Room 118 Solutions - Web Application Development & Programming

Author Archives: Chris Gunther

Chris Gunther

About Chris Gunther

Chris has been developing for the web for over four years, but began tinkering with PHP and Visual Basic long before. Originally getting his start in PHP, he's now rediscovered his passion for programming with Ruby on Rails. His dreams are sometimes haunted by the semantics of his latest markup.

When he's not coding, Chris can be found taking in a Yankees game, cheering on the Jets, learning new chords on the guitar, or cycling all around town.

Website Optimization for Retina Displays How-to

Posted by Chris Gunther on April 3, 2013 with no comments

Packt Publishing has recently released their introduction to retina displays as part of their Instant line, entitled Website Optimization for Retina Displays How-to, by Kyle J. Larson.

The book provides a quick overview of many of the different ways of serving higher density images to retina displays. Kyle starts with the basics using <img> tags and CSS, working through media queries and using fonts for icons, all the way onto Javascript and server-side methods for swapping in higher density images. Over 10 different techniques are shown, each with a description and sample code to demonstrate it. If your client just started complaining their site is blurry on their new Retina MacBook Pro, or you’re just looking to keep up with recent trends, this book is a good, quick place to start understanding your options.

Back in April of 2012, Jim shared his thoughts on dealing with retina displays in his own post, Server Side Retina Graphics.

Twitter Bootstrap Web Development How-To

Posted by Chris Gunther on December 20, 2012 with no comments

Packt Publishing has recently released their introduction to Bootstrap (formerly Twitter Bootstrap), entitled Twitter Bootstrap Web Development How-To, by David Cochran. I was lucky enough to be a technical reviewer for the book.

If you’re new to web development, it’s a good walk through of building a website using  Bootstrap, introducing many of the components provided out of the box, like navigation, drops downs, carousels, and even taking advantage of Bootstrap’s responsive design features. At under 60 pages, it’s a quick read to get you up and running with Bootstrap for your own projects.

SD Times – Software engineering: Art or science?

Posted by Chris Gunther on November 8, 2011 with no comments

I was recently interviewed for an SD Times article about the role of art and science in software development.

Chris Gunther, cofounder and developer at Room 118 Solutions, agreed with Jacobson.

“I believe software development is not an art, but rather a craft as it is ultimately defined by its ability to solve a need for an end user,” he said. “Beautifully written code doesn’t count for much when it fails to solve the needs of the end user, and vice versa; poorly written code will have little negative effect on the end user when it successfully solves their needs.

“I think the craft side of software development becomes more of a necessity when working alongside other developers. Code that clearly reflects the domain model and is well organized becomes self-documenting and allows fellow developers to collaborate and understand the domain much easier.”

Gunther believed that science plays a role in development, but mainly due to the experiments used to find the perfect combination of code and the fact that developers are always building on top of older theories and ideas.

Read the full article.

Styling Print Headers and Footers With CSS

Posted by Chris Gunther on March 31, 2011 with 5 comments

Last week I was tasked with porting a couple of reports for a client from Crystal Reports to HTML/CSS, so I thought I’d document my trials here. Luckily because this was running on a server and the printing was initiated on the server side, I was able to focus just on one browser (Internet Explorer 8) rather than ensuring wide cross-browser compatibility. Read on →

Happy 1st Birthday!

Posted by Chris Gunther on February 4, 2011 with 1 comment

Today marks one full year of business as Room 118 Solutions and it’s been an awesome ride. We’ve made some great friends, worked on awesome projects and expanded our skill sets. Here’s to another amazing year.

In celebration of one year in business, we thought its about time we started blogging, so welcome to the inaugural post and keep an eye out for more to come in the future.

Chris & Jim