Sep

12

ALA Sandbags: Revisited

Web Development

The picture used in this example is A List Apart’s own picture and is used on this blog to show how to create the effect originally posted on ALA.

I recently bought Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman, which I mentioned in an earlier post, and do not stop learning. It is one of the best purchases I have made in a long time. Whenever I take the time to sit down and read a chapter (or two for that matter), I just can’t stop. So, I recently decided to subscribe to the RSS feed of A List Apart to get my fix of web standard compliant advices and tricks to add to my webpage. Last week, I was delighted to find a post on how to create a wrap around text effect, like the one in this post, which I had previously observed in action on Mike Davidson’s site.

I presume that Mike [Davidson] had computed the “sandbags” by hand, which would be fine, I guess, if you only have to do it once or twice a month, but could end up being a very long process. However, the article in question: “Sliced and Diced Sandbags”, promised to automate the process using a little php script, written by the author himself, Rob Swan. Automate the process it did. And very well I might add. It is based on the transparency values stored in png files, but let’s not get into the details. Explaining the nuts and bolts of his script is not the point to my story today.

Read More» Posted by | 2 comments
Aug

31

Web Developer Extension for Mozilla-based Browsers

Web Development

In the works since June 3rd 2003, the Web Developer Extension for Firefox (Any Mozilla-based browser really, including Flock!) is simply amazing. The first version, Version 0.1, had a couple of features like resizing your screen and validating the css, etc. Now, the brand new version, Version 1.0.2, came out on January 31st 2006 and is simply stunning. It allows you to do many many things, from validation of HTML, CSS, Feed, Links, etc, to editing HTML and CSS on the fly. All of this is done by adding a toolbar in your browser.

By now, you are wondering why I am that excited about the plugin ? Right. My exact reaction when I found it (My friend Clint did actually, from www.leavingbehind.com). Well, for one thing, the tool bar enables you to change code for ANY page on the web. You wonder what www.alistapart.com would look like with red text instead of grey/black text ? No worries, simply click ‘Edit CSS’ and change ‘color: #333;‘ to ‘color:#FF0000‘ in the base.css file. It’s that simple. Now, of course, this will not change the look of the page for every user on the internet, only for you, but think about the time saved by developers all over … We can finally look at the result of changing a simple little css command live in the browser. It is an amazing tool to learn XHTML and CSS as well, since you can see what a XHTML command does by changing the values and seeing the result right away.

Enough praising. Where can you find a little jewel like this ? Find it at Chris Pederick’s page. Let me know what you think. I think it’s a stunning like plugin that, so far, works perfectly fine without any bugs. Great, great piece of software!

Posted by | 0 comments
Aug

26

Shopping at Chapters

Personal

Book Cover: Geometry of Design Today, I decided to go shopping for a book or two. I dropped Bonnie at work and then headed for the nearest Chapters. It was fun to walk on St-catherines St. on a Saturday night. I hadn’t done that for a long time. Anyways, I first browsed the magazine section for a good issue of Computer Arts but wasn’t impressed with their August issue and So I switched to the Web Design book section. I saw a couple of the books I keep reading about around the web like: Eric Meyers on CSS, The Zen of CSS Design by Dave Shea and Molly E. Holzschlag, and Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm. Ironically, I didn’t really like what I saw on those books, well I did but I have a limited budget, and decided against. So I moved on to the programming section. Again. Not good enough.

I finally ended up in the Design section and I decided to get Kimberley Elam’s book on the Geometry of Design. Only then did I decide to also get Jeffrey Zeldman’s book Designing with web standards. So here I am now. Two new books and a whole lot to learn.

I’ve only started to read the book by Kimberley Elam and it is really good. I mean, I’m almost done already and I’ve owned it for only two hours. The topic is really interesting, touching how mathematics can be applied to beautiful design or, in fact, how mathematics potentially explain why we prefer some designs to others. It’s a real eye-opener and I suggest it to anybody who would like to read a little on this subject. Great buy!

Book Cover: Designing with web standardsAs for the book by Zeldman, it is basically a bible in terms of how to respect web standards when developping on the web and a little introduction to the main topics surrounding the web development of today. I haven’t really started to read this one, but the couple lines I’ve read here and there were really promising. I will let you know officially what I thought when I am done. For now, I have some reading to do.

Posted by | 1 comments
Aug

15

Creating a Tip Jar on WordPress with Paypal

Web Development

I’ve been curious to know how to setup the equivalent of a Tip Jar on my website. Just for the fun of it. I finally got to it, and I thought I should share the wealth by writing this simple tutorial on how to create a Tip Jar using your existing PayPal account.

  1. Go to http://www.paypal.com and login to your account (Sign up for one if you don’t have one)
  2. Click on ‘Merchant Tools’
  3. Find the link to ‘Donations’ at the right side by scrolling down a little (or do a search for Donations).
  4. Fill out the necessary information and click on ‘Create Button Now’
  5. You then copy it to your website, and hope for some more traffic!
  6. Don’t forget to leave a tip by clicking on my ‘Make a Donation’ button to see if my setup works and help improve my site (Ha ha!).
Posted by | 0 comments
Nov

02

My Website (Version 2.2)

Personal

Here is the new design of the website. I am still working on it and so I hope most of the stuff is working correctly. I am going to change a lot of the stuff around and so don’t get too comfortable. I need major feedbacks from everybody because I am not sure about the new menu thing. J’l'ai changer pour toi John!!! Est-ce que c’est pour le mieux ? Anyways, I hope you guys like it.

To leave comments, just click on the small ‘comment’ link at the bottom of THIS post.
Pour laisser un commentaire, clicker sur le petit icone ‘comment’ en bas de CE message.

I am also thinking of introducing a bilingual option to the site, but HEY I am writing a masters thesis at the same time… Hehehe In the meantime, practice your english!!! Oh and the photoblog is still coming up. How do you like the new beardcam comments ? I’m off to watch some CYE a little bit more. Everybody should get into that show, it is hilarious!!

Posted by | 0 comments
© Copyright Bonuel Photography - Theme by Pexeto