

eventually, you know, we'd love to make it happen but Yeah.

Nothing to say right now.

>> So you haven't done anything in the past

in order to try and, and target the platform?

>> Not specifically, no.

>> We target as many platforms as we can.

>> That's fair.

>> Alright, thank so much for calling, Rick.

>> Thanks guys.

>> Bye.

>> Later.

Alright, once again we are live and you can call us at 407-545-7924.

>> That's 407-5, what was the middle one?

>> 5, 545.

>> 407-545-SWAG.

>> Swag.

Jinx

>> [LAUGHS] Rob asks, what's your preferred

way of uploading files to a server?

Through Sublime, doing it manually with FileZilla, etc.

?

>> First of all, I did not know that

you could do that directly through Sublime, but That's interesting.

I assume that there's a plugin or something, or maybe it's built in?

>> Sublime Text has just a ton of plugins.

>> Sure.

>> I prefer to upload files using some sort of secure copy mechanism.

generally, that'll be done through SSH.

>> Mm-hm.

>> FTP is pretty insecure because you

can see anything that's transmitted, through each server.

With something that is secure, you know SFTP, SCP, it's encrypted end to end.

So if you have any sensitive information it won't be leaked in transit.

>> If I'm just doing like a quick static HTML CSS website.

All just use SFTP and use some sorta client, like, FileZilla, or Cyberdock.

Something that nature.

>> Yeah, I like Transmit.

>> Yeah, Transmit is good as well.

>> Transmit's a good one, and they're not sponsoring the show, just FYI.

Grace asks, is Adobe Flash an obsolete choice for making mobile games these days.

>> Yes, because I don't know of any mobile platform that actually runs Flash.

Maybe Android does, I don't know, I don't think it does though.

>> Don't hold me to this but I think Newer versions of Flash might be able to

export to the iPhone, but I'm not sure, I

haven't looked at Flash in a really long time.

And when I say Flash, I mean Adobe Flash, not, the DC superhero, the Flash.

>> It's good to make that distinction.

>> Yeah, Barry Allen Flash obviously, not Wally West.

>> People could get confused.

Zachary says, a lot of people say responsive web design.

Isn't the end all of multi display development.

If not responsive development then what?

Well this is an ongoing debate on the internet, You

could just make a responsive website that is gonna work.

On a multitude of different resolutions, so it will work on,

you know, a mobile phone, a tablet, desktop, and so on.

But, there, there's this other alternative, which is

making separate websites for each one of those platforms.

So, which should you do?

Generally, I'm gonna err on the side

of response web design, just because it's easier.

You have one code base to maintain.

And it's really just simpler, it's less to worry about.

It' kind of a little bit complex upfront to learn some of the nuances, but when

you break it down, it's actually quite simple, especially after you learn it.

It's easy to do it anytime you're building a new site.

But-

>> Also, the, the variance is kinda where we started With the whole.

>> Yeah.

>> Multi display.

>> Mm-hm.

>> Output.

So people would make different versions for their phones.

I don't know if you've ever seen any

websites recently that, when the iPhone first came

out, in like 2007, they were designed to

look like the iPhone interface at the time.

You can still see some of 'em these days.

And that would be an example of making a site that uses

a different version for the main Desktop site and a mobile version.

>> Yeah.

It's, I mean, it's an interesting strategy, but

you're actually seeing that less and less these days.

A lot of big name website that did have

separate desktop and mobile sites, are actually just going responsive.

And just doing away with their, their mobile sites.

You have to have A very, very specific

use case where your mobile site truly has different

functionality than your desktop website, but it's really

hard to think of any exam, examples of that.

I mean, it's it's kind of an unusual case.

>> Yeah, also I think, you know, what we're gonna see is

not something, oh, we're gonna develop

this way, instead of doing it responsively.

I think what we'll see is the techniques for

responsive design are going to evolve as the web evolves.

>> Mm-hm.

>> I mean we've already go situations today where we're

loading different versions of images depending on what device you're on.

You know, different versions of the HTML 5 spec.

>> Mm-hm.

>> Are there specifically for that reason.

So we're getting new elements all the time for

responsive development since we are in a multi-device world.

Alright, so our next question comes from Dale, and Dale says I

am learning css and html and I am cruising through the WordPress courses.

Is there a recommendation for a course that eventually

links how developers can intertwine WordPress with html css.

In PHP.

There probably already is a course like that.

<< I'm sure there is.

<< On Treehouse, we have a lot of

WordPress courses, so if you, just go onto teamtreehouse.com,

and hit the library, you can look in the

WordPress category and see all of our WordPress categories.

I think Jason is.

Tempting to pull up right now.

>> Don't remember my password.

>> Uh-oh.

>> Nick, NickPetit12345 isn't working for me.

>> Okay, let me try it on mine then.

>> My usual password.

Jason so yeah if you just go into our library here and you click on Wordpress

you can see all of our Wordpress courses

we teach Wordpress admin settings, we talk about Buddypress.

There's how to build great Wordpress.com websites.

So if you don't want to do it you know, using WordPress.org and their

open source platform, you can just jump onto WordPress.com and have it hosted.

Right here, building a WordPress theme with foundation five is

probably, More so, the kinda thing that you're looking for.

So, yeah, whether you wanna customize WordPress

using PHP or you wanna get into template

design with the HTML and CSS there's

certainly a lot of different stuff On Treehouse.

