Using Twitter for instant social news
This may sound obvious for some, but I am still surprised by how many people have underlooked or forgotten a major feature in Twitter, the Twitter search engine. Twitter search is also built into many clients and the search engine has become an invaluable tool for sharing instant news. The great thing is you don’t even need a Twitter account to benefit from social news.
Doing JavaScript pop-up windows the right way
Some would argue there is no right way to do a JavaScript pop-up since it disrupts the natural flow and usability of the web. I would tend to agree, but like all things web, there are exceptions to this rule and it may not be your choice anyway. That said there definitely is a very wrong way to do a JavaScript pop-up, and unfortunately there are literally hundreds of tutorials showing you how to do it the wrong way and even more websites implementing it wrong.
How to write super clean CSS
Everyone who works with (X)HTML probably knows how to use CSS to some degree, but not as many know how to write clean CSS. Cascading Style Sheets are probably one of the most powerful tools a web designer/developer can master. It’s hard to find a site today that doesn’t benefit from the capabilities of CSS, and with the slow arrival of CSS3 that is unlikely to change. That said I still constantly come across style sheets that could be cleaner, more optimized, and more elegant.
iMac OS X wifi issues finally solved
I had been facing brutally slow Internet speeds lately on my iMac. It’s a 27 inch 2009 iMac9,1 model, but a quick search shows many people are having wifi issues with a range of iMacs made in this time frame. The first year was alright, but then slowly I began losing connectivity and getting degrading speeds followed by exceptionally high ping speeds and major packet loss. The tipping point forcing me into all out research mode to find a fix for this issue was when Star Craft 2 starting lagging. I mean I can handle slow downloads, but slowing down while conquering the Zerg? That’s where I draw the line.
Moving your Drupal site and breaking all the links
This is a quick tip for anyone moving their Drupal site. I recently moved a development site to a live site and have done this on several occasions only to be left sitting their scratching my head wondering why only the home page of my Drupal site works. Each time after a few minutes it hits me that the .htaccess file is the culprit and that I did not move it. Often if you upload your files via some ftp programs you may not actually be able to see the .htaccess file to upload it. To see it on a Linux/UNIX box type ls -la and it will show up. FileZilla is an open source FTP program that will also do the trick.
So remember after you upload the files to your new server, import your database data and change your database credentials to also bring along your .htaccess file or just grab it from a Drupal package. Hope this saves some of you some head scratching.
Zen Coding – a new way to write HTML lightning fast
The other day I purchased a new editor called Coda. I might review this fantastic little piece of software at a later date, but one of the reasons I purchased it was to use some of the many plugins the community has created for it. One of these plugins has been produced for several editors and could change how you code. It’s called Zen Coding, and it will make you write large chunks of HTML a lighting speeds.
What is Zen Coding?
Zen Coding is hard to explain, but if you have been working with HTML and CSS for awhile now you should be able to pick it up very quickly. It’s easy to learn and best shown by example, so lets start with an example.
Outlook 2007 losing font-family declaration
Email clients are one of the pinnacle frustrations for web designers. The limitations are far greater than those of web browsers and you can always count on Microsoft’s Outlook 2007 being at the forefront of compatibility problems and bug issues. If you create emails that have to support Outlook 2007′s wonky Word rendering you may have noticed on occasion that your specified font-family disappears. There’s a few ways to fix this, but some are better than others.
How to fix floated images and list overlap
The other day I was looking at my blog and saw that one of the posts had a left floated image followed by a bulleted list. The problem was that the list was not indenting properly the way it did when next to a paragraph without a floated element. After a bit of searching and hair pulling I found a discussion that solved my problem.
15 Awesome web design & development sites you should know about
This is a small list of invaluable websites I use to further my knowledge of everything web and to help out with inspiration, tools, resources and tutorials. It’s a list not aimed at any one facet of web design and development, but the many facets and processes that make a website possible.
It is becoming more and more important to at least have a basic understanding of all the information that goes into making a fantastic website. Knowing limitations and pushing those limits makes web design and development fun, interesting, and challenging. If you work in this field you probably already know that web work is all about constantly learning new technologies, tools, tips and tricks.
Creating simple pure CSS buttons
This week I played around with some pure CSS button techniques. This style of button is clean looking and easy to set up, it even has slightly rounded corners. This is not the sliding doors technique which allows you to have full rounded corners, but it a variation, a little simpler and requires only one image and one div tag in the markup. Check out the working demo and read on.
