Three Interviews
11 Jul 2007
Three recent interviews if you feel like gaining some additional insight on me. First up is an interview with JavaScriptWorkshop.com where I oddly talk about JavaScript. Second, is Devlounge talking about some recent sites. Lastly, I chat with Adii from South Africa about freelance....
Google makes FeedBurner Pro free
03 Jul 2007
Google, after its acquisition of FeedBurner, has now made the pro features free for everyone....
Zend Framework Releases 1.0
03 Jul 2007
Zend Framework hits 1.0. It's a PHP5 MVC framework. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet but I want to....
Using Math object to shorten scripts
28 Jun 2007
Christian Heilmann talks of using the Math object in JavaScript in some very nice ways. In particular, using the min and max methods to save extraneous if/else logic and even normalising property values like scrollTop. ...
Focus Clouds
26 Jun 2007
Focus clouds. It's like a tag cloud but with more focus. With PHP source code. Makes tag clouds just a little more interesting....
Google Universal Search
22 Jun 2007
Google is slowly integrating their verticals into one massive search. From an SEO/SEM perspective, I find this interesting....
IE6 Memory Leaks Fixed
22 Jun 2007
Mark Wubben reports that Microsoft has fixed the memory leaks in IE6 and pushed the security update out to XP users. Happy days!...
Incremental Leading
16 Jun 2007
Mark Boulton, who's covered some great typography and grid design on his site now covers incremental leading. Because vertical rhythym can look bad....
Spiekermann Interview
08 Jun 2007
This interview with designer Erik Spiekermann is fascinating; especially all the tidbits on professional life. (via)...
Movable Type 4 beta released
05 Jun 2007
Movable Type 4 beta is released and I have to ask myself if any of their users are still around to care....
Anonymous Functions in PHP
20 May 2007
Anonymous functions to make their way into PHP? I'd like it. (via)...
Dailypixel.ca nominated for CNMA
18 Apr 2007
A client of mine, dailypixel.ca, whose site I designed last year, is a finalist for the Canadian New Media Awards. Cool....
Quick Link: Freelance Switch
13 Apr 2007
Freelance Switch is a blog about freelancing. Absolutely great content....
Quick Link: CakePHP and Flickr
04 Apr 2007
Create a photo gallery using CakePHP and Flickr. An article I wrote for Sitepoint has gone live....
Quick Link: Rules and Context
20 Mar 2007
Andy Rutledge talks of Rules and Context in art and design and sums up the difference between art and design quite nicely, too....
Debug Flash with Firebug
20 Feb 2007
Debug Flash with Firebug. Aaron Bassett created a cool actionscript object which can log info into the Firebug console. Sweet....
Ages of the Web
24 Jan 2007
James Bennett puts an amusing tale together chronicling the Ages of the Web...
Prototype 1.5.0 Released
18 Jan 2007
Hot on the heels of the recent jQuery release, Prototype has hit 1.5.0 and now has it's own site. Not only that, but a whole team has been working on documentation. That's right, official documentation! Go on and read the official announcement. That's right, they even have a blog!...
Tips for a Better Design Review Process
16 Jan 2007
D. Keith Robinson offers his Tips for a Better Design Review Process. My favourite: don't be afraid to show a client some rough work to make sure you're on the right track....
jQuery 1.1 Released
14 Jan 2007
jQuery 1.1 released. Congrats John and the rest of the team. Probably one of the smallest yet fast and robust libraries out there....
Sergio's Prototype 1.5.0rc2 Documentation
02 Jan 2007
Sergio Pereira updates his Prototype documentation for 1.5.0_rc2....
YUI TreePanel
30 Dec 2006
Jack Slocum has updated drag and drop performance and a new TreePanel in 0.40 of yui.ext. The TreePanel stuff is fantastic work....
Five Questions
21 Dec 2006
Zachary Houle, a writer here in Ottawa, was nice enough to invite me to answer five questions....
76design Hiring
13 Dec 2006
The folks over at 76design, based here in Ottawa, are looking to hire a developer....
farfromfearless.com
14 Nov 2006
My buddy Chris Murphy launches his blog farfromfearless.com. I love his design....
Flickrdrillr
03 Nov 2006
Christian Heilmann put together Flickrdrillr, a way to explore tags and photos from Flickr. JSON-powered, this is....