Here's how to build a Wordpress theme and so on.

A lot of Wordpress courses, wow.

>> Yeah.

>> And we're adding more all the time.

>> Jacob asks, when should I learn sass?

What CSS slash HTML level should I be at before taking it on?

>> Really sass is pretty useful Almost immediately after you learned CSS.

I do still recommend learning CSS first, before jumping straight into sass.

A lot of people will look at sass, and say, oh, I"m just going

to be writing that anyway, I should just learn SAS, Why bother with CSS?

Or same with JavaScript and jQuery.

People oftentimes will think, I should just learn jQuery.

We're gonna get back to that question.

>> Got another call.

>> Got another call.

>> This is the Treehouse live.

Live show with Jason and Nick.

What's going on?

>> Hey.

What collaboration tools do you recommend?

>> Oh boy, there's tons of collaboration tools.

For source control I recommend Git.

For communication, we use HipChat in the company, as well as custom software.

Project management, lots of people use Basecamp.

>> Mm-hm.

>> For sharing code, GitHub, that's a, that's a pretty popular one.

>> In the past, we've used things like Asana and Trello for task management.

Both were pretty good.

I, I liked both of 'em a lot.

They, they had their merits.

We use all sorts of stuff to collaborate and really it just

comes down to whatever it is that we're trying to collaborate on.

These days we've gotten kind of such a specific structure to

our company that we actually have custom tools just for that.

But yeah.

That's, that's kinda a smattering of different stuff.

Does that kinda answer your question?

>> Yeah, some of it.

What about for the wire framing, design revisions kind

of passing stuff back and forth with marked up.

>> So I like to use Balsamic mock ups, >> Yeah, Balsamic is wonderful.

>> Only because I've been using it since like forever.

I, I really like Balsamic a lot.

There's also Omnigrapple, I know a lot of people use that

to wire frame, there's there's a bunch of them out there, but

to pass them back and forth at treehouse, we started out using drop

box, to make interactive wire frames We've been using envision app.

And I think there's a new one out that does something

similar to that I can't think of, of the name of it.

But we've been using invasion app and basically you can take an array of screen

shots and kinda highlight different portions of

the screenshots sot it should be a button.

Or a drop down menu and so on, and then you can link to other

screen shots to kind of make a,

a pseudo interactive mock-up, and that's pretty cool.

But since using Drop Box, we've actually, I

think, switched everything over to Google drive, and I,

I think we're using that these days to collaborate,

and that's another tool that we use a lot.

We use Google docs, Google spreadsheets, and all of

those Google tools to kinda Collaborate in the company.

>> And not really a collaboration thing, but there's a OS Ten app that I

really like called Monosnap, which let's you

take screen shots really easily and annotate images.

It's kinda like Skitch, if you remember that.

But, that program became pretty useless after Evernote took it over.

So, I, I switched to Monosnap.

>> What about brainstorming?

>> We tend to not do much of that here.

We basically just start working immediately.

>> We don't think at all.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> No.

Just kidding.

We, I don't have any good brainstorming apps.

>> Yeah, I don't actually have any,

Apps that I use for brainstorming, specifically.

Usually for me that's just pen and paper.

I mean, we'll chat a lot on Hip Chat, just because of the immediacy of

the medium, or if we need to hash out an idea, we'll kind of talk over

>> Google hangouts.

>> Yeah, Google hangouts, we've actually started using Hip

Chat's video chat feature which was just released pretty recently,

and that's kinda interesting, but Yeah, for brainstorming, you

know, it's again, kind of a, a mixture of things.

No specific app that we use.

Does that kind of answer your question?

>> Absolutely.

>> Cool.

>> Alright, cool.

Thanks a lot Rick.

[NOISE] Alright, we also wanted to give a shout out to Kayla.

>> Mm-hm.

>> How you doing, Kayla?

Alright.

Salvatore says I'm thinking of switching careers

into web design, development or user experience design.

Any advice on preparing a portfolio?

>> yeah, I think you know it's important

to pare down your portfolio as much as possible.

There's a big temptation to put everything you've ever done in your portfolio.

But that's almost always a mistake, you wanna really present your best work.

And you know, that could be maybe like four or five items or maybe just like

three really good case studies where you say,

you know, for this company They had these

needs and you know, here's the initial sketches

I started out with, here's the final product

and you know, here's their testimonial with it

and you put together like a nice case study.

So if you don't have a whole lot of work to present, that could be a good way to

kind of emphasize how much detail and work you put into each individual project.

So You know, I, I think, with portfolios

the, the biggest rule is that less is more,

and you want to present your best work

above all else, so go for quality over quantity.

>> That is great advice.

I don't have anything to add to that.

Cause Nick you nailed it.

>> Thank you Jason.

>> So that is that's the last question that we have for today.

Thanks everybody for calling in.

I'd like you know, if you don't already watch the tree house show.

I recommend checking today's episode.

We have some very fascinating, hard hitting stories in that episode.

>> You could check out our YouTube channel at Youtube.com/gotreehouse.

And just look for the Treehouse Show.

We're also on iTunes, again, you can just search for the Treehouse Show.

>> Yeah, and leave us, leave us a, a rating, if you are so inclined.

Nick, who are you on Twitter?

>> I am @nickrp >> And I am @jseifer.

We wanna thank everybody for tuning in to this

live stream, and we will see you next time.