Colin Bacon, web developer.

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Recent posts

Binding mouse events for range inputs with Knockout js

Binding mouse events for range inputs with Knockout js

HTML5 range input is a great control and an alternative way for a user to select or set a value. Knockout is a great fit for handling it.

Converting a hex colour code to RGBA is easy - LESS CSS

Converting a hex colour code to RGBA is easy - LESS CSS

These days the use of colours with opacity (RGBA) is common. The downside is, it means the number of colour values we need to maintain multiplies and it is hard to tell when a hex value is the same as an RGB value in our CSS files. Fortunately, LESS provides us with functions to simplify this.

Abstracting grid implementation with mixins using Semantic grid - LESS CSS

Abstracting grid implementation with mixins using Semantic grid - LESS CSS

A grid system can make life a lot easier when it comes to creating the layout of page. This article demonstrates how creating a level of abstraction from our grid with mixins can make it even easier.

A simple workflow using a central Git repository and Visual Studio

A simple workflow using a central Git repository and Visual Studio

Git is a great version control system and is very easy to integrate with Visual Studio. Here's the workflow I use for projects using a centralised Git repository.

MVC5 prevents your website being loaded in an IFRAME

MVC5 prevents your website being loaded in an IFRAME

Allowing your content to be hosted in a cross-domain IFRAME can make your website vulnerable to attacks such as framesniffing and clickjacking. Now MVC5 prevents this by default.

Syntactically Awesome in Visual Studio

Syntactically Awesome in Visual Studio

Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets) is a powerful CSS preprocessor giving you all the goodness of CSS plus lots of extra goodies. Want to use it with Visual Studio? No problem, here's how.

Creating a pinch using CSS

Creating a pinch using CSS

Styling that we would typically use background images for can be done using CSS. This post explains how to create a 'pinch'.

CDNs do fail - Set up a fallback with MVC bundling

CDNs do fail - Set up a fallback with MVC bundling

There are many advantages of using public CDN hosted libraries instead of a locally hosted file. But nothing is fail proof, using bundling in MVC4 we can include a fallback in case of CDN failure. Meaning if a third party goes down your site doesn't suffer.

Getting ASP.Net authentication to work on a web farm

Getting ASP.Net authentication to work on a web farm

You've built your website. You've tested it locally. You upload it to your hosting provider and everything seems fine. Then you notice that when you're browsing pages controlled by authentication, you keep getting logged out. Luckily it's simple to solve.

Switching between desktop and the start screen, Windows Server 2012 Essentials

Switching between desktop and the start screen, Windows Server 2012 Essentials

Another Windows OS, another time when I have no clue where anything is. This is a quick how-to on switching between the desktop and the start screen for Windows Server 2012 Essentials.