http://www.seanmccambridge.com/ en sean@seanmccambridge.com Copyright 2011 2011-11-02T00:22:42-05:00 http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/i-dont-write-much-here-anymore/ http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/i-dont-write-much-here-anymore/#When:00:22:42Z My site is long overdue for a redesign.  I’m thinking I’ll still have a blog on the new site, but it won’t be the focus.  I mean, why focus on something that you’re going to let get stale and old?  The realities are realities, and this blog isn’t much more than a spam magnet.  So here’s one last post over here as a reminder to reinvent my site.  I have a lot of recent work to share, but I’m going to save it for a fresh, clean seanmccambridge.com until I post it here. 2011-11-02T00:22:42-05:00 http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/re-rendering-facebook-twitter-and-sharethis-social-buttons-when-adding-new-/ http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/re-rendering-facebook-twitter-and-sharethis-social-buttons-when-adding-new-/#When:19:21:44Z I was working on a WordPress site today with social buttons for each post on archive pages.  The site also has AJAX pagination that appends posts to the page when you click ‘view more’.  The issue I ran into was when new content came in via AJAX, the social buttons in HTML and XFBML weren’t rendering their iframes or complete content.  They were just the placeholders specified in the source. So here are three snippets to remember for Facebook, Twitter and ShareThis buttons: Facebook Facebook is simple.  It’s just a call to its XFBML parser. FB.XFBML.parse(); ShareThis Share this is also simple. stButtons.locateElements(); Twitter Twitter had a similar method in the past, but in new versions of their code the method was dropped.  So now you just have to reload the Twitter JS.  Not graceful, but it works. (function(){   var twitterWidgets = document.createElement(’script’);   twitterWidgets.type = ‘text/javascript’;   twitterWidgets.async = true;   twitterWidgets.src = ‘http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;   document.getElementsByTagName(’head’)[0].appendChild(twitterWidgets); })(); I know I’m going to use these again.  So here they are.  Hopefully, this cures someone else’s headache in the future. 2011-06-22T19:21:44-05:00 http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/i-just-saved-up-to-120-roundtrip/ http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/i-just-saved-up-to-120-roundtrip/#When:03:20:31Z WTF, Southwest? If I had a Save Me from the Hell of Modern Advertising Bill of Rights, the phrase “up to” would be banned.  Violators would have “MY IQ IS AS LITTLE AS 50” tattooed to their foreheads. I just bought a plane ticket on Southwest.  I already bought it when they shoved this graphic in my face.  I didn’t really get a great deal.  I paid a little over $200 for a one-way flight from Chicago, IL to Charleston, SC.  It wasn’t a bad deal, but it was nothing to light fireworks over. Then, on the post-transaction confirmation page, I get, “You just saved up to $120 roundtrip.” First of all, isn’t their shopping cart software smart enough to know I bought a one-way ticket?  Let’s say I saved up to $60 one-way, taking the average.  So I might have paid $260 total for a one-way ticket instead of $200? Secondly, if you squint really hard and read the fine print, you’ll see that this cute graphic is telling me that Southwest doesn’t charge baggage fees, and if i was high-maintenance enough to check a bunch of bags, then I would have saved $120 r/t. Big effing deal --- last time I flew to Europe I paid $500 round trip, and I checked a bag.  That would be something to make a graphic about. Enough hype.  Just tell me my credit card was approved. 2011-04-25T03:20:31-05:00 http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/i-have-no-excuse/ http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/i-have-no-excuse/#When:23:59:41Z I am a slacker writer.  It can be a challenge keeping up with a blog.  Since I started working full-time again, I have been immersed in building websites.  I’m learning a lot but writing little. But if you want to keep up with my annoying neighbors, you can read my blog about being surrounded by people who skateboard and play soccer on the hardwood floors above and torment me with loud hipster music below. 2011-04-12T23:59:41-05:00 http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/big-ben-in-chicago/ http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/big-ben-in-chicago/#When:05:41:31Z Just kidding, it’s the Wrigley Building. 