Quick Link: XPATH Injection Attacks
14 Oct 2006
I'm familiar with SQL Injection attacks but was intrigued to hear of XPATH injection attacks. Luckily, the answer for both seem to be the same: validate your data before passing it on....
Quick Link: String functions in Prototype 1.5
29 Aug 2006
Cory Hudson covers some of the new string functions in Prototype 1.5. The template class looks nice. ...
Quick Link: Memory Leaks Reduced in IE7
28 Aug 2006
Microsoft is indicating that they've improved on the garbage collection in IE7. Some testing I was doing over the weekend seems to support this. ...
Quick Link: Go Pink for October
28 Aug 2006
Still early stages yet but Matthew Oliphant is setting up a new site called Pink for October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. ...
Quick Link: Strip HTML in SQL Server
23 Aug 2006
A custom MS SQL Server (2005 or 2000) that strips HTML. You can go right to the code in case you can't find your way through all the ads. ...
Quick Link: Remote JSON
17 Aug 2006
A couple links on remote JSON: Dump Your Proxy and JSON and the Dynamic Script Tag. ...
Quick Link: Creation of the AP Logo
15 Aug 2006
Anton Peck goes into detail on how he put together his AP logo. A lot of subtle details that I'd never think about. ...
Quick Links: PHP UTF-8 Tips and XML to JSON
10 Aug 2006
Double header in this quick link: PHP UTF-8 Tips and Converting between XML and JSON. ...
Quick Link: Enumerating JavaScript Objects
27 Jul 2006
Dean Edwards shares his code for enumerating JavaScript objects ...
Quick Link: Page Slugs in CakePHP
21 Jun 2006
Using page slugs instead of page id's for friendlier URL's using CakePHP. ...
Quick Link: Ajax Edit in Place using Prototype
10 Jun 2006
Joseph Scott offers up a new version of his Ajax Edit in Place using Prototype script. Comes in at 3.6k uncompressed in addition to the Prototype Library. ...
Quick Link: Comparison of JavaScript Loops
10 Jun 2006
Which loop is fastest? Check out the results of moddular's javascript loop test. Most of it is dry comparison data but the chart at the bottom sums it up extremely well. ...
Quick Link: Interview with Cameron Adams
07 Jun 2006
Cameron Adams, aka The Man in Blue, gets interviewed at Devlounge. ...
Quick Link: JavaScript Tetris
16 May 2006
On a dare, Dustin Diaz built Tetris using the Yahoo library. Seriously sweet. And when you're done there, cook up a little Bunny Hunt by the Man in Blue, Cameron Adams. ...
Quick Link: HTML Editor Reviews
10 May 2006
Inaccurately called "Celebrity Interviews" (at least in my case), Eric Barstad had a few questions for me on my HTML editor of choice. ...
Quick Link: Flummoxed by Frameworks
08 May 2006
Eric Meyer is flummoxed by frameworks. It's a fine example of why I think frameworks suck. Let me iterate that I don't actually think that all frameworks suck but rather that frameworks aren't magical bullets, at least not unless you know how to use a gun. ...
Quick Link: Sessions and Multiple Windows
27 Apr 2006
Although the article is .NET specific, the concept can be applied to any language. The problem is, how to retain certain information from one page to the next. The example really explains it all. ...
Quick Link: Snook.ca Design Revealed
26 Apr 2006
Revealed, sort of. I'm not going live until the weekend but with only 5 days left, I've posted a screenshot on CSS Reboot. ...
Quick Link: Pricing a Project
25 Apr 2006
The folks at Blue Flavor cover the touchy subject of pricing projects. Lots of good info in this one for anyone who does who even does a smidge of freelance contracting. ...
Quick Link: Get the rendered style
24 Apr 2006
Robery Nyman shares some code to get the rendered style of an element. ...
Quick Link: Handling AJAX Timeouts using Prototype
24 Mar 2006
Althought titled AJAX Timeouts with Prototype (which could be read good or bad), it's about how to handle AJAX timeouts using Prototype. ...
Quick Link: 9charities
17 Mar 2006
The 9rules Network starts up 9charities. Choosing nine charitable organizations per year and provides free web design, consulting, and hosting. ...
Quick Link: Forget addEvent, use Yahoo!'s Event
07 Mar 2006
Dustin Diaz goes in depth on Yahoo!'s event handling. The biggest plus is the ability to attach a handler to an object before it exists in the DOM. I suspect we'll see something like this in Prototype soon enough. ...
