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How digital services have transformed working from home

2020 has been a year like no other and we’re only halfway through it yet. In six short months the global population have transitioned from ‘normality’ to lockdown and are now making learning the ropes as we all re-adjust and come to terms with a post COVID-19 normality.Despite the lockdown though we have...
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How Does Javascript Run

Javascript is a dynamic programming language also referred to as a scripting language. If you're like me you are currently thinking to yourself  'What the hell does dynamic mean in javascript'? That question led to this blog post. A dynamic programming language is a language that executes at runtime. Runtime is...
Technology

Ionic Framework 4: What's new?

Rob our Head of Development has been talking all things Ionic 4 with Gareth Stirling from Web Talks NI. Have a listen to this episode of the weekly podcast to find out a bit about Scaffold in the early days, Rob's career path so far and how we use Ionic to develop commercial mobile apps.  You can also...
Development
Ionic

An Introduction To State

Today I want to try something slightly different. Over the last few months I have found myself working on a handful of legacy angularjs applications. These applications are typically single-page applications, use some form of database to persist the data and  contain very little in terms of documentation. In this...
Technology

My First Month at Scaffold

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My First Month at Scaffold   So I started as Scaffold’s new UX Designer about a month ago. I wasn’t the new girl for very long though. Daniel our newest Developer started a week after me - not that I ever felt like the new girl, everyone was so welcoming and I settled in very quickly.  After what...
Design

Reassigning Objects & Arrays using Const

When working with numbers, strings and booleans with const we know through our previous blog post var-vs-const-vs-let that you cannot reassign a const variable. The same goes for any const variables even objects or arrays. But unlike simple variables, objects and arrays have methods and properties that let you...
Technology

Scaffold Digital to change the lives of people living with dementia with new memory supporting app

Scaffold Digital, a Lisburn based digital agency, is in the final stages of developing a new app to support a personalised approach to reminiscence.  The InspireD app has been commissioned by NI healthcare authorities for use by people living with dementia and the health and social care staff who support...
Business
News
Technology

Project Discovery – What is it and why is it important?

Project discovery is relatively new concept to the digital world. However, as the sector has grown and pivoted to suit latest technologies it has become more and more evident how important it is in the delivery of the successful digital products. For us as a company a successful project can be measured in three...
Business
Project Management

Tips and tricks for vim

In todays blog post I would like to take the opportunity to share some knowledge I have gained with vim. In particular with customising vim to make it more user friendly. Out of the box the default configuration wraps long lines across multiple lines and line numbers aren't shown. Resolving these two things...
Technology

Software solutions that provide results

When commissioning a software project of any kind it usually requires a significant investment both in terms of cost and time spent getting your solution operational within your business. When a client commissions a software project with us, we make a commitment to work alongside you as an extension of your team,...
Project Management
Technology

Getting Started with Sass

The more projects you work on as a developer the larger and more complex they seem to become. The narrative becomes the same with stylesheets as the project grows, the CSS gets harder to maintain efficiently. That is where SASS can help. SASS is a stylesheet language that extends the capabilities of CSS. It makes...
Technology

Affordances in design

Eh, can you use that in a sentence, please? Affordances are the properties of an object that show the possible actions a user can take with it. Affordances suggest how a user should interact with the object. For example, a button on a website or app could look like it needs to be clicked or pushed, the visual...
Design

Top 10 tips to digital project management

There are many contributing factors that will determine how successful your digital project is with you at the helm as project manager. However, after spending the last 7 years dedicating my career so far to managing digital projects, I have learnt what I believe to be the top 10 things you need to consider when...
Project Management

The Best of Javascript ES6

ECMAScript 6 is also known as ES6 and ECMAScript 2015. Some people call it JavaScript 6. Javascript ES6 has made some nice changes which make Javascript a lot easier to use. One of the common questions is it safe to use. A quick answer is yes it's safe. If you take a look at this web page. It shows current...
Technology

You’ve built your digital product, now what?

