Blog Archives: Page 2
Confessions of a Web Developer IX
It's been quite a while since I've gotten a few things off of my chest and since I'm always full of peeves and annoyances I thought it was time to unleash:
Change Category Slug within WordPress
When I first started this blog, I set the category "slug" to "sugar." Why sugar? Because a lot of a good thing is candy; thus, a bunch of MooTools tutorials is as sweet as sugar. While I get a giggle out of calling my categories sugar, Google doesn't find it nearly as funny, nor does Yahoo or Bing. In an effort to increase my SEO, I wanted to change my category slug to "tutorials." That's where the awesome Redirection plugin and a simple regular expression comes into place.
Accomplishing Common Tasks Using MooTools, jQuery, and Dojo II
My love of the JavaScript frameworks knows no bounds. Unfortunately too many developers stick to one framework without taking the time to learn the others. The more frameworks you know, the better a programmer you will be and the more money you'll make. Let me show you how to accomplish a few more tasks using three JavaScript frameworks: MooTools, jQuery, and Dojo.
CSS Triangles
I was recently redesigning my website and wanted to create tooltips. Making that was easy but I also wanted my tooltips to feature the a triangular pointer. I'm a disaster when it comes to images and the prospect of needing to make an image for every color tooltip I wanted made me rethink my redesign. Lucky for me, MooTools Core Developer Darren Waddell shared with me a great trick: CSS triangles. Using pure CSS you can create cross-browser compatible triangles with very little code!
HTML5′s placeholder Attribute
HTML5 has introduced many features to the browser; some HTML-based, some in the form of JavaScript APIs, but all of them useful. One of my favorites if the introduction of the placeholder attribute to INPUT elements. The placeholder attribute shows text in a field until the field is focused upon, then hides the text. You've seen this technique a billion times with JavaScript!
The Beauty of dojo.require()
I've been working full time with Dojo for the past four months and one of my favorite parts of the toolkit is the dojo.require system. The dojo.require system allows you to asynchronously request Dojo modules within the current page without needing to adjust your core Dojo build or needing to go out and download the given plugin. dojo.require is quite comprehensive but I wanted to give you a taste of dojo.require and how it works on a very basic level.
7 MooTools Plugins You Should Use on Every Website II
The advantage of using unobtrusive JavaScript is that you can vastly improve the user experience for website visitors using just a snippet of code. And since the MooTools JavaScript framework’s community is known for creating unique, quality plugins, I’ve compiled a list of plugins you MUST use on every website to take the user experience to the next level.
Implement the Google AJAX Search API
Let's be honest...WordPress' search functionality isn't great. Let's be more honest...no search functionality is better than Google's. Luckily for us, Google provides an awesome method by which we can use their search for our own site: the Google AJAX Search API. Let me show you how to implement this awesome API within your own website!
Dive Into Dojo Series: Dive Into Dojo Chart Theming
I just wanted to give everyone a heads up about my latest Dive Into Dojo post: Dive Into Dojo Chart Theming
HTML5: Wrap Block-Level Elements with A’s
HTML5 presents a simpler line of thought with HTML than XHTML. And quite honestly, it's a much needed simplification. One of those simplifications is the ability to wrap block-level elements like DIVs, H-tags, and P's with basic A elements. You read that correctly: wrap block-level elements with A tags.