Quick Link: Photoshop Starburst Effect
26 Feb 2006
Sitepoint offers up a nice screencast tutorial of creating a starburst effect in Photoshop. Fun stuff. ...
Quick Link: Yahoo's PHP Developer Center
24 Feb 2006
How did I miss this? Code samples and what not in Yahoo's PHP Developer Center ...
A bunch of links
23 Feb 2006
Playing catch-up on a few links: I love logo design and Be A Design Group covers the common art of placing vowels inside an uppercase C in I Would Like To Buy a Vowel (Inside a C). Robert Nyman put together ASK - AJAX Source Kit. It's designed to create progressive enhancement of a page with AJAX. Don't leave your non-JavaScript (or non-AJAX) users out in the cold. On a similar note, Kyle Kneat...
Quick Link: Discoverability in Rich Web UI's
15 Feb 2006
Luke W covers some ways to address discoverability in rich web UI's. ...
Quick Link: Yahoo Links
14 Feb 2006
New from Yahoo, we've got the User Interface Blog, the Design Pattern Library, and the UI Library. ...
Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview is available
31 Jan 2006
Not one to release early, release often, Microsoft has made IE7 Beta 2 Preview publicly available. It will only install on Windows XP SP2 and requires you to complete the "Windows Genuine Advantage" process. You may be able to install side-by-side with IE6 like IE7B1 (which coincidentally, avoids the WGA process. Keep in mind that an install like this will almost likely cause some side-effects; i...
PDF Generation Using Only PHP
25 Jan 2006
PDF Generation Using Only PHP. I'm a fan of people who can pick apart a spec and make a free, scripted API out of it. I once came up with a hackish way of reading SWF files using ASP but ran into trouble when they implemented zlib compression as of Flash 6. ...
Emailing Large Files using DropSend
23 Jan 2006
DropSend is a web-based application for emailing large files. This is the kind of service that I never thought I’d really find a need for. Ryan Carson was kind enough to send me a free subscription a while ago but I never got around to checking it out. Most files that I end up sending are usually less than 5MB and have never been an issue. Sometimes the files might be 10 to 15MB and I’...
Quick Link: Getting Funky With Scopes and Closures
22 Jan 2006
Getting tired of hearing about JavaScript scope? I hope not. Mark Wubben shares his tidbits on scope and closures. ...
Source Order, Skip links and Structural labels
19 Jan 2006
Webusability has published the results of their research on Source Order, Skip links and Structural labels. Our results suggest that: Most screen reader users expect at least the main site navigation to be presented before the informational content of the page. The source order of a web page is likely to be of little relevance to the majority of screen reader users. About half of the scr...
Quick Link: Using Flash as an Animation Underlayer
09 Jan 2006
From the particletree folks: Using Flash as an Animation Underlayer. My prediction: expect to see some creative flash/html integration in the months to come. ...
Buzzword Hell
01 Jan 2006
Every industry has its buzzwords and the web industry is no different. Ever sit in a meeting with a salesperson (they're buzzword-friendly) and cringe at the mention of every buzzword you've ever heard? It's no longer about thinking outside the box. It's about being a thought leader or best of breed. If you find yourself needing to vent, make your way over to Buzzword Hell. ...
Quick Link: Lightbox JS
29 Dec 2005
Lokesh Dhakar sent me his unobtrusive JavaScript-based image popup, called Lightbox JS. I like the feel of the result although the execution feels a little jumpy in Firefox. A smoother transition and a way to cancel the image (or at least hide the overlay) before it has loaded would be nice features. ...
Quick Link: Make Internal Links Scroll Smoothly with JavaScript
27 Dec 2005
Just wanted to bookmark this little script: Make Internal Links Scroll Smoothly with JavaScript. If a user clicks a link to an on-page anchor, it'll scroll the page instead of jumping directly to the spot. ...
Quick Links: Around 9rules
20 Dec 2005
A few interesting things from fellow 9rulers and I thought it easier to bundle them up into one quick post. Matt Brett creates PSD and AI files for the feed icon used in Firefox and the Internet Explorer 7. Matthew Cahill, recently inducted into 9rules, has a nice site—love the topics in the sidebar. And Roger of 456 Berea Street links to a few of his favourites for the year (might have been...
