When upgrading to the newest version of WordPress you should back up your theme. I wasn’t thinking and clicked update and all my work vanished. With some late night damage control and I’m presentable again… I sure wish upgrading wasn’t such a hassle. The only reason I did it in the first place was to get the most-secure version of the code. I guess it’s better to be safe than and sorry.
August 25, 2010
August 16, 2010
Typekit turns 1, partners with Adobe
Most the designers I work with use Adobe fonts. Having an easy route to implement the fonts I actually encounter day-to-day is a huge plus. I’ve wanted to use typekit in the past, but haven’t, because you ususally have to make the designer and client compromise on a lesser known font. Perhaps the next project I work on I can get by without Cufon or sIFR. It’s nice to see how quickly @font-face typography is gaining traction (finally!).
August 3, 2010
Canvas presentation
Here’s a presentation I put together about canvas. I’ll try to get some more detailed tutorials together sooner or later.
July 25, 2010
Added projects to github
I just added a few projects to github. Here’s the rundown:
- jQuery Asset Loader – This class is based off an example from Steve Souder’s book Even Faster Websites. Essentially you can load a script OR a stylesheet with a callback function.
- jQuery Canvas Graphs – This is a Work in Progress. So far I built a pie chart and a bar graph.
- jQuery Custom Selectbox - This class hides the real selectbox and inserts a JS version. It is keyboard accessible, fast, and fully style-able.
If you have any questions, let me know.
July 24, 2010
Safari personal info hack
Jeremiah Grossman recently published a security vulnerability in Safari that can steal your personal information. The gist of the problem is that an attacker can hide some inputs on their site with field names that normally get autofilled by the browser. Then using JavaScript the attacker can extract information about the user.
Check out this creepy demo in Safari. It found all my info successfully… Luckily I only use Safari for testing. If you want to avoid the problem disable AutoFill web forms in your Safari settings.
July 21, 2010
Cheap eBooks
Mark Pilgrim wrote this great online book “Dive into HTML5” that you should check out. It’s being released by O’Reilly as “HTML5: Up and Running“. I’m not sure how different the physical copy will be from the online version, but it seems to me that you can either read it online now for free, or wait until August 15th for it to be released as a book and pay $20 for it.
Another tip for getting good content cheap is to download the iPhone app version of O’Reilly books. For example, I downloaded High Performance JavaScript as soon as it came out for $5 and read it by the time it would have taken to get shipped to me. The list price for this book is $35.
Honestly I still prefer a real book over an eBook, however, I’m willing to read on a screen when the price is so cheap. Especially when you live in a small apartment and your bookshelf is overflowing onto the floor…
July 14, 2010
June 17, 2010
iPad (and iPhone) debugging
Check this article out: iPad HTTP Debugging with Charles
This approach is extremely useful and has saved me a lot of time. Also, the same tutorial works for the iPhone too. Once you have Charles set up to work with your device there are two main benefits that will help you debug your work.
Viewing HTTP traffic to your iPad site – Great for ensuring resources aren’t returning 404, checking that everything is being cached properly, and no extraneous calls are being made etc…
Mapping production files to your local environment - This is great because you can be viewing your production site, but have Charles point to a JS/CSS file on your desktop so you can test changes on the fly.
June 14, 2010
Choosing the right jQuery easing function
When I animate elements in jQuery I often find myself looking for a little something more than the default “swing” and “linear” values. So to spice things up, I usually download this jQuery easing plugin. Once you include it in your project you have many more options to choose from.
Some animations need playfulness while others need polish. I find the easiest way to pick the right easing algorithm is to temporarily create a selectbox that displays on the page, so you can tweak and test the value on the fly. This is also useful if you want a designer’s input, they can easily see what’s available and pick the one they like best.
To streamline the process I created a simple jQuery plugin that generates a selectbox based on the $.easing object. It just spits out all the potential values, and then you can test them out in your animation without having to constantly update your code. You can find the extension here.
And here’s an example of the plugin in action testing an animation.
June 1, 2010
Maximize windows in OSX
After switching over to a MacBook Pro from a PC, one of the OS quirks that bothered me was the zoom button (+) on every window. My initial inclination was that it would maximize the window, however, instead it behaves drastically different from program to program.
I read up on the issue, since I’m sure I’m not the first person to get confused by it, and was a bit surprised by the community feedback. Many people on message boards proclaimed that maximizing windows is obsolete and that they don’t miss it. They claim OSX is truly a multitasking environment, and if you embrace that you’ll forget you ever even used maximize. But to me that’s a load of crap and it’s an OS flaw. Why would pressing (+) in one window turn iTunes into a mini player, and in Firefox it maximize the window, but then in the calculator reveal a scientific calculator? Having windows scattered all of the screen is great and all, but I especially need maximizing because I’m on a 13′ MacBook Pro so I don’t have a ton of real estate.
Anyhow, after some googling I found a fix, RightZoom. With RightZoom most my windows (+) button now works as expected, and I also set up a shortcut option+command+e to maximize a window.