Super Ginormous

Category: Web Development

Posts related to web design and development.

  • RefreshAugusta

    I had the idea to start a local group for a while now. Having read about the success of Refresh in other cities, I was intrigued to try and do something like it here in Augusta, Georgia. It wasn’t until recently that I started to get serious with the idea. Tonight we’re holding our first planning meeting. Next month, we’ll hold our first meeting. I’m nervous and excited at the same time. I can’t wait to see what this group can accomplish for Augusta.

  • Take the Survey

    It’s that time of year again: The 2008 A List Apart: Survey for People Who Make Websites is here and it wants you to get in on the action.

    Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites. It is time once again to pool our information so as to begin sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide.

    Possibly the most important invention of the past century, the web is undeniably one of the most robust engines of knowledge transfer, political and social change, artistic endeavor, and economic growth the world has seen.

    Remove the web, and billions in trade disappear. Websites enable people who can’t walk to run to the store. They bring knowledge and freedom of thought to places where such things are scarce; make every person with a connection a citizen of the world; and allow every citizen to be heard.

    So, what are you waiting for? Go take the Survey already!

  • Firefox 3 add-ons I can’t live without.

    Today Mozilla officially released Firefox 3. If you haven’t grabbed it yet, what are you waiting for? These are some of the extensions that I now use:

    • AnyColor – Currently available for the Windows version of Firefox 3 only, this add-on lets you shift the color/appearance of your current theme on the fly. It works really well with the default theme for Firefox 3 on Windows XP. I’m currently using the Dark preset.
    • Better Gmail 2 – An excellent extension that allows users to get more out of Gmail. (Updated the link!)
    • Color Management 0.4 – Though Firefox 3 has some support for color profiles out of the box, this add-on gives it the ability to read ICC color profiles embedded in images. (This hopefully translates to better and more consistent color fidelity in images on the web.)
    • ColorZilla 1.9 – With the ability to sample colors from anything on a webpage, and the ability to grab color palettes from those sites, this is an invaluable add-on to have.
    • Facebook Toolbar – If you use Facebook and Firefox, this toolbar is worth having. It notifies you when your friends post anything new, allows you to search contacts, see status updates and more all without visiting facebook.com.
    • FaviconizeTab – I just recently started using this add-on, and I can’t see how I worked without it. If you’re like me, and keep several tabs open all day long, this extension allows you to right-click on tabs and turn them into just the favicon only. Not only does this save valuable screen real estate, it allows you some degree of privacy in that people looking over your shoulder won’t necessarily be able to see what’s in all of your open tabs.
    • Firebug 1.2.0b3 – If you’re doing any sort of web design or development, you need to have this add-on installed. It’s an invaluable tool for debugging CSS/HTML, Javascript, and much, much more.
    • Google Gears – Gears enables you to use compatible sites offline. Google Documents, Remember the Milk and many more sites support Gears, and I’d imagine more sites in the future will work with it as well.
    • IE Tab – Another must have add-on for web designers/developers. Quickly toggle between Firefox and Internet Explorer rendering engines with Firefox itself.
    • MeasureIt 0.3.8 – This ruler comes in handy when wanting to measure elements on a site, specific images and more.
    • PicLens – PicLens lets you browse through photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube and more through an immersive 3D experience. The latest version has integrated Amazon “window shopping”, videos from MSNBC, ESPN and movie trailers and more…
    • Prism for Firefox 0.2 – This add-on allows you to create stand-alone applications of websites you commonly use. I used it to create stand-alone versions of Basecamp, Gmail and gCalendar.
    • ReloadEvery 3.0.0 – This simple add-on allows you to configure pages to be refreshed on a schedule you set. For example: If you use the web version of Twitter, you could set this extension to reload the page every 5 minutes.
    • Web Developer 1.1.6 – Honestly, I don’t use this add-on all that often, but when I do – I’m glad I had it. Simple things like being able to disable all styles and resizing the browser window makes this add-on worth keeping around for me.

    What add-ons/extensions are you using with Firefox 3 that you can’t live without? I’d love to know!

