by Vernon Kesner

Pack Your Bags, It’s Time To Choose

Vernon — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:59:33 +0000

I’ve had this blog going for several years now, and I’ve finally come to the decision to move to a new domain name. The new site will have a more focused goal to provide links and information on resources for specific web designers.

What do I mean by “specific”? Well, visit the new site to find out.

Aside from the “focus” that you can read about in the link above, I also wanted to get the blog on a domain name aside from my personal name.

The new domain name, choosedaily.com, fits great with the focus of the website. The goal is to have a website sort of like Dev Snippets or CSS Globe but focused on certain other things (check the link out above).

I will be leaving this site live though as it generates a good bit of search traffic for several of the tutorials and articles so no sense in taking it down. I may still post here from time to time, but my main focus is going to be over at Choose Daily.

Let me know what you think about the new site and if you’d like to help out! Shoot me an e-mail and we can see what’s up. I’m at vernonkesner at gmail dot com.

Worldwide Real-Time Firefox 3.5 Downloads

Vernon — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:39:00 +0000

So today is the big day where Firefox 3.5 was officially released! Have you downloaded yet? I downloaded today and aside from Tab Mix Plus, I’m also missing YSlow and Measure It as they are extensions I use a lot.

However, I like the 3.5 experience. How about you?

Want to know how many downloads of Firefox 3.5 are going on right now? Well, Mozilla has the answer for you.

25 Tips To Improve Your jQuery

Vernon — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:48:39 +0000

Jon Hobbs-Smith, from TVI Design, has a great post out there that covers 25 tips to improve your jQuery. He describes himself as an “intermediate” jQuery user, but he has a great little list of tips, tricks and techniques to improve your use of jQuery.

Here’s a link to the post. Here are links to the different areas of the post:

New Website Inspiration Area

Vernon — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:32:10 +0000

I haven’t been posting here in a while, but thankfully I’m still generating a decent amount of traffic from all my older posts. I do want to get back into posting often again, and I’m starting here. If you look to the right of this post (when it’s displayed on the frontpage, if you’re seeing this in an archive take a look at the top right corner of the sidebar) you’ll see a new slideshow feature that I’ve added to the site.

This is a photostream that I’ve set up on Picasa of web design inspiration screenshots. These screenshots will hopefully help to serve as inspiration for your web design projects as they have mine. Sometimes, they’re also just nice to look at!

If you have a site that you think could go here - or know of one - shoot me an e-mail with the URI and I’ll take a look. I’m at vernonkesner at gmail dot com.

Register.com Coming With a Redesign and New Logo?

Vernon — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:18:24 +0000

I accidentaly went to Register.com today and was greeted by a new design project by them that seems to have taken the name “Titan” (just garnering this from the URL). I knew it looked completely different from the Register.com I remembered (new logo, completely different design) so I typed in the address again and was greeted by the Register.com that I remember.

At this point my brain was saying, “Well wait a sec!” I knew I had typed in correctly but for some reason I got a completely different website. Then I realized they must be preparing for a launch of a new version and was randomly showing it to visitors. So I went back in my history a couple pages and found the page I was looking for. I knew it!

Below is an image of the two designs side-by-side. You can also check out the old design and then visit the “Titan” version.

Overly Judgmental IE6 Splash Pages

Vernon — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:16:59 +0000

I can’t believe there is a web designer on the planet that doesn’t dream of a big red button that would nuke all installations of IE6 across the globe. Well, here’s a link to some overly judgmental IE6 splash pages.

WORD OF WARNING: These splash pages contain some pretty vulgar language and references that could be offensive to some adults and may be considered inappropriate for minors.

SSL (HTTPS) URLs and CodeIgniter

Vernon — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:10:16 +0000

About 6 months ago I started using CodeIgniter, a PHP framework, for coding my projects and I instantly became a fan. It’s easy to use and molds to your project rather than requiring your project to mold to it like some other frameworks.

One problem that most CodeIgniter developers will run into eventually is the problem of handling SSL (HTTPS) URL’s. The problem lays in the fact that with CodeIgniter we can define one base URL. This leaves us with either “http” or “https” as the option. So what are we to do? Put the whole site behind SSL? That would be redonkulous.

Luckily, I’ve found an answer for you so that you will now be able to create to base URLs. A secure URL and a non-secure URL. Keep in mind, these changes are done to some of the core files so you’ll need to modify files during upgrades to newer versions of CodeIgniter.

Head on over to Dream House where Mohammad has put together an answer and instructions on how to use both “http” and “https” URLs with CodeIgniter.

Reading CSV File With CodeIgniter

Vernon — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:38:33 +0000

CodeIgniter is my PHP Framework of choice. There are others (like Kohana, Cake, Yii) that are worthwhile, I just prefer CodeIgniter. There’s a handy library available for CodeIgniter that will make reading and parsing CSV files really easy. For most that visit here, you already know what a CSV file is. If you don’t you can read more about the CSV file format here (don’t forget to come back).

In an article over on Insic Designs, you can get the code you need and walk through the entire process in order to learn how to use the CSVReader library. Take a trip and learn how to read a CSV file with CodeIgniter!

Photoshop Tips To Make Your Photos Look Better

Vernon — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:30:23 +0000

Ever wish that the photos you use on your website or blog looked a bit better? You know, crisp and vibrant photos?

Well, now you can easily learn how thanks to Alex over at AlexAllied.com. He’s got a post up about Photoshop Tips Every Blogger Must Know that will walk you through different techniques to make your dull photos more vibrant and really come to life.

Head on over to learn how now!

EZPZ jQuery Tooltip Plugin

Vernon — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:31:14 +0000

It’s not a hard feat if you’re trying to find a tooltip plugin for jQuery. There are a ton out there. I came across EZPZ today though and really like it. It’s based on a really simple concept (and I like simple) of being able to hover over a target element and get content that shows up while being flexible in the look and feel. EZPZ does just that. It’s a nice little tooltip plugin for jQuery that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Check out the demo here or learn more here.