Archive for August, 2010

Cufon, a god send!

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

So for any of you developers out there who have been living under a rock like (like myself until a few months ago) there is this incredible JavaScript plug-in caller Cufon. Cufon allows you to render any font you want on your web page without having to convert everything to images and thus worry about SEO issues. The best part is super that it is easy to install! Really it is a simple five step install, which goes a little something like this:

(more…)

Sure jQuery is Pretty, But Don’t Write Off CSS…

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

Have been teaching intro to jQuery a bit over the past two months, I have noticed that many of my students are quick to ditch the CSS hover pseudo-class once they discover the .hover() function. Sure .hover() is great and all, but CSS is built into the browser and thus you don’t need to load a script or execute a script in order for it to work. CSS is a powerhouse if you can get a little creative with it…

(more…)

Now That is a Good Looking Toy…

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Me as a Toy Story Character

This may make me a total dork, but I was teaching an intro to the web and HTML class last night and we were discussing interesting or cool websites, when I stumbled onto the Toy Story 3 Website. It is pretty fun, not going to lie. Sure the idea has already been done, a la create your own Simpson’s character or create your own m&m character, but this one is still rather fun and very well designed. Check it out and have a look: http://www.toystorytoycreator.com/. By the way the stud above is what my class thinks I should look like as a Toy Story character… Enjoy!

What Does That Symbol Mean Anyway

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

I don’t know about you, but there are a whole ton of icons and visual cues out there, especially in the tech world, that I haven’t the slightest idea what they are or why they look the way they do. Sure I know what they refer to and when they are used, but what is the back story, why that icon? Take that good old apple key symbol, which for those of you who did not know and are too young to remember, used to be a picture of an apple (hum, well that would have made more sense, seeing as it IS called the “apple” key). So, what is that strange design which replaced the logical one for which the “apple” key was labeled? Well this cool article written by Bryan Gardiner over at Gizmodo, goes into the history of some of these icons which we see every day. Pretty cool. Check it out: http://gizmodo.com/5612630/the-secret-histories-of-those-ing-computer-symbols

IE Cracked: Stick it to the Browser

Monday, August 16th, 2010

In the past I have written a few articles about some of the Internet Explore (IE) bugs and how to fix or work around them. Due to the success of these articles, and the largely expressed interest in knowing more, I have decided to start a series of articles entitled “IE Cracked” where I will dive into a few more of the specific problems commonly seen in IE and explain how to address them.

I hope to cover as many of the usual suspects as possible, but should there be a particular one that proves especially tricky or that I miss, feel free to shoot me an email and as I am more then happy to help or blog by request.

So keep an eye out for the many posts soon to come! Until then, down with IE! x-P