Confessions of a Web Developer XII
First impressions, second thoughts, and third degree...
- I can't make up my mind on Twitter. On one hand, they've made their name by allowing 3rd party development to flourish, and now they seem to be shutting people out. There's a feeling of betrayal, like we've been suckered in and now that they've got us, they change the rules. On the other hand, it's a free service and we're owed nothing.
- I'm not sure web developers know how under attack they are from mobile devices and "native." We need to band together to improve tools like PhoneGap and Titanium, as well as support the Firefox Marketplace and Firefox OS (formerly Boot2Gecko). We grew up loving the web -- let's ensure it lasts.
- I've read that Facebook's previous iPhone app was loading 40 blocking JavaScript files. 40. HTML5's fault. LOL
- Though I don't quite get it yet, Pinterest seems like the new Digg. Funny pics, viral stuff, but not sure there's a true value. I appreciate the house tips my wife has pinned though...
- The days of complete JavaScript frameworks are numbered. Developers are finding the value in micro-frameworks and are getting used to working with different APIs.
- on* attributes are incredibly useful for AJAX-driven sites. The alternative is event delegation; the problem, however, is that event delegation effects every event of the desired type -- on* just fires on that element. Way more efficient.
- It should be mandatory that WordPress plugins with CSS and/or JS files have options to disable them. Otherwise you must override the plugin's styles, guessing specificity or littering your style declarations with !important. Pain. In. The. Ass.
- When redesigning a blog, make it an absolute that you must finish it in a month, otherwise you get tired of your own design before it goes live.
- My Mozilla coworker, affectionately nicknamed "Tofu Matt", recently posted one of my favorite tweets: "I'm drinking beer on a Brazilian rooftop after hanging out with developers all night and I'm going to London tomorrow. http://careers.mozilla.org/". Mozilla is an incredible place to work. Tell 'em David sent you!
- The return of Script & Style warms my heart. So much inspiration; I hope that everyone else enjoys it as much as I do. The new S&S site will launch with my redesign next week...
- My redesign experience got me to dig deeper into the WordPress API and now that I've used it a bit, I have to say it's very nice. Now I understand why there are blogs dedicated entirely to the popular CMS.
- I still can..and can't...believe the fall of Digg. Digg was epic in its tech story days, eventually became a funny pics site, was rumored to be sold for $100m+ at one point, and in the end, it was sold for $500k. Shocking....
- I'm incredibly humbled by the group of people who have guest-posted for my blog relaunch. Flattered they'd do it and I hope you all enjoy hearing from someone other than me.
And there you have it. Feel free to let me know where I'm rubbish.
The first two ones are the one where you hit the nail on the head for me.
I really like these “state of my world”-posts you do, btw.
The best way to override a WordPress plugin’s styles/scripts is to use wp_dequeue_style and wp_dequeue_script.
That’s assuming they plugin author used wp_enqueue_style and wp_enqueue_script when she wrote the plugin.
” you get tired of your own design before it goes live.” I often do end up here…. LOL Well said..!!
As far as WordPress goes, that’s not quite true. I’ve started calling a “last.css” (whatever you want to call it) via the functions.css. At the least, you’re below the plugin css files.
I’d love to see something more… useful from plugins (and some themes) in the CSS and JS. Many plugins are build by PHP guys who shouldn’t be allowed within a hundred feet of a CSS file (let along JavaScript). They should know this and plan for those of us who know better to fix their (often very useful) code to suit our needs.
I could agree with getting tired of your own design, lol. Not only is it annoying to design for yourself, you take forever to publish it because you want it perfect.
Nice to hear that you’re redesigning the blog. (script and style news is quite awesome too!).
If I may suggest; please use an easy to read font when showing us code. I find the current one a real wtf!
“Meslo LG S DZ” : https://github.com/andreberg/Meslo-Font/downloads
Mensch : http://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-font.html
Monofur : http://www.dafont.com/monofur.font
“DejaVu Sans Mono”
“Consolas”
Freemono : http://www.fontspace.com/gnu-freefont/freemono
“Envy Code R” : http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-coding-font-released
“APL385 Unicode” : http://www.dyalog.com/downloads/fonts/Apl385.ttf
“I’ve read that Facebook’s previous iPhone app was loading 40 blocking JavaScript files. 40. HTML5’s fault. LOL” – it’s a shame the majority of people won’t ever read past the fact that they blamed HTML5.
You had me at “The new S&S site will launch with my redesign next week…”. I was very sad and frustrated when the site was hijacked. S&S is my favorite goto source for random acts of “cool stuff I should put on this site for no reason”.