Quick Link: Z-index and Positioning
16 Dec 2005
In Andy Clarke's entry at 24 ways, "Z's not dead baby, Z's not dead""Z's not dead baby, Z's not dead", he describes using z-index and absolutely position elements within a relative container. I've used this on projects in the past (with alpha PNG's) and it works well. Older versions of Safari and Netscape have issues under certain edge cases. ...
Know JavaScript and need a job?
14 Dec 2005
If you consider yourself a JavaScript master and live close to Palo Alto (that's in California!), Facebook is looking for you. Check out Avalonstar for more info. ...
Quick Link: Ruby on Rails hits 1.0
14 Dec 2005
What's that? A Web 2.0 project that ISN'T in beta? That's right, Ruby on Rails is officially 1.0. ...
Quick Link: Unobtrusive and Persistent Script.aculo.us Effects
08 Dec 2005
A quick little tutorial on creating unobtrusive and persistent script.aculo.us effects. ...
Quick Link: How to: Embedded Google Maps
04 Dec 2005
Paul Stamatiou puts together a decent how-to on embedding Google Maps on your page. Is a Yahoo Maps How-to on its way? ...
Quick Link: Worn Type
03 Dec 2005
Get that wicked worn look using CSS. It uses an empty span to achieve it's magic -- you decide if that's acceptable. ...
Quick Link: Quick Guide to Prototype
29 Nov 2005
Particletree offer a decent overview of some of the features of Prototype, the JavaScript library with some great utilities built into it. It's important to mention that at +30k, it's best to take out anything you don't need. ...
Quick Link: Firefox 1.5 Released
29 Nov 2005
Firefox 1.5 has been officially released. Lots of new stuff. Things I find interesting: better application update feature and better CSS support. Now, when will IE7 make an appearance? ...
Quick Link: Google Analytics
14 Nov 2005
Google has web analytics for free. Similar service coming soon from Adaptive Path is Measure Map. And if you like hosting your own stats (and paying to do so) check out Mint. ...
Quick Link: How Big Companies Can Innovate
12 Nov 2005
Kareem Mayan talks of Mike Davidson's departure from Disney and the innovation that can and should exist in big companies (and I would add, should exist in small companies, too!) ...
Quick Link: The Ultimate getElementsByClassName
07 Nov 2005
Robert Nyman adds his version into the fray with his own getElementsByClassName function but accounts for that pesky hyphen (which is a special character in Regular Expression world). ...
Quick Link: Cross-browser Image Transitions
07 Oct 2005
brothercake's Image Transitions. Yeah, they've been out for awhile but they're still interesting. Especially in this Web 2.0 day and age. Ugh, I just said "Web 2.0". Shoot me now. ...
Quick Link: MAX Awards Finalists
06 Oct 2005
Macromedia MAX 2005 Awards Finalists Fuel Industries (with CP+B) is in there with Watch Me Change. ...
Treehouse - A Web Development Magazine
03 Oct 2005
Treehouse has released its first issue! Treehouse is a PDF-based web development magazine put together by the fantastic team at Particletree. There are interviews with Jason Santa Maria, Shaun Inman, and Paul Scrivens along with content from Jeremy Keith, John Zeratsky, yours truly, and the members of Particletree. This first issue is free so be sure to check it out. ...
Writeboard from 37signals
02 Oct 2005
Although just a soft-launch for now, I decided to take a look at the application; especially after a thorough review by Solution Watch. Writeboard is a web-based collaborative writing tool allowing multiple authors to go in and edit a single document. Based on that description alone, I thought of Writely but the two don't really compare. As Brian of Solution Watch mentions, 37signals has really ...
Rollyo: Roll your own search engine
29 Sep 2005
Rollyo is still in beta but has now been released to the general public. The idea behind it is that you can select a number of sites that you can search at once. This way, you can create customized topical searches that are of interest to you. Fellow 9ruler, Erik of Kartooner, has set up a searchroll to search all the 9rules sites that cover web development. One of the things that I've really fou...
New companies: clear:left and Blue Flavor
26 Sep 2005
Two new companies have made their way into the market, being headed up by some fabulous individuals within the web development community. Over in the UK, Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith and Richard Rutter have started clear:left. Then, over in Seattle, D. Keith Robinson, Nick Finck, Matt May and Brian Fling have started Blue Flavor. Best of luck fellas! ...
Writely, so.
