Musings
Recent musings
Flickr short URL bookmarklet
13th June 2010
I was getting annoyed with the whole view source > find canonical link > copy shenanigans when trying to get a Flickr short URL so I’ve put this little chap together. It’s a bit quick and dirty, so if you run into problems just let me know and I’ll sort them out. Similarly, if you find it useful drop me a line.
I’ve tried to add the bookmarklet to this entry, but ExpressionEngine doesn’t like the idea, so it’s on it’s own page here.
February 2010
Dan Wellman’s jQuery UI 1.7 book
21st
The jQuery ui is essentially a set of pre built, ready to use JavaScript widgets based (obviously) on the jQuery framework. They can be really useful straight out of the box, or as the foundation for something more complex, and they also come packaged with a decent set of CSS themes.
According to Dan Wellman himself, his book is written for…
…front end designers and developers who need to quickly learn how to use the jQuery UI library. To get the most out of this book you should have a good working knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript ,and will need to be comfortable using jQuery, the underlying foundation of the jQuery UI.
Delicious and Fever sitting in a tree
10th
I use delicious a lot, and I’ve been using a very small network with no real enthusiasm, until recently that is! I found myself becoming lazier and lazier with my delicious bookmarks, frequently just scavenging my network’s bookmarks for interesting things and saving them to my own. The people in my …continue reading...
January 2010
Wanted!
21st
Yesterday it was announced that I’ll be starting a new full time gig at Erskine Design as their new front-end developer. I’m absolutely thrilled to bits to have won the role, and equally so about the possibilities it opens up for me: working with that team. It does however mean that …continue reading...
ExpressionEngine plugin - retrieve custom field info in your templates (saef)
14th
This plugin will let you retrieve all custom field info for use in stand alone entry forms or anywhere else. If the field has options there’s a variable pair for that. There’s no restriction on formatting either so you’re free to use it how you will. The project is available on …continue reading...
November 2009
URL ABC
27th
A nice little idea from Tim Van Damme:
A simple game: Go to the address bar in your favorite browser, and type one letter. Start with “a”, end with “z”.
NME’s top 50 albums of the noughties on Spotify
18th
The Guradian NME have compiled a fairly comprehensive list of the greatest albums of the last decade, and although I’m not sure I’d agree with all of them, I do with a lot. So helpfully I’ve created a Spotify with all of them on. I suggest you whack it on random and enjoy!
Open the Spotify playlist of the Guradian NME’s greatest albums of the last decade.
ExpressionEngine entry excerpts outside of the search page
11th
If you need to use an excerpt for an entry perhaps inside an entry loop with several weblogs this plugin will automatically select the correct excerpt field then format and truncate it to a specified length.
jQuery UI 1.7 book by Dan Wellman - a precursor
11th
Dan Wellman has just launched his new book about the jQuery UI and his publishers have sent me a copy to review. I’ll have more on that later, but I’m certainly looking forward to reading it; here’s how he describes the book
An example-based approach leads you step-by-step through the implementation and customization of each library component and its associated resources in turn. To emphasize the way that jQuery UI takes the difficulty out of user interface design and implementation, each chapter ends with a `fun with’ section that puts together what you’ve learned throughout the chapter to make a usable and fun page. In these sections you’ll often get to experiment with the latest associated technologies like AJAX and JSON.
I really like the idea of the ‘fun with’ sections, quite often the biggest barrier to absorbing a text book is the tedium of the examples.
Flaws in quantifying online advertising success
6th
the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32% of Internet users in July 2007 to only 16% in March 2009, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8% of the Internet user base) accounting for 85% of all clicks.
Interesting stuff there indicating an ‘alarming’ drop in click through rates. Jack goes on to talk about how advertisers are using these figures to express a flaw in the system, and how they are wrong to do so.
The internet is a constantly evolving entity but equally so are the people who who use it, just because we’re not clicking ads as much as we used to doesn’t make them ineffective. We still see, read and hear them and that’s worked just fine for television, radio and print advertising up until now. Just as he says:
online display ads generate significant lift in trademark search, online and offline sales, and brand-site visitation across all verticals, among those internet users who were exposed to the online ad campaigns – whether they clicked on the ad or not.
Interesting stuff, and useful for those of us who use or implement online advertising.
p.s. apologies for the crappy stock imagery there, I was feeling a tad lazy
October 2009
ExpressionEngine 2.0 & CodeIgniter
29th
no longer is ExpressionEngine limited to interacting with extensions or modules. No, with CodeIgniter entire applications can interact with your ExpressionEngine install.Kenny Meyers – EE Insider That is very very exciting news. Surely that sneaky little tid-bit is one of the most important parts of this new launch? I’d expect to …continue reading...
Web users don’t read
23rd
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Political debate and Twitter
23rd
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A brand new website
19th
Out with the old and in with the new! My old site was a couple of years old, and I’d thrown it together over a day or two, it has served me well but it’s time for a change. I’ve also switched to ExpressionEngine, which I’ve been wanting to do for …continue reading...
Kiliman8
18th
In February next year I’ll be joining five other lads in a bid to climb Mount Kilimanjaro for charity. We’re hoping to raise in the region of £20,000 and it’s all from the support of lovely people like you! We’ll be supporting both Orchid Cancer Appeal and the National Association for …continue reading...
ExpressionEngine autocomplete search / jump menu with jQuery
7th
This tutorial will show you how to build an text input that will give autocomplete / auto suggestions via AJAX straight from an ExpressionEngine template then redirect straight to the entry. It could be used for searching, or shortcuts to particular entries, I have it working for the latter on a recent project. It will allow you to …
- Start typing parts of an entry
- Scroll through the autocompleted suggestions that pop up
- Click one (or use the keyboard shortcuts)
- Get redirected to the relevant entry on the relevant page
September 2009
Getting .hidden files to appear in the Textmate project drawer
30th
There are instructions available if you want to view various type of hidden files like .htaccess etc. but none for if you just want to see all files beginning with a “.”. All you need to do is update your file pattern in Preferences > Advanced > Folder References. Change your …continue reading...
Change the bundle / language activation shortcuts in TextMate
7th
There are shortcuts to change the current bundle you’re working with in TextMate usually ⌃⌥⇧C (ctrl + option + shift + {first letter of bundle title}.) It’s useful if you’re switching between say a PHP and a CSS file and TextMate hasn’t automatically switched. To edit the shortcuts, or to add …continue reading...
August 2009
Spectacular YouTube collages
31st
Josh Poehlein has painstakingly produced these collages exclusively from YouTube screen grabs. Currrently the collection is still a work in progress, but he says you can contact him and he’ll send you large printable versions for free. What a legend. Here are a sample of two of them, please visit his …continue reading...
July 2009
Change Firefox 3.5 to look just like Safari 4
11th
I’ve always been a fan of Firefox, and it was only recently when the Safari 4 beta came out that I switched my default browser. The beta seemed pretty good, I was even a fan of the tabs-at-the-top palaver. However… it crashes: a lot. For every day I’d say it crashes …continue reading...
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