So you’ve had your eureka moment, conceived a digital product, and commissioned your technology partner. They’ve taken your idea and delivered a working digital product. You're done, right? Unfortunately, it’s a common misconception that all of the hard work and effort needed to build your product will last...
Business
Technology

Kubernetes: Lessons Learned

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Why We Started Using Kubernetes Our journey really started about 4 years ago, shortly before Kubernetes was officially released (in July 2015). Truthfully, at that time we didn't even know it existed. As a company we'd been working on more and more complicated web applications most of which couldn't simply be...
Technology

Async/Await

Recognising the advantages and disadvantages of async/await requires an understanding of callbacks and promises. Before we review these lets first remind ourselves of the problem they solve: Asynchrony. Javascript is a blocking, synchronous single threaded language. This essentially means it can only perform one...
Technology

London Trade Mission 2019

In early 2019, Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council (LCCC) were offering local technology companies the opportunity to accompany them on a trade mission to London. The trip was designed to help local companies establish and build a network of contacts in the London market by introducing them to potential...
Business
Project Management

Getting started with UX / UI animations.

So, you've been working as a web / UX / UI designer for a while, you've been there when your job consisted of designing pixel perfect mockups in photoshop, then the web became responsive and the need to create iterations at different sizes required the use of multiple artboards, so maybe you moved into illustrator,...
Design
Technology

Every business is a digital business…

They just haven’t realised yet. On a daily basis we consume an ever-increasing number of digital services and products. Indeed, due to this trend, there are 5-year olds who are more competent with digital technology than some hardened business people. Businesses that have embraced digital innovation are now...
Business
News
Technology

Why work with Scaffold Digital?

At Scaffold Digital, we have an experienced team that encompasses, UX/UI designers, developers and project management. We are a young team, but we have a lot of experience working in the digital sector covering many different types of project and client. Our team specialise in projects like websites, mobile apps...
Business
Project Management
Technology

Retail and Hospitality – How can digital products help you?

On the 5thof February 2019 Scaffold Digital will be attending the SMART Retail and Hospitality show in the Europa Hotel, Belfast. SMART Retail and Hospitality is a show designed to help providers in this sector to understand how digital solutions can help the day-to-day running of their business, to form...
Business
News

Service Workers

An introduction to service workers Put simply a service worker is a script that runs in the browser. They can intercept network traffic, send push notifications and perform background syncs. If that was a bit of a blur don’t worry, we’ll take a step back and take a look at each in...
Technology

2019 Trends for the digital transformation

As 2018 draws to a close we have been fortunate enough to work with fantastic clients across a range of sectors and for each project we pride ourselves in choosing the most appropriate technology that balances a fit for the current and future needs of a business. There are times when a ‘bleeding edge’ piece of...
Business
Technology

What is a Digital Transformation project?

At Scaffold Digital we have a team of passionate and highly skilled designers, developers and project managers who strive to make a difference to all of our clients with the digital solutions we provide. You could say our team is split into two halves: Commercial:For some of our team it is about business. It...
Business
Project Management

Kicking off a web design project

As a designer I often find myself browsing inspirations sites in order to get "inspired" before I start into a project, just fire up siteinspire, hpptster or webcreme and cmd+tab+click all those delicious thumbnails until your browsers bursting with tabs, barely big enough to house the...
Design

Smart Construct 2018 - Digital transformation in the construction sector

In November we exhibited at the Smart Construct event arranged by Naomh McElhatton and her team at Smart Global. This event was aimed at businesses and organisations in Northern Ireland involved in the construction and engineering industries, allowing them to connect with like-minded companies and associates...
Business
News
Technology

Getting Started with Classes in PHP - Bespoke Software - Scaffold

In my previous blog post, we looked at OOP and why you should be using it. If you missed it, you can get caught up by clicking here. Now that you’re up to date we can look at creating our first object. Object-oriented programming lets us group data as well as functions into a specific piece of functionality....
Technology

Trusted partner for Ionic Mobile App Development in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

In 2016 we were delighted to be accepted as a trusted partner for mobile application development using the Ionic framework for iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry development. Since then we've produced a wide range of app-based solutions for clients across the UK & Ireland. What does it mean to be...
Business
Technology

When to commission bespoke software development and when not to

As a digital business we’ve had the privilege of being part of a wide array of digital projects that result in a bespoke software solution being delivered. This also means we’ve had time to hone our process and know what to look out for in a project. If you don’t have a background in technology it can...
Business
News

The Power of Laravel's Observer Pattern

Today I want to talk about hooking into Laravel model events, their benefits and potential drawbacks. This, along with some examples on how and when to use them and avoid them. Why use Observers? Keeps the controllers lean Using observers will allow controllers to do what they're supposed to do. Receive requests...
Technology

Simple reCAPTCHA with Laravel

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Introduction We've all seen reCAPTCHA at one point or another - that previously hateful box on every contact form or registration page that you'd take half a dozen stabs at before finally getting it right. Thankfully it's been replaced lately with a much more intelligent implementation that doesn't usually require...
Technology

What is Object Oriented Programming?

