AjaxLine -

«There are two general methods for creating partially transparent elements on a Web page. The first method uses transparent PNGs with the opacity pre-set through a digital imaging application. While this technique works, making it cross-browser compatible is a bit complicated. Internet Explorer 6 and below don’t support PNG alpha-transparency natively, so you need to incorporate Microsoft’s AlphaImageLoader filter and some scripting to correct for this deficiency.

The second method for creating translucent elements—the technique we’ll explore in this article—is to use CSS properties to directly control the transparency of an element.»

Source: Opera Developers Community.

Build An Incredible Login Form With jQuery

Spider84 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:42:52 +0000

Conner Zwick post an article in which he tells about creating beatiful login forms with jQuery. He writes:

«One struggle that still remains today in web design is displaying all of the redundant information on every page. For example, a login form. What if there was a way to easily make the content accessible on every page, but keep it hidden until needed? Well you can, by making a top panel that when clicked, will reveal its self and its content. But we need to make this look nice, so we'll also animate it.»

Source: NetTuts.

Reading ID3 tags with JavaScript

Spider84 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:09:21 +0000

Jacob Seidelin tells about reading MP3 tags with Javascript in his blog.He writes:

«I figured I'd try to put the binary Ajax code to some other use than the EXIF data library, and a simple project seemed to be the ID3 tags used to store artist, title, etc. in MP3's. For now, it's only capable of reading (the rather lacking) ID3v1 tags since these are very simple compared to the more fleshed out and robust ID3v2 tags. Maybe I'll try to add support for the v2 tags later.

Of course, one big disadvantage of doing this on the client in JavaScript is that the you need to download the entire MP3 file before the tags are available, so it might be better to stick to server-side solutions (of which there are plenty, I'm sure) in many cases if all you need is the tag info.»

Source: Nihillogic.

PHP / MooTools 1.2 Accordion Helper

Spider84 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:51:14 +0000

David Walsh has created MooTools 1.2 Accordion Helper written on PHP. He writes:

«The MooTools Accordion plugin seems to be the plugin that people seem to have the most problems with. It's an awesome plugin, so I can see why so many people want to use it, but I think that may be part of the problem. I think people see and want it without sufficient knowledge of MooTools or javascript in general. That's why I've created a PHP Accordion class to help make the develeopment of accordions easier and faster.»

Source: David Walsh blog.

7 Principles Of Clean And Optimized CSS Code

Spider84 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:38:18 +0000

There is an intresting article about oprimizing your CSS code posted on the Smashing Magazine site. Here's small excerpt from this article:

«Some of you may remember the days when 30KB was the recommended maximum size of a web page, a value which included HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images. I find with every new project with even the slightest bit of complexity, it’s not long before that 30 KB ideal is well out of my reach. With the popularity of CSS layouts and JavaScript-enriched web page experiences, it’s not uncommon, particularly for large sites, for the CSS files alone to jump well beyond that 30KB ceiling.

But there are some principles to consider during and after you write your CSS to help keep it tight and optimized. Optimization isn’t just minimizing file size — it’s also about being organized, clutter-free, and efficient. You’ll find that the more knowledge you have about optimal CSS practices, smaller file size will inevitably come as an direct result of their implementation. You may already be familiar with some of the principles mentioned below, but they are worth a review. Being familiar with this concepts will help you write optimized CSS code and make you a better all-around web designer.»

Source: Smashing Magazine.

Creating a Dynamic Data-Driven User Interface (Part 1)

Spider84 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:28:10 +0000

Scott Mitchell post an article about creating data-driven user interface. He writes:

«Most data-driven web applications have a fixed data model and user interface. What I mean by "fixed" it that the data it needs to be captured is known in advance. Consequently, the database's tables are created before a single line of code is written and the application's user interfaces are dictated by this pre-determined data model. While most applications work with a fixed data model there are scenarios where the parts of the data model need to be defined by the end user. Such applications are more difficult to create because both the data model and user interface need to be flexible enough to allow the user to specify the information to be captured.

Imagine that you were creating a web application to be used by small law firms for managing their clientele. You would need a database table to capture information about each client. This table would have columns for each attribute of a client, such as: FirstName, LastName, Email, Address1, Address2, City, and so on. Regardless of what attributes you define for this table you can be certain that there will be a law firm that needs to store additional information not already captured. To allow for this level of flexibility you could enable each law firm to define additional client-related attributes specific to their law firm. »

Source: 4Guys from Rolla.

5 Great Uses for the CSS Display Property

Spider84 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:14:44 +0000

Rob Glazebrook post an article in which he tells about 5 most commons uses for display propert. He writes:

«The display property is a bit of an unheralded workhorse in the CSS world. Even though the list of theoretical display property values is quite long, only three of them ever see any use (primarily due to poor browser support on the others): inline, block, and none.

30 Common String Operations in C# and VB.NET – Part I

Spider84 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:55:50 +0000

Suprotim Agarval post the first chapter of his new article about managing strings in C# and VB.NET. He writes:

«In this article, I have compiled some common String operations that we encounter while working with the String class. In Part I, I have covered 15 common string operations. In the next article, I will continue this article and cover 15 more.

All the samples are based on two pre-declared string variables: strOriginal and strModified.

Daily news 18.08

Spider84 — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:02:24 +0000

ASP.NET

The wild wide web for mapping

GDI+ Tutorial

Localizing Linq to SQL Entities

Flex

This week's Gumbo specs posted

JavaScript

AppJet + Random.org = True JSON randomness

Javascript Libraries

30 Days of Mootools 1.2 Tutorials - Day 1 - Intro to the Library

A Closer Look at YUI 3.0 PR 1: Dav Glass’s Draggable Portal Example

jQuery Timers

Various

8 Great Typography Blogs

Web Design

Bad Graphic Design and Preschool Websites