Aspire Media

a web development and technology blog

Load Time

May 12, 2014
by Arthur Khachatryan
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What Not to Do In Web Development – Load Optimization Debacle

It’s an understatement to say that I get surprised by really bad web development practices I come across when surfing the web, but now and then I see something that is so horrifying, so utterly bewildering, that it must be pointed out. I recently came across what appeared to be a microsite of some product or event by Oakley, and it made me almost fall from my chair. To date it is the second worst example of failing to optimize a website that I’ve ever come across (#1 was actually twice as bad as this one). Continue Reading →

April 7, 2014
by Arthur Khachatryan
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Syntax Chroma Code Highlighter

Some time ago I was sifting through the internet trying to find a good syntax highlighter. After passing on the first 5 promising candidates, I realized it was a bit more difficult to find something that lived up to my modest expectations. After the surprise of my failure to find something good wore off, I decided to build one myself. After delving into the project I realized the main challenges involved with building a good functional syntax highlighter. Still, I was intent on creating something that met my requirements, and thus was born Syntax Chroma Code Highlighter. Continue Reading →

April 5, 2014
by Arthur Khachatryan
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Get and Set URI Parameters on the Front-End

Ever wanted to pull a querystring parameter from the address bar? Or get one from an anchor tag? How about changing one that already exists or creating a brand new parameter? How about doing it on the front-end on the fly? If you’ve never felt the need to do anything of the kind, it’s safe to say that it’s only a matter of time before you do.
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April 3, 2014
by Arthur Khachatryan
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Introducing Aspire Ghost Theme

Aspire Ghost Theme is a FREE open source Ghost theme. It is a clean, lightweight, responsive theme for Ghost (http://www.ghost.org), the emerging Node JS blogging platform. I developed this theme to be consistent with the principles with which the Ghost platform was built – simplicity and intuitiveness. This theme was developed for Ghost v0.4, and although some assumptions may be made about the future development of Ghost being backwards compatible, no guarantees can be made that this theme will continue to work with future Ghost versions. Aspire Ghost Theme was modeled after Casper, the default Ghost theme, and was built using Bootstrap v3.1.1 (http://getbootstrap.com), taking full advantage of the Express 3 handlebars template engine. Some assets and elements were retained from Casper, to make some of the look and feel consistent with the platform defaults. Continue Reading →

September 25, 2012
by Arthur Khachatryan
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Responsive Web Design

No one can legitimately debate that the web is going everywhere nowadays. Devices of all sizes and stripes are equipped with web browsers. The internet has never before been this accessible to this many people…and it’s only spreading. More devices with a larger variation of screen sizes and browsers – sounds like a nightmare to manage it all, right? Enter responsive design! Continue Reading →

September 20, 2012
by Arthur Khachatryan
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CSS3 Gradients

The days of old during which developers would need to use images to have any sort of gradients on web pages are gone. With new CSS3 techniques and better support for CSS3 on newer browser versions, what used to require an additional image request, can now be rendered (generally) by the browser with no additional overhead. Continue Reading →