Starting out with object orient programming or OOP for short can be a daunting concept. In this post, we will look at OOP in PHP but the concept can be shared across other programming languages such as Java, Python, Ruby, C++ and more. A quick look at OOP can make it appear more complex than your standard...
Technology

Digital DNA 2018

What is Digital DNA? Digital DNA is one of Irelands most valued and well attended business and technology events. Digital DNA is hosted over two full days in St George’s Market with over 100 companies exhibiting and up to 150 inspirational speakers sharing their eclectic knowledge of all things new and exciting...
Business
Project Management

Quick tips for App design in Sketch

In this post, I shall quickly highlight my process for designing an app in Sketch. With a handful of free plugins and a guide to quickly set up your sketch document, this process should streamline your set up time and let you get to the design stage more quickly. Before we start, it's worth noting that in my...
Design

Hybrid vs Native

Mobile development debunked, what are the options and how are they different? With the number of mobile phone users in the world expected to pass the five billion mark by 2019 (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/), it’s a given that businesses are turning to...
Business
Technology

Ionic & The Android Back Button

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What's the problem? Generally speaking, Ionic does a good job of handing navigation. Sadly, one of the things it doesn't do well (in my opinion) is it's handling of the hardware back button on Android. Sure, we can push a handful of views onto the screen and it will casually pop them off again every time the user...
Technology

The Programmer Mindset

Introduction I want to describe what I have learned and hurdles I have faced in cultivating the mindset of a programmer. Doing this is not an easy task by any stretch, but important for progressing down this career path. I have written this post for aspiring developers, developers who are at a crossroads in their...
Technology

Dublin Tech Summit 2018 #DTS18

Recently I had the pleasure of a few days out of the office to attend the Dublin Tech Summit. What follows is my attempt to unpack my experience and share some interesting tidbits of information I picked up!   Day one   After a short trip down to Dublin, I arrived for the 2018 edition of the...
Business
News
Technology

Var vs Const vs Let

JavaScript first appeared 22 years ago in 1995,  in most of its lifetime there has been only one way to declare a variable using the var keyword.  Some declarations of var can have some unexpected behaviours due to scope. That's why with the sixth version of JavaScript ECMAScript 2015 developers decided to...
Technology

Communication is the key to success

As project managers we become obsessed by processes. Every piece of work touched by one of your team members should have a robust process that ensures projects come in on time and on budget. We become focussed on reducing the risk for both our clients and our ourselves. We get bogged down in Gantt charts, figures...
Business
News
Project Management

How to keep focused and finish strong

More often than not, when beginning a project we start out with the best intentions and get swept away with the notion of creating something awesome and beautiful. Quite often, what happens is after a few days of fumbling around in sketch and endless searching on inspiration websites we become overwhelmed, lose...
Design

Laravel Validation with Custom Attribute Names

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  • Read time 10 mins
For the most part, I don’t have many complaints when it comes to Laravel. That being said, every now and then I find myself trying to accomplish something I’d consider to be relatively simple only to keep hitting brick walls. As handy as it is for the Laravel Validator to automatically generate friendly error...
Technology

Hi! Welcome to Scaffold Digital

Nine months ago, I was being welcomed in to Tepee Design as their new Project Manager. “Hi! Welcome to Tepee”. The last 9 months has seemed like a massive whirlwind and I have just had the thought that I am still the newest member of the team. Together we have achieved so many great things in such a short...
Business
News
Project Management

Metamorphosis - times of change

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  • Read time 15 mins
This post, is the first of many as we emerge from a year of planning and strategic change to Scaffold Digital - a new name, renewed focus and vision to Tepee, the name you will be more familiar with (for now at least). The context I’m a big believer in giving a clear context in any scenario where key decisions...
Business
News