09 Sep 2005
I've had numerous ideas for web-based applications and the folks behind Writely have come pretty close to reading my mind. Writely is an online document editor. It's primary purpose is to facilitate document sharing between multiple authors. That in itself is interesting. With Word support, it can replace the need to purchase Word by allowing document editing via the browser. Another feature the...
Bookmark: JavaScript Logging
08 Sep 2005
David F. Miller's recent article on A List Apart describes the use of a cross-browser logging tool called fvlogger that can assist in debugging JavaScripts. No more alerts! ...
CSS Star Ratings Selector
29 Aug 2005
Just a quickie that I found interesting: CSS-based Star Ratings Selector. I swear star ratings are the new yellow-fade. ...
Bookmark: CSS Rollovers Image Preload
22 Jun 2005
Marko over at Maratz.com explains a quick trick to preload images used in CSS-based rollovers. ...
ASP.NET links
14 Mar 2005
This is just a to-do list of reading for myself. Walkthrough on basics: http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/excerpt/progaspdotnet_14/index2.html Control Samples: http://www.denisbauer.com/ASPNETControls.aspx Resources: http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/ http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/#Custom+Controls Support Groups http://www.dotnetmonster.com/ http://www.dotnetmonster.com/Uwe/Forums.asp...
Bookmark: SQL Server DBCC Commands
18 Jan 2005
A thorough list of DBCC commands including some undocumented ones. (via Windows IT Pro) ...
Bookmark: Guidelines for Accessible and Usable Web Sites
18 Jan 2005
Great insight from actual accessibility testing: Guidelines for Accessible and Usable Web Sites (via Mike Davidson) ...
Building an Address Book...
23 Dec 2004
Leslie over at 0xDECAFBAD is starting up a "Building a Web Application" series of his own. He'll be building an Address Book which will be developed, as he describes it, using a loosely coupled architecture. ...
Template Overview
23 Dec 2004
The Web Application Component Toolkit over at Sourceforge has a great overview of various HTML template techniques. ...
Designing with CSS in Dreamweaver
09 Dec 2004
Some may argue that WYSIWYG tools like Frontpage or Dreamweaver should never be used for web development. Dreamweaver, in particular though, is actually a formidable tool for developing sites that conform to web standards. On the Macromedia site, there is a tutorial which steps the user through using Dreamweaver to create CSS-based layouts. ...
Understanding Identity Columns (SQL Server)
08 Dec 2004
SQLTeam.com has an article that discusses in some depth Identity columns. I particularly like the little tidbit on resetting the identity column: DBCC CHECKIDENT('TableName', RESEED, 7). ...
Quotations and Citations
24 Nov 2004
There's one thing that Roger Johansson is and that is thorough. His most recent article on Quotations and Citations is a further testament to that. He offers some great advice on how to use and style quotes and block quotes. ...
Bookmark: ASP.NET Performance Techniques
17 Nov 2004
Scott recaps Rob Howard's 10 tips for writing high performance web applications and adds some interesting info on pagination. Returning multiple recordsets is high on my list of optimizations. It's also one of the reasons I don't like MySQL. As much as possible, open the connection, get only the required data you need for the page, and then close the connection. ...
ASP.NET CAPTCHA
16 Nov 2004
An ASP.NET approach to creating CAPTCHAs. CAPTCHAs are quick tests that humans can easily figure out but are difficult for computers. Luckily, I haven't seen too many of these pop up on blog sites. It seems like an unnecessary hassle. Someone needs to come up with a better way! ...
Bookmark: Search Engine Decoder
16 Nov 2004
See which search engines feed their content to other search engines. Do we really need this many sites? ...
use of the :target attribute and conditional text
10 Nov 2004
Ooh, this is a good one. Andreas over at Webgraphics talks of using the :target selector to add additional content or style after clicking on an anchor. Sorry IE users, you're left out in the cold again. ...
Ruby Links
28 Oct 2004
I grabbed this list off of a slashdot article. Ruby Home Ruby Forum (new! primarily for beginners) Ruby Online Docs Ruby Project Archives, also here Ruby Package Manager (easy to install ruby apps) Ruby IDE (free!) Ruby One-Click Installer for Windows Ruby IRC channel: #ruby-lang at irc.openprojects.net Ruby Newsgroup Ruby Central DMOZ Add any links to Ruby resources you might have to the co...