2011-02-26T05:41:31-05:00 http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/have-you-started-using-the-html5-doctype/ http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/have-you-started-using-the-html5-doctype/#When:19:46:13Z On the escalator, are you a walker or a stander?online surveys 2011-02-17T19:46:13-05:00 http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/idea-javascript-font-preview-widget/ http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/idea-javascript-font-preview-widget/#When:04:13:56Z Web fonts are all the rage.  I’ve been playing with both Typekit and the Google Fonts API recently, and one of the big drawbacks I’ve seen so far is the inability to test the fonts without a lot of pain.  If you’re used to making comps, how will you design with a given font if it isn’t installed on your machine?  If you’re a developer, aren’t you hungry for something more efficient than configuring options on the font archive’s site, calling the script in your header and then adding it to your CSS? So far I haven’t seen a smooth, simple way to flip through various fonts in the same way you might in a graphic design program. There should be a way.  It wouldn’t be hard to write some JavaScript that you only have to place once in your page header that would allow you to preview many fonts in your site.  Imaging being able to specify a class or tag — or even just click on an element — and choose from drop-down boxes full of fonts, sizes and styles. Normally, I would keep this idea to myself, scheme about it for eons and maybe, just maybe, bring it to light.  Instead, I’m going to discuss it here so somebody builds it — maybe me, maybe you — but it seems like a good enough idea that it must be done.  Maybe it already is and I don’t know about it. 2011-02-17T04:13:56-05:00 http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/jquery-tubular-a-youtube-javascript-video-background-jquery-plugin/ http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/jquery-tubular-a-youtube-javascript-video-background-jquery-plugin/#When:22:51:01Z Just released tubular on the jQuery plugins site and on Google Code.  The plugin uses a single line of JavaScript to add a YouTube video in the background of your page. I think it’s pretty sweet.  It’s my first jQuery plugin. Check out the demo: http://www.seanmccambridge.com/tubular on Jquery: http://plugins.jquery.com/project/tubular on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/jquery-tubular/ 2010-11-21T22:51:01-05:00 http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/youtube-videos-as-background-video-using-css-and-javascript/ http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/youtube-videos-as-background-video-using-css-and-javascript/#When:02:34:39Z I’ve been seeing more and more use of video as a background on the web.  Sometimes, the results are cheesy; sometimes the results are dramatic.  Take a look at Design Kitchen’s portfolio, which is dominated by video.  You can’t help but watch the show as a human hand reaches in and throws the page around.  (Really, you can’t help it.  I’ve seen the site a few times already and still paused when I ran over to double check their link.) Meanwhile, all kinds of web services are opening up their APIs for anyone to take advantage of rich content like video, social media, maps, etc.  I read a tutorial on working with the YouTube API and had to take a stab. The result is a microsite for the Lowcountry Roller Hockey Association, a group of roller hockey players I am a part of.  I took some video of us playing a pick-up game recently when my skate broke—my choices were to go home or grab my Zi8.  I got behind the goal and filmed the scene.  Naturally, I put the video up on YouTube so the guys could see.  (Yeah, I like Vimeo, too, but YouTube is way more visible—it’s the #2 search engine in the world, after all!) So with a little jQuery, plain ol’ JavaScript and some calls to the YT API, I was able to build a site that stuck a YouTube video behind some normal HTML content using basic CSS positioning and some rudimentary geometry. Never forget proportions and cross-multiplication.  You know, when x/y = a/b and you know x/y and one of a or b?  Let’s say you’re solving for b.  You multiply y * z and divide by x.  Google it if you don’t follow.  It should be a part of every web designer’s day. Anyway, here’s the end result: Check out the site. It’s not live yet but it will be at charlestonrolleryhockey.com one of these days. I’m planning on turning this into a jQuery plugin that I’m quite sure would make a lot of people unhappy, if it became popular. 2010-11-15T02:34:39-05:00 http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/collection-of-wordpress-tutorials-plugins-and-widgets/ http://www.seanmccambridge.com/articles/page/collection-of-wordpress-tutorials-plugins-and-widgets/#When:04:28:34Z Tutorials Sidebars http://automattic.com/code/widgets/api/ http://www.studiograsshopper.ch/code-snippets/how-to-add-a-widgetised-area-in-a-wordpress-theme/ Plugins Widgets http://mygayborscom.ipage.com/geeklyspeaking/2010/11/top-15-wordpress-widgets/ 2010-11-09T04:28:34-05:00