Servage Magazine

Dropdown menus are known from many websites that make complex menu structures and page hierarchies available to users via one or multiple levels of dropdowns. They are furthermore also often used in a convenient way to hide extended or advanced functionality, yet making it available quickly upon request. In menus the dropdowns are usually built into the overall design of the header, or other part of the page the menu is embedded into. However, with many websites moving towards a more app-like interface, and with the rise of Bootstrap, the typical button-style triggers for dropdown menus have become widely used. Button-triggered dropdown menus are a great way to make functionality available without cluttering ...

Every website owner faces decisions about how to engage users and their communication needs. Obviously the users' desire to ask questions or otherwise get in touch with the website owner vary a great deal depending on the type of website. Simply put, a hobby page for a specific topic may not trigger too much communication, where a busy online store may get overloaded with support requests. There is no generally right or wrong way of communicating with users, it all really depends a lot on your type of project. However, it is important to identify your users' needs and your capabilities as a provider to facilitate a satisfactory and efficient communication. Especially ...

The MVC pattern (Model, View, Controller) dictates a clear division between controller logic and view generation. It means that you strictly use the controller code to determine what backend actions to make in order to process a request, but then hand over the response generation to the view. I.e. you can process, validate and store data via the controller, but pass the final result over to the view, which creates the output to be sent back to the client. In Laravel this means that you end up returning a response from your controller, which sends relevant content to the client. The view is usually HTML output, because other response types would have different ...

Bootstrap is by far one of the most widely used frameworks for CSS and Javascript effects and modules. It offers great capabilites to build functionality quickly, and well implemented theming allows you to create customized design as well. Many websites build their entire HTML for Bootstrap and simply add some custom elements plus the custom CSS. This does not mean you are copying everyone else. It is actually quite smart, because you are reusing a modular approach to create custom functionality and design. It looks good and usually works faster than own solutions. The basic modal dialog Bootstrap dictates how you should structure your code to facilitate a modal dialog. You can, however, build ...

Most website owners would benefit from a mobile version of their website, because nowadays many users also use mobile devices. Some users even exclusively use mobile devices like smart phones or tablets. It is also important to consider the use case for your given site, because some content is more likely to be consumed via mobile than via desktop or laptop computer. Native apps are competing with mobile or responsive websites, and they both have advantages and disadvantages. Responsive websites You can relatively quickly turn your website into a mobile-friendly version. This can be done either by making a separate version only for phones and tablets, which is determined based on the client type. ...

The normal usage of Laravel on a website is that a client request to an endpoint results in a response, one way or the other. The request could be anything from a typical browser request for a given website for HTML or files, to an automated request from a client server to an API endpoint you publish for structured data responses like JSON or XML. Either way, at some point you need to create and return a response in your controller- and Laravel comes ready to do so with lots of options available. Responding from a route without a controller You can respond directly from a route, without making a controller and action method. ...