Treehouse Quick Tips

The real value of events you attend is in the people you meet and connections you make. In this Treehouse Quick Tip, author and blogger C.C. Chapman shares his strategies for successful networking and standing out from the crowd.

Found a photograph online that you'd like to use on your site, but not sure where it came from or who took it? Or are you a photographer who wants to know where your work is being posted? In this Treehouse Quick Tip, we'll learn how to do a reverse image search using Google Images and TinEye.

In version control, best practice is to commit your work in discrete chunks. Unfortunately, sometimes that's easier said than done when real life gets in the way. In this Treehouse Quick Tip, we'll learn how to overcome this hurdle with Git's stash command.

Many of you are already looking for the next opportunity to work on a freelance project or to get hired by a company. In this Treehouse Quick Tip, Dan Gorgone explains the importance of preparing detailed portfolios and researching prospective clients and companies so you can make a compelling case for yourself as the best candidate for a job or project.

It's tough to find a site on the web today that doesn't include Facebook, Twitter, and other social media logos in its design. You probably want to include them on your own site, but where do you find the actual icons? And are there rules for how to use them? In this Treehouse Quick Tip, Chris walks you through how to not only find the most up to date social media logos, but how to follow each site's brand guidelines.

Tests are small, automated Ruby programs that automatically test different parts of your applications. After writing some tests, you can run them using the "rake" command line application. Treehouse Ruby teacher Jason shows you how to run tests in this Quick Tip.

A Ruby gem is a library you can use in your Ruby applications. It's really easy to install a gem. You just need to know the name of the gem you want to install. In this Treehouse Quick Tip, Ruby teacher Jason shows you how to install the Bundler gem.

Many people assume that the time to test your website is right before it launches. Having a plan in place, from the beginning, to test your website from a user's perspective will make your work so much easier when it's time to go live. Treehouse business teacher Dan explains the ins and outs of website testing in this Treehouse Quick Tip.

Are you starting a new business and wondering what your financing options are? Treehouse Business teacher Pasan explains the various kinds of business financing available to you, including equity financing, debt financing, and angel investors, as well as each of their pros and cons.

Starting up a blog is a fairly simple process these days. But what's not so simple is figuring out what to write about and keeping the content pipeline full. In this Quick Tip, author C.C. Chapman shares advice on how to present new content to raise your profile and generate new business.

In this Treehouse Quick-Tip, Jason Seifer shows you how to use the [Select2 Plugin](http://ivaynberg.github.io/select2/) with Ruby on Rails. Select2 is a jQuery based replacement for select boxes. It supports searching, remote data sets, and infinite scrolling of results.

In this Treehouse Quick Tip, Andrew Chalkley will take you through an example using jQuery's Smooth Scrolling on a FAQ page.

Ever sketch something in pencil and want to transform it to digital art with lines of varying thickness? In this Treehouse Quick Tip, teacher Mat Helme will show you how to create a thick to thin line character illustration in Adobe Illustrator. This technique is just one of many techniques used when illustrating.

What's an SVG, and why do I have to use it? SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics, are very small in file size and are great for retina displays. Vector graphics have an advantage over pixel formats like .gif or .jpg as they don't deal with resolution. SVGs can scale to any size and not lose clarity. All SVGs are usually smaller in file size than raster graphics. Treehouse Illustrator teacher Mat Helme will help you get started saving resolution independent SVG files in this Treehouse Quick Tip.

In this Treehouse Quick Tip, Jason demystifies the concepts behind what a has many :through association is in Ruby on Rails. We'll figure out what a join table is, how different models fit together, and the syntax needed to make it all work. Score one for Treehouse!

jQuery, a framework written in JavaScript, offers a simple way to add behavior to websites using the same CSS selectors web developers are familiar with. In other words, you can write less, and do more! Treehouse jQuery teacher Andrew will help you get started with jQuery in this Treehouse Quick Tip.

Have you ever wanted to give a text field in Photoshop an unusual shape? In this Treehouse Quick Tip, Photoshop teacher Allison demonstrates how to bend and curve a text field into whatever shape you need!

Writing a business plan has many uses. You will really understand if your idea is feasible, and forces you to think about your company's future in detail. You'll have a much better idea if your business will work, and if you really want to move forward and actually start the business.

In this Special Firefox OS Treehouse Quick Tip, we discuss building web apps.

In this Firefox OS Treehouse Quick Tip, Jim discusses Firefox's Web Apps Manifest.

In this Firefox OS Treehouse Quick Tip, we walk through the awesome Firefox OS Simulator.

Learn how to improve your daily workflow while programming your iOS app. Knowing these these helpful Xcode keyboard shortcuts will give you a boost in productivity!

In this Firefox OS Treehouse Quick Tip, we discuss Web Standard Technologies.

The "each" method in Ruby on Rails allows you to iterate over different objects inside an array-like structure. It's an important part of development in Ruby, and Treehouse's Ruby teacher, Jason, explains how to use it effectively in this Treehouse Quick Tip!

In this Treehouse Quick Tip, Nick explains how to get a head start on your next project with HTML5 Boilerplate. Boilerplate is a front-end template that gives you everything you need to make your HTML5-based site ready for any browser.

When creating JavaScript functions, we give names to each one of the arguments that our function takes. But what if you want a function to take more than one argument? Learn more about variable arguments in JavaScript with Jim, resident Treehouse JavaScript expert, in this Treehouse Quick Tip!

