Eoghan O'Brien.com - Cork Web Designer/Developer, Ireland

CSS Naked Day

I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and stripped off my digital man pants. Why? To promote Web Standards of course.

Today is April 5th, the official, CSS Naked Day 2007 giving all web standards aware designers and developers a chance to strip off their CSS while others look on and laugh at your embarrassing … font-sizes.

According to official CSS Naked Day Website

The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your

IE Operation Aborted

I came across a very strange bug in Internet Explorer today, I was using swfobject to embed flash the web standards way, everything worked perfectly well in Firefox, as usual. However, when I tested in IE I got a runtime error saying:

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://www.domain.com/path/to/file/.

Operation aborted

The problem is you can’t append to the body element from script that isn’t a direct child to the body element. It can be fixed simply by putting defer=”defer” in the script tag.

According to the W3C, the defer attribute:

When set, this boolean attribute provides a hint to the user agent that the script is not going to generate any document content (e.g., no “document.write” in javascript) and thus, the user agent can continue parsing and rendering.

It’s not every day you find a way to crash the IE runtime entirely like this, but hopefully this post will help people overcome the problem faster, if they do.

Safari Clearfix Bug

I’m not sure if this has been mentioned before, but if you’ve ever used the clearfix you’ll have come across the content: property with a value of ”.”;

.clearfix:after {
content: ”.”;
display: block;
height: 0;
clear: both;
visibility: hidden;
}

What you might not have noticed is the that in Safari that dot value ”.” is actually shown on the page. So if, like me, you were scratching your head looking for an answer to this, I hope this helps.

The solution is quite obvious and very simple but hopefully using this page as a resource will save you time scouring your css for errors.

All you need to do is replace the ”.” with ” ” and no more strange dots appearing on your screen, the clearfix works just the same so all is good.

.clearfix:after {
content: ” ”;
display: block;
height: 0;
clear: both;
visibility: hidden;
}

Moving to Magnolia

I’ve been using delicious now for over a year, but I’ve never really liked the way it was set up, tagging is messy and the design is ugly. It wasn’t until yesterday that I finally gave up on delicious and made the switch to what is a vastly more usable and much better looking alternative, Ma.gnolia.

After signing up (using my OpenID account) I quickly realized Ma.gnolia is much more than just a social bookmarking website, it is infact an entire community dedicated to finding interesting websites. There many different groups packed with people interested in the same sites as you, there is also a instant messaging system built helping members to keep in touch.

When I began add bookmarks to the service I wanted to do two things: 1. import my Firefox bookmarks and 2. import my delicious bookmarks. Ma.gnolia helps you to do this with two very simple processes in the Support & Tools section, it even gives you the option of turning all your folders in your browsers bookmarks into tags.

All in all, magnolia proved to be the much faster, cleaner, prettier choice than delicious, all I have left to do is change my link roll on this site so it brings in my Magnolia list rather than my Delicious list.

Google's New Link Reporting Tools

I just finished reading an interesting article over at searchengineland.com about the release of Google’s new Link Reporting Tools.

The new system gives you far more information on inbound links than the “link:” search keyword ever did, mainly because “link:” purposely omitted links to a site out of fear webmasters would use the information to manipulate their ranking.

To access the new link information, go to webmaster tools and click the site you want to view, you should see a tab called Links, click that to view how many sites link to you or how many internal links you have.

You can read all about the link reporting tools here and here

Favicon2dots

Hey, its been a while since I’ve posted so I thought I better mend some fences and give you an update and also tell you about a cool little website I found.

Firstly I suppose I should tell you all that I’m working as a developer in Cork, part time, after a successful spell in Dublin with ActiveOnline. This week I’ve mostly been developing bespoke content management systems for individual clients, which has been an interesting research project for me as I’m still planning and blue-printing my own CMS.

Secondly, in what will be a very short post, I’ve found a very cool website called favicon2dots which takes your sites favicon and generates a pixel icon with your logo or brand, its a nice idea, pointless but cool all the same.

Posting has been sporadic in the last few months I know, but I should have more time over the next few months to pass along some thoughts and opinions to you which you care nothing about, hopefully one or two will be of some interest.

Symphony CMS

I’ve just completed my first site managed with Symphony CMS, and I’ve got to say its an amazingly powerful system and free too. One hurdle that would stop a lot of designers from using the system is its dependence on XML and XSLT for templating, though where some might see this as its downfall, I see it as Symphony’s most powerful feature because it allows customization beyond any regular CMS.

I started building a site for RedKing Architectural Design which needed to be updated by my client and so needed modules for Page Management, Services Management and Portfolio Management. Normally, the process of developing a custom CMS with these modules could take a week, with Symphony however it took less than two days and in a time where time is money, rapid application development such as this is invaluable.

If your interested in learning more about Symphony, I suggest you head over to the site , create an account, and download the install file, then take a gander at the Overture Wiki and Forums, the project is really starting to catch on with more users every day and there is already a thriving extremely helpful community.

Getting Acquainted With My Mac

I’ve had my eMac for about a year now, I know they aren’t the coolest looking or the fastest on the block but, for someone new to the mac environment, it has worked well for me.

I’ve installed most of the Web Development applications I frequently use as well as trying out a few more. I’ve really like using MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL & PHP) mainly because of how neatly it fits with OSX, its entirely self contained and takes only a few minutes to setup.

