April 2007 – Page 2 – Still Breathing

HTML mastery

Posted on April 20, 2007April 20, 2007 by chris

Nathan Smith, himself no slouch when it comes to things webby, is recommending a new book by Paul Haine entitled HTML Mastery. If the title and premise are anything to go by this, as Nathan rightly says should be required reading for everyone involved in building websites.

You see, it all comes down to the quality of your foundations. Whether you’re talking about architecture, drumming, or pretty much anything else, getting the basics right and keeping them right is fundamental to your success. When developing websites the basics is the HTML your pages are made up of. get that right and you’ve got a great foundation from which to build. get it wrong and you’ll come unstuck sooner or later.

Once you pop

Posted on April 19, 2007April 19, 2007 by chris

There’s been another little development over at the Performer academy. If you want to create popup windows (yes, Popups Are Bad, I know) then you can now do so in an unobtrusive way using Performer.

Because I realise that the prototype framework that Performer runs on is quite large (over 30Kb event when compressed and packed) I’m looking at a way to create a PerformerLite version that will include just the few prototype features that Performer actually uses, rather than the whole thing. I’m aiming for a file that will be less than 15Kb with all the Performer features you’ve come to know and love.

If anyone is interested in helping out with that effort just drop me a line.

CSS positioning

Posted on April 17, 2007April 17, 2007 by chris

Bored? Take a look here at all you’ll ever need to know about CSS positioning (well, until the article on floats comes out).

Microsoft, the web, and lots of long words

Posted on April 17, 2007April 17, 2007 by chris

Microsoft have long been seen as the enemy of The True Web ™, and to be honest they haven’t always been on the ball when it comes to Internet developments. However perhaps all that is to change. This particularly intrigues me:

Later this year, it will offer Live CRM, a Microsoft-hosted, subscription-based version of its customer relationship application, part of its Dynamics line of business apps. Microsoft has hinted that it will offer its Dynamics ERP apps online and says new versions of the shrink-wrapped products coming out this year will feature links to Microsoft-hosted online communities. The first, a social network for financial professionals, will feature blogs, discussion boards, wikis, and the ability to create personal profiles, Ã la MySpace.

Why ‘financial professionals’? Why not add these sorts of facilities to the already huge Hotmail community? Or create a MySpace killer (if such a thing is possible)? Oh well, whatever they do I’m sure it will be worth watching.

Limiting the number of characters entered into a textarea or input box

Posted on April 12, 2007 by chris

I bet that title just grabbed you, yes? Well, sound boring it may do, but it’s been a bit of a problem for web designers for a long while now. However I’ve just made things a little easier with the latest addition to my Performer library. Suffice to say the new function is called ‘Limiter’ and does what it says on the tin.

I’d also like to thank kourge for very helpful suggestions and input on the source code that’s made Performer a lot more streamlined.