In this Quick Tip, Treehouse WordPress teacher Zac explains the options you have when choosing your WordPress site's URLs. Choosing the right permalink structure can have an amazing effect on your website's SEO value. Do you have a blog or news site where a date-based permalink structure would work best? Or do you need those all important title keywords in the URL? Find out in this helpful tutorial from Treehouse.

In this Treehouse quick tip, we're going to look at how to change the home page in your WordPress blog from displaying the latest blog posts, to displaying a static home page instead. This is really helpful when you're using WordPress more as a content management system than just a blogging platform.

In this Quick Tip, Nick Pettit provides an overview of HTML5, including a look at some of the new tags now available to designers and developers. If you want to learn how to take advantage of all the new features of HTML5, this video is for you!

In this QuickTip, we're going to discuss how to create and edit an .htaccess file to use with a WordPress site.

In this Treehouse Quick Tip, Mat Helme starts off this great new Illustrator series by showing us how to effectively use the Adobe Illustrator CS6 workspace.

Have you ever wanted to learn the basics of the Type Tool in Adobe Illustrator CS6? If so, you have come to the right place. In this Quick Tip, we will use the Type tool and learn how to: select other fonts, alter the size of the text, add a stroke color, and change case (Uppercase, Lowercase, Title Case, Sentence Case). Also we will convert the text to an object with the Create Outlines feature.

In this Adobe Illustrator CS6 Quick Tip we’ll take a look the Shape Tools. This will include the Rectangle Tool, Rounded Rectangle Tool, Ellipse Tool, Polygon Tool, Star Tool and the Flare Tool. We will also learn how the directional up and down keys can add and subtract anchor points to the Star Tool and the Polygon Tool for faster productivity.

Precisely aligning objects can be pretty difficult without the Align Panel in Adobe Illustrator CS6. In this Quick Tip we’ll take a look at using the Align Panel and all of its features. We will cover the methods of aligning objects to one another as well as to the Artboard. Also we will take a look at spacing objects and distributing them. This comes in handy whenever we want to be precise with our layouts and design aesthetics.

In this Adobe Illustrator CS6 Quick Tip we’ll take a look at using the Pen Tool and all its features. From creating a simple object to altering the anchor points of the object. We will also go over adding and removing points with the Add Anchor Point Tool and Delete Anchor Point Tool. Also, we'll take a look at the Convert Anchor Point Tool. We then take a look at the importance of bezier curves and how we can manipulate them with the pen tool.

Create a registration form within a storyboard for iPhone and iPad. This is done using a static table in Xcode. Static tables are used throughout the settings app.

In this Treehouse Quick Tip, we will learn how to test locations in the iPhone simulator. When building with location service, you want to be able to test various locations to make sure you're app is functioning correctly.

In this Treehouse Quick Tip, we're going to learn how to use random objects found throughout the average household to create our very own custom texture in Photoshop.

In this Quick Tip, we'll learn how to validate HTML and why it's important.

Sometimes you need to wait a certain amount of time in your program before taking an action. You may also want to repeat an action after a certain length of time. You can do this using a timeOut and an interval. In this example tutorial, the element is replaced using getElementById.

When you want to setup your web server, you have a few different options. The first is shared hosting, which is very cheap but does not provide a lot of flexibility. On the other end of the spectrum, you could rent or buy your own server and have it hosted. The problem is that this will cost quite a lot of money, and give you a lot of pain and frustration as you try to manage it. In between is a VPS - Virtual Private Server. It offers all of the benefits of owning your own server, but the hardware is virtualized which makes it a great value. In this video, we'll show you how to setup a VPS with Linode.

Once you've setup and booted your virtual private server, you need to connect to it so you can begin configuring it. On the Mac, we'll be doing this in the terminal using ssh.

Now that you've setup and booted your Linode virtual private server, you need to login to configure it. In Windows, we'll be using a tool called PuTTY.

Now that you've setup and connected to your Linode, you need to give it a hostname. The hostname is the name of the machine, and can be set with just a couple commands.

Learn how to quickly prototype an iPhone app using the Storyboard feature of Xcode which requires no programming. By using scenes and seques you can easily establish transitions between view controllers.

There used to be a clear differentiation between desktop and mobile. With the introduction of tablets and tons of new internet accessible technologies, we've been faced with designing for more monitor resolutions and devices than ever before. In this video, we'll learn the basics of how and why we should embrace responsive web design.

When asking for input from your app users, it's a good idea to include a keyboard that makes it easy for them to input this information. For example, email address fields should include the @ symbol, and phone number fields should include the number keys. You can improve your user experience by displaying the proper keyboard to allow for easy input of text, emails, and numbers.

As a web designer, it's important to embrace that your website is going to look different in various browsers and on different devices. Focus on making your website change layout to match the device that your visitors are viewing it on.

The first argument in the splice function is the index you want to begin with. The second argument is the number if indices to remove. You can also replace or insert values into your array with the splice function. This is done by simply adding the elements to insert into your function.

You can easily share data between Android apps using the "Share" Intent. Intents allow you to utilize components inside and outside of your app with very little extra code, and a nice clean decoupling of components.

Logging is extremely useful. URL, paramaters, database calls, and other useful information. There are 5 levels of logging in Ruby on Rails: Debug, Info, Warn, Error, and Fatal. In production, all logging is set to "Info" level by default. All other levels are set to "Debug" This video will show you how to add a debug statement to a Rails application.