Jon Raasch's Web Development Blog

Announcing the TranslateThis Button for WordPress

Jon Raasch — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:42:51 +0000

I just released a new WordPress plugin to leverage the TranslateThis Button, a Javascript translation widget that uses the Google Language API. This plugin provides an easy interface for customizing the options in the TranslateThis Button. The widget can be either be displayed anywhere in your theme with a template tag, or be included as part of the widgetized sidebar. The plugin provides a variety of settings that can be accessed in the WordPress admin section:

Control the languages in the dropdown and the text of the various UI elements.
Enable Google Analytics tracking for translation events.
Use new button imagery, or disable images altogether, opting for text-only links.
Confine the translation to the post/comments, or translate the entire page.
Disable the cookie, or allow the plugin to translate all the pages on your site automatically.
And more...

These Icons Look Like Crap – Poopy Social Media Icons

Jon Raasch — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:03:27 +0000

Social media often seems like a load of crap, so I’m releasing these Poopy Social Icons: 36 different icons in 3 crappy sizes: 48×48, 64×64, 128×128. Feel free to use the Poopy Social Media Icons on any site personal or commercial. No attribution is necessary but please link back to this post or retweet it if you like using these. Thanks! Download the Poopy Social Media Icons The Poopy Social Icon set covers 34 different social media outlets with an extra icon option for both Twitter and Digg. If I missed any, please let me know.

Get Around Email Address Privacy Issues in Google Buzz (Sort of)

Jon Raasch — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:44:29 +0000

Last week marked the release of Buzz, Google’s new competitor for Facebook and Twitter. Initially Buzz inherited a lot of the privacy issues of G-Chat by automatically adding everyone in your Google contacts. The problem with Google contacts is that even people you email casually end up in this list. Fortunately, this privacy [...]

10 Javascript Performance Boosting Tips from Nicholas Zakas

Jon Raasch — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:55:06 +0000

Nicholas Zakas is a Javascript guru and principle front-end engineer for the Yahoo! homepage. Zakas just announced his new book High Performance JavaScript, which you should order today. Zakas is pretty much the man when it comes to Javascript performance, and in June he gave a Google Tech Talk entitled Speed Up Your Javascript. While Javascript [...]

CSS Rounded Corners In All Browsers (With No Images)

Jon Raasch — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:00:19 +0000

In the past two years, increased browser support has transformed CSS3 from a fringe activity for Safari geeks to a viable option for enterprise level websites. While cross-browser support is often too weak for CSS3 to hold up a site’s main design, front-end developers commonly look to CSS3 solutions for progressive enhancement in their [...]

jQuery Contra Plugin – Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, enter

Jon Raasch — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:35:47 +0000

Remember the code from Contra on original Nintendo? Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start; it’s also known as the Konami Code and the 30 Lives Code. This famous sequence of buttons from the 80’s isn’t going anywhere: in more recent times it’s been in a Moldy Peaches song, and used [...]

Appending Style Nodes with Javascript

Jon Raasch — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:00:47 +0000

In Javascript it often makes sense to attach a stylesheet rather than style a bunch of individual attributes. Appending a stylesheet to the DOM has a number of advantages: Stylesheets can be easier to work with than Javascript—it’s just more natural to use CSS syntax for styling. It’s nice to avoid the cross-browser headaches associated with [...]

TranslateThis – A Javascript Translation Widget for Noobs and Nerds Alike

Jon Raasch — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:16:38 +0000

TranslateThis is a new Javascript widget that provides 52 languages of translation by leveraging the Google Language API. Installing TranslateThis couldn't be easier—simply copy and paste the widget code anywhere on your website, you don't have to upload any files or change any settings. Besides being easy to use, TranslateThis also provides many attractive features for developers. First off, requests to the Language API run in Javascript, so the translation is pretty fast. Additionally, the script is lightweight, weighing in at just over 11kb with another 7kb of imagery. And since it doesn't depend on any Javascript library, TranslateThis can be implemented on any website without additional overhead. Finally, TranslateThis has been tested in all modern browsers and its user interface is designed to be straightforward and seamless. Get your own TranslateThis Widget Read the TranslateThis Documentation

What can you customize in TranslateThis?

10 Advanced jQuery Performance Tuning Tips from Paul Irish

Jon Raasch — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:55:12 +0000

There were a lot of good speakers at today’s jQuery Summit, but Paul Irish’s talk on jQuery Anti-Patterns for Performance & Compression was my stand-out favorite. Covering a number of advanced jQuery performance optimization techniques, this speech put my knowledge of jQuery optimization to shame. Before Paul’s talk my understanding of jQuery performance tuning was [...]

Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin for WordPress (YAFPP)

Jon Raasch — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:27:14 +0000

Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin provides an easy-to-use interface for featuring specific posts in a WordPress blog. After installing the plugin, you can feature and unfeature posts by clicking on each post’s ‘featured star’ in the WordPress edit posts page. Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin has a variety configuration options, allowing you to control a [...]