CSS circles using border radius.
After I began using border radius to give elements rounded corners, I began to wonder if circles could be created this way. The corners would have to be half of the height and width. This technique worked in Firefox 3, but not Safari 3.Any ways, I made a circle with that technique.
Works in FF3, Safari 3
view it at http://bakerdesignz.com/code/circle.html .
Google Chrome is great!
Today, Google released their own open source web browser, Chrome. The Javascript rendering engine, v8, that Google uses for Chrome is super fast. The browser was built for speed, security, and the future. Each separate tab runs in its own sandbox, so if a single tab crashes, it and only it will crash. It is built from existing open source components including Web Kit and v8. This means that you need not learn how to make hacks sites for Chrome, because if your site already works in Safari, it will work in Chrome.
Oh, and the logo for the project ( Chromium) Looks like a Poke’ Ball!
Frameworks killed the javascript star
After playing around today with prototypejs and scriptaculous, I began to think: “How did the world work without this!?”. If you compare using a javascript framework for XHR, as opposed to writing the code for each one, there’s no competition between the two. Frameworks, whether or not they are server-side or client-side, simply do the task they are designed to do: cut development time in half.
Frameworks also bridge the gaps of browser incompatibilities *cough* IE. Code only has to be written in one way, unlike without a framework where you can end up with a lot of ugly try and catches.
One thing frameworks cannot do is write the code for you. You still need an experienced developer to write the code using the framework. After all, wheres the fun if you don’t have to do anything?
Ruby on Rails is amazing.
Who agrees with me? I know that has been around since 2004-2005, but why hasn’t it taken over the world yet? It’s like you can have your cake and eat it too! It comes pre-packaged with my favorite javascript framework, Prototypejs, and the amazing scriptaculous effects library. In the screencasts shown on the Ruby on Rails site, a weblog is made using 58 lines of code. Who uses this wonderful framework you ask?
Well.. just a few..
Twitter, Basecamp, Odeo,43 Things, Backpack, Strongspace, A List Apart.
It goes on and on.
Ruby on Rails is just plain amazing :).
- Justin B
New Site Design!
The previous one left me unsatisfied. This one looks much better in my opinion and is XHTML Strict Validating and CSS 2.1 validating. Comments on it?
A New Project,
I’ve begun full-on development on a new project, Project Moji. This project will be open-source, GPL licensed,
with a heavy implementation of Prototype/Scriptaculous in the UI.
Basically, it will be a photo site, with microblogging, and some social networking features such as messaging.
It is , and will continue to be 100% OOP PHP.
Anyone interested in helping development or testing, email me at justin [at] bakerdesignz.com
Why is Prototypejs so great?
For one, it’s no doubt the easiest framework out there. You can use $(’element’) instead of document.getElementById(element). I know that I’m lazy and I prefer using this :).
And going off of an example on protypejs.org, $(’comments’).show() will take an element with the id “comments” and show it if it was previously hidden.
JSON ( JavaScript object notation ) is a fast alternative to XML for transporting data via api’s that is commonly used by many sites such as Vimeo and Twitter . Prototype has a great JSON encoding and parsing support. Used in conjuction with the built it Ajax capabilities that Prototype has, Ajax is relatively easy 
.
Oh yeah, that reminds me of how great Prototype handles Ajax. It offers a simple cross-browser way to address ajax. How about: new Ajax.Request(’/some_url’, { method:’get’ }) ? I would much rather type 3-7 lines for an Ajax function that 20 plus that does the same thing.
I’m not even going to discuss Jquery here. That’s for another day, another post.
-Justin B
Bigger is not always better!
I just changed Bakerracingtech.com to use 3 files ( besides CSS,images,javascript). 6,641 bytes total.
Aren’t Dynamic pages + cruft-free URL’s the best?
Prototype JS
So after doing a little bit of exploration in javascript frameworks yesterday, I found out how easy prototype makes it.
Ajax is easy as could be, and you address element id’s with $(id) as compaired to document.getElementById(’id’).
I wish I was smart enough to make my own framework, I’ve got some learning to do, but I think I got the idea.
I haven’t figured out how to extend the DOM so that you can use $( instead of document.getElementById, but I’m working on it!
Any Ideas?
Update: June 26,2008
Kangax pointed out to me this:
function $(id) {
return document.getElementById(id);
}
I feel really stupid now for not seeing this earlier.
-Justin B
After what's been done in the last 5 years, I have one question. What will happen in the next 5 years? The sky is the limit for the future. It's like this analogy: When you were 10 you thought you were mature, when you turned 15 you thought you were more mature and realized you weren't mature when you were 10, and so on and so on.
I can't even begin to fathom what the web will be like in 5 years.
New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.
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