March 2011
1 post
Fool-Proofing Resizable Text Areas
Okay developers, we now have three of the four major browsers supporting re-sizable textarea elements, so it’s about time to update those stylesheets! Here’s what you’re going to do:
Find anywhere in your CSS that you have a textarea rule
You probably have a width and height set on it, amirite?
Set min-height to match the default height setting.
Set max-height to be 2 or 3...
February 2011
1 post
WatchJavascript Morse Code Translator from Kevin Sweeney on Vimeo.
Started to play around with the new sound API in the Firefox 4 nightly. Pretty cool to see this in action…even if Flash has supported sound generation for years…and Processing before that! Not yet playing at the “correct” speed with proper pauses and the like, but it’s a start.
November 2010
1 post
8 tags
Lightboxes (You're Doing It Wrong)
Do you remember your first lightbox experience? Me neither, and yet, they’re on just about every website you visit these days. Not this one though; and I’d like to explain why that is and why this design pattern probably doesn’t belong on your website either.
Lightboxes as we have come to know them have been popularized on the web since 2004 and in that time over 50 varieties...
August 2010
2 posts
Google and Arcade Fire Team Up for HTML5... →
cameronmoll:
This multi-window browser experience is probably unlike anything you’ve seen before, though eerily reminiscent of the Javascript-controlled browser window resizing and spawning we saw a decade ago (most notably with Flash sites).
The big headline here is that it’s built with HTML5. I’ve not dived into this enough to understand precisely what components of HTML5 are being used, and...
Maniacal Rage: The Problem with Facebook's... →
Here’s the thing about Facebook that really gets under my skin: They are slowly incorporating the features from every other independent web application on the internet. This is not inherently a problem—companies get bigger and they begin to have the resources to widen their feature set—the issue…
June 2010
4 posts
Lazy Image Loading
While researching some methods of lazy-loading images, I came across the following plug-in by Mika Tuupola which is based on the ImageLoader utility of the YUI library. A few different things don’t sit right with me with these existing solutions:
The jQuery plug-in would seem to require that it be included in the <head> of the page. Otherwise, the DOM would be well on its way to being...
3 tags
3 tags
Welcome to New Jersey...We're Sorry
I never intended to live in New Jersey. Suffice to say that I ended up there through a series of unfortunate events, but have learned to make my peace and have met plenty of people along the way who aren’t your stereotypical “Jersey Trash” types. This t-shirt concept is for all those people who I feel carry the need to apologize for “the rest of New Jersey”.
3 tags
May 2010
3 posts
5 tags
2 tags
Elevator/Door Communication System
Problem: People in hotels, apartment complexes and office buildings always seem to wait on elevators, regardless of the floor they are on. This is especially true in less trafficked buildings.
Concept: Smarter elevators that reduce wait time.
Details: When user opens certain doors on a given floor, the elevator is called for that floor. For the ground floor, there would be a double-sensor to...
3 tags
Dynamic Font Size
Problem: People who reference computers while doing other physical tasks (cooking, repairs, etc.) cannot read screens from a distance.
Concept: Web cam application which adjusts font size dependent upon user’s proximity.
Details: I like to cook for myself, but I refuse to buy cookbooks when there’s a wealth of recipes already online. The great thing about this is that I can use my...