Six years ago tomorrow I was made redundant from what I thought was a fairly stable job as a senior member of staff at Greenbelt Festivals. As soon as it happened I knew I wanted to set up my own webshop and pretty soon amillionmonkeys was born. Six years on…
A couple of months ago ITV got in touch saying they needed a microsite for Robozuna, a kids TV show that will air on CITV and Netlflix later this year. Having seen the image heavy design, this felt the perfect opportunity to get to grips with Progressive Web Apps. Why…
Over the past couple of weeks I've taken a little time to get to know the CSS Grid spec. It's super cool and allows front end developers to build stuff we've always told designers weren't possible. Sites like Grid by Example illustrate the endless possibilities, but for those of us…
A couple of my clients have decent use cases and are asking me to explore the option of using Blockchain for their apps. After a month or so, I'm starting to get my head around it. If you're a developer trying to get your head around blockchain, I'd really recommend…
Since Patterns Day last year I've been using Clearleft's Fractal to create style guides for almost all front end projects I'm working on. Last week I took an afternoon out to create a start package which is available on github, for use on a few forthcoming projects. This gives me…
Last week I launched my first app on the App Store. Pinx isn’t much; it provides an alternative UI for exploring your pins and doesn’t do much more besides. But never the less I’m super proud. Here is the back story… Background Over the past ten years…
A couple of weeks ago Clearleft hosted Patterns Day here in sunny Brighton. I don't often go to web conferences but I fancied this one as clearly Design Systems are becoming increasingly standard practice. The videos from Patterns Day are available over here. As ever at Clearleft hosted events, the…
Last year we had to build a Cordova App and ship it on Windows Phones. It was a world of pain, and whilst I really think Microsoft are doing some great new stuff, some of their older stuff is not so great. This week I've been working on importing mail…
As mentioned for the past twelve months I've spent a lot of my time learning Javascript properly. Like most front-enders, I had a pretty good grasp of jQuery but our switch in focus to apps, has meant a better knowledge of vanilla Javascript was necessary. Jose Aguinaga's recent post on…
I love what I do, but truth be told, the older I get and the older my children get, the more important it becomes that amillionmonkeys pays the bills. Historically, that has meant websites. Lots of them. And developing a fierce workflow, that meant I could produce progressive, content-managed, responsive…