Do your email newsletters look right in Gmail?
The world of email clients is constantly changing, especially when it comes to webmail. Google recently updated Gmail and it’s pretty cool. The UI is super clean, and you can set themes which have different backgrounds. I’m a huge fan of Gmail as a user, but it’s not always fun to build email newsletters for it. The newest issue is due to the semi transparent background which allows users to set backgrounds. It looks great, and really allows us to customize our email experience, but it can leave you email newsletters looking a bit odd if you have not taken the right steps.
Creating subdomains and custom server names with MAMP
My server of choice is Apache, but I’m no web administrator, so I use MAMP a great quick install Apache, MySQL and PHP stack. Recently I have found the need for local subdomains like dev.localhost. With a local subdomain you can more accurately simulate your live environment because you can link absolutely to the root of your server. These simple directions are specific to the MAMP configuration, but the same steps can be used on any Apache WAMP and LAMP setups with the exception of the location of the configuration file, so lets get started.
jQuery: How to get links to work in toggled or dynamic content
jQuery still never ceases to amaze me. The developers of this fantastic library seem to have thought of everything, and the only real challenge for us end users is hunting through the API. Recently I was tasked with creating slide out toggle boxes that had links embedded within them. The problem was that the animation would be triggered before the links, thus rending them useless. Luckily like many things with jQuery the fix is simple and I will demonstrate with two examples.
Google Maps api and iPad/iPhone zoom and scale issues when orientation is changed
I recently bought an iPad and I’m absolutely loving it. It also happened to coincide with an exciting project that I’m working on that requires the Google maps API to work on an iPad. The project required a full screen map, but when switching from landscape to portrait or vice versa the zoom level would be off. The Google maps controls would also be off the page, page graphics were also blurry due to being zoomed, even the Google Map itself was blurry. After much tweaking, fiddling and scratching my head, the fix turned out to be quite simple to fix.
IE6 is dead! … No really, I mean it this time!
How many times have we heard that IE6 is dead or even it’s funeral announced? The fact of the matter is that IE6 is not dead until your clients say so, or you just stop taking on clients who demand support for it. As with so many web projects, it’s often not your choice anyway, but we can still try and nudge them along with a decision to axe IE6. Charging more money, removing fantastic features from your mockups, or showing clients web stats are some methods that can be used to steer people away from this ancient browser. Google has also added one more tool to our arsenal and I recently got to use it on a project that was self destructing in IE6.
Clearing the jQuery animation queue
Ever see sites where a jQuery animation happens over and over when you rollover or click it multiple times. It’s almost as if the animations are stacking on top of one another in a queue and executing one by one, and guess what? That’s exactly what’s happening. Not to worry though, there is a simple and easy way to fix this.
3 easy methods to create dotted or dashed lines in Photoshop
Dotted or dashed lines can be a great design element and easy to achieve with a bit of CSS, but creating a lot of them in Photoshop mockups can be time consuming and frustrating. There are 3 simple ways to create dotted or dashed lines in Photoshop. The first one is the way a lot of people probably do it and that’s by doing it with the pencil tool dot by dot and then duplicating the layer. This is slow but there are ways to speed up the process. The 2nd method is achieved by using the brush palette spacing settings. The 3rd method is uses custom patterns. This tutorial will cover all three methods with the Mac/Windows shortcut keys needed to speed up the process.
Firebug for IE
Tonight I stumbled across Firebug Lite and was ecstatic to find that all the features I use the most are available not just for IE, but pretty much any modern browser. There are other debuggers out there, but I know a lot of people really love Firebug. This fantastic tool really lets you get under the hood and see what’s going on, it’s saved me countless hours, but what would save me even more time and effort is if it was available for the browser where 95% my problems occur; Internet Explorer. Firebug was also number one on my post “14 killer web design and development tools for the Mac“.
When Mac OS X Exposé and screenshot capture stop working!
You may have experience this before, you are working away and suddenly Exposé, screen shot capture or hot corners stops working! It is an extremely frustrating bug I have experience for some time on Mac OS X, and up until recently only a reboot would remedy it. This is not something I have experienced on all Macs either, and unfortunately I don’t know what is causing it, but I have found a fix that’s made life a little easier.
Using custom CSS and Javascript in WordPress posts
Today while writing The secrets to using custom web fonts I ran into a bit of a snag. I wanted to show several CSS driven examples within the post, but the WordPress editor would remove anything I added. I have dealt with this issue in the past, usually in a clunky manner or even hosted separate example pages. This time though I really wanted the font examples to show up within the actual page content and I didn’t want to add more styles to my WordPress theme. The method I used is remarkably easy and can be implemented in about two or three minutes.