    Michael Montgomery suggested these extensions:

  • No Photoshop vs. Photoshop

    Photoshop CS3 ExtendedWhy We Skip Photoshop vs. Why We Don’t Skip Photoshop – I think the lesson learned here is that teams work the way that suits them best. 37Signals has the luxury of being able to design for themselves, and has established a set of design standards that they can ripple throughout their products. Whereas at Blue Flavor – which is a business more similar to PowerServe, I’d imagine – Photoshop is an integral part of the design process that cannot be ignored.

    I like the concept of sketching things down on paper and then going directly to HTML, but in most cases, that’s just not practical – especially if your goal is to design something that doesn’t look vanilla. What works for one person, one team, one company isn’t necessarily going to work for another.

  • The new Twitter Transparency

    One of my biggest complaints with Twitter is that users were left in the dark when the site was having problems. That’s changed. Twitter’s more transparent than ever.

    Recently Techcrunch asked Twitter several questions regarding their infrastructure, policies and more (Hey Twitter I Have A Few Questions Too). Twitter answered back with “It’s not rocket science, but it’s our work.“. In their response, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone answer each of TC’s questions honestly and directly. As TC put it: “Twitter continues to be annoyingly and constructively responsive to criticism. They respond to this post here, saying “We’re working on a better architecture.” Kind of takes the air out of the balloon when you can’t get them riled up.”

    Twitter is now serving as the model for transparency. Yes, they’re experiencing growing pains, but they’ve learned from their mistakes and are embracing the idea that the more they let users know, the more understanding they’ll be. Other companies should take note.

  • Disqus integration

    DisqusI’ve been toiling over the idea of integrating DISQUS into my site to provide a better way to allow site visitors to comment. I’m not sure how it’s going to work out, so consider this an experiment for now.

    The idea behind Disqus is that commenting becomes more interactive for readers of this site and others. By using Disqus I’m attempting to make this site more a conversation as opposed to the usual: I post something, you read, you think about posting a comment and then talk yourself out of it. That’s not to say it won’t still be that way, but I digress.

    Older posts won’t be affected. If comments exist on an older post, and the discussion is still open, those comments will still use the standard WordPress commenting system. New posts and those with no comments, where commenting is still open, will utilize Disqus.

    If you hate the new system, let me know. It’s not going to hurt my feelings one bit. But if you dig it, I encourage you to sign-up for Disqus as well. You can friend me on Disqus by going to: disqus.com/people/cdharrison.

    Now, let’s get this conversation started, shall we?

  • Download Day 08

    Download Day - English
    Download Day 2008. Pledge your involvement in helping Firefox 3 set a Guinness World Record for number of software downloads in a day. I’m in, are you?

  • Dreamweaver, Fireworks CS4 Betas Released

    Fresh from the Adobe Labs comes betas for Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 and Adobe Fireworks CS4. It should be noted that if you’ve been using CS3, there is a new unified interface that’ll be appearing in CS4 that may take some getting used to.

    Also, if you tested the Photoshop CS3 beta when it was released, I can’t stress enough that you should not install this software on a machine that is mission critical for your business. This is beta software. It may have problems. It may cause difficulties if you decide to upgrade to CS4 when it’s released.

    Caveat emptor.

  • Simple Form Redirection

    Recently, a friend asked if I could come up with a simple form that would allow you to enter a value into a field, hit the submit button, and have it take the user to a URL with the value they entered in the field appended to the URL. I’m not great with JavaScript, but I figured it’d be a good learning exercise for me.

    Scripting is an area I have never been comfortable in. I can work with existing code without any problems, but writing my own has always been a challenge for me.

    Here’s what I came up with:

    <form action="http://subdomain.example.com/" method="post" name="redirect">
<input type="text" value="" name="url" id="" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" name="submit"
onclick="this.form.action=document.redirect.action + document.redirect.url.value;" />
</form>

    View Code on Snipplr

    To use this, simply change the URL set in the form action to your own URL. Once the user hits submit, the form will post to http://subdomain.example.com/XXXX where ‘XXXX’ equals the value of the text field. Obviously, there’s no validation whatsoever. Also, the domain needs to have a slash after it or it’ll fail in IE. If a user enters a value that doesn’t pair up with a URL that resolves, it won’t work.