Another Mac specific application I’ve tried out recently is TextMate, its a very slick text editor for web developers with built in syntax and spell checking aswell as automatic indentation and a myriad of other features, I’ve actually been looking forward to coding.

I’m still discovering the Mac after 12 years on Windows from 3.1 to XP and I’ve got quite a way to go until I’m even slightly as comfortable as with Windows, I think the Mac undeniable style could be the deciding factor in converting me.

If anyone out there in Interwebland knows some more good applications worth looking at throw me a comment and let me know.

Version 6 Is Upon Us

It’s 4:30am and I’m still up puttin some final touches to version 6 of the site, I’ve put a lot of work into the little details this time around.

So! Whats new in this version? I hear you ask. Well, V6 will be the first design to feature “Sidenotes” (basically a blogroll) which will contain any random interesting bits of information I see around the Interweb, I’ve added a Books section where I’ll be adding all the books I’ve read into an online library and I’ve finally Categorised all my posts for easier browsability.

Whats gone? With progress there comes deprecation and that is certainly the case with the V6 update, I’ve removed the Colphon and Gallery pages because they were’nt getting much traffic, the Colophon page will now be integrated with the About Me page but there is nowhere in V6 for a gallery however I will definately add more features as I go.

Whats Cool? I’ve been working with script.aculo.us for a while now and so I decided to show the public a bit of tidy progressive enhancement using the effects library. Enter the busy bee image acts as a cover for some hidden features, go ahead click the button, I know you want to. Its pretty cool huh? I’ve also added in Christophe Beyls Livesearch Plugin which I found very useful and quite fun.

A couple of other small updates to each page will be completed later in the week, for now I’m happy with this. If you find any bugs or errors please let me know so I can iron them out ASAP.

Let me know what you think of the new site, Leave a comment! :D

Ajax Search 2.0

Hey, I’ve being playing around with Scriptaculous and Prototype recently, and decided to revamp the Ajax Search I posted before.

I’ve used some Scriptaculous Effects for animating the Search Results instead of just popping them up and have added a more user friendly Search Results page for users without Javascript. Take a look at the newer version here

Creating Ajax App using Scriptaculous and Prototype is absolutely simple once you understand the basic concepts of XMLHttpRequests. There’s a vast library of properties and methods available that make developing with Ajax absolutely painless and actually a lot of fun.

more…

Ajax Search

Continuing in my experiments in Ajax, I’ve created a very simple Ajax search, very similar to the LiveSearch used on this site, which will search through a database for the name of an article and pop up a result box filled with tasty Ajax Result goodness.

It also degrades quite gracefully as the search form will return whichever results without javascript turned off.

I’ve avoided using any JS libraries like prototype or Rico and opted for a homemade script for the Ajax request and any other methods needed.

Feel free to check out my code, if you want any further information, leave a comment, or send me a message from the contact page.

Check Out the Ajax Search

My First Ajax App

Well, its not really an app, but that seems to be what everyone who does anything with AJAX is calling it.

Basically, its an Add Comment script that allows you to preview your comments before you send it, then when you are ready to send it, it will be added to the database on the fly without the need for a page reload.

Obviously, because this is my first real try at using the XmlHttpRequest (I hate buzzwords), there will be a few problems, if you feel like pointing out any bugs or anything at all that you notice about the script, feel free to leave a comment, either here or at the comment app page.

Hosting Switch

I decided to switch hosts last week after seeing some of the hosting plans over at Dreamhost. They have some really amazing and cheap hosting plans which I couldnt just let pass me by.

I’ve signed up for the Level 1: Crazy Domain Insane (what a name!)
The package includes, 20GB Storage Space, 1TB(Terabyte) Monthly Bandwidth which automatically increases by 8GB each week, Unlimited MySQL Databases, 3000 E-Mail Accounts. PHP and Ruby on Rails Enabled and 1 Free Domain Name all for 7.95 a month, but with a Dreamhost code you can slice the fee in half, so all I ended up paying was €76 for two years of hosting. Which considering what I’m getting is a pretty sweet deal.

I’ve ported my Textpattern and Mint installations and databases over now so all is back to normal, if you have been on the site between Monday and Wednesday, you may have noticed some problems moving between pages, that was just a simple mistake on my part as I forgot to ftp my .htaccess file.

I have some site changes in the works, such as some experiments with Javascript Libraries that I have decided to implement on the site. So stay tuned for that.

I also uploaded some photos of my auld dog Rocky to my Flickr account . Rocky turned 12 (84 in human years) on June 6th. The old tyke is still truckin’, he’s grown extremely lazy and is getting more deaf with each passing day, he’s still a legend of a dog though.

Site Update: Version 5.0

If you havent noticed, I have updated my blog and made it a bit brighter. The old blog was getting a bit depressing and I was starting to justify not making any posts with the fact that I didnt like the look.

This re-design will force me to re-organize my site info and structure and will hopefully make it easier to read and use. Grab my RSS feed for updates or just do it old school and come back in a few days.

I will also be posting a few new tutorials in the coming weeks and months along with more stuff from my phone, which will become a regular feature on this site.

• CSS Naked Day
• IE Operation Aborted
• Safari Clearfix Bug
• Mmm...Launchy
• Moving to Magnolia