Posts Tagged ‘css3’
Apple’s HTML5 and Web Standards Page
Posted in Web, on June 4th, 2010 by Carlos.
Apple has posted a smorgasbord of HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript samples that show off the capabilities of browsers supporting these web standards (i.e. Safari). Check it out – just don’t use any browser but Safari (whether it supports these standards or not). [Apple]
Panic-Inspired Status Board Live Preview using HTML5 contentEditable and localStorage
Posted in Status Board How-to, Web, on April 26th, 2010 by Carlos.
Ok folks, ahead of me trying to explain how I built this thing, which might take some time to get to, I figured I might as well share a live preview of my Panic-inspired Status Board with the masses.
Credit goes to the following sites for the different components that I grabbed from various tutorials or resources to make this all happen:
contentEditable with localStorage: http://html5demos.com/contenteditable
I modified it so to save several different chunks, rather than just one list. Admittedly, I’m not a script coding pro, so I’m pretty sure I took a long-way of doing things, but ultimately it worked! If you have suggestions on how to make it better, please let me know!
jDigiClock – jQuery Clock with Weather: http://www.radoslavdimov.com/jquery-plugins/jquery-plugin-digiclock
This little plugin is actually much more full-featured than what I used, so check it out for what it can do. I modified to include only the information I wanted (time, weather icon, temperature). I either hid, or deleted the rest of the items that I did not use. I used some CSS to position the items how I wanted them, and used a bit of transform capabilities of CSS3 to scale the plugin to my wanted size. This saved me from having to open all the different graphics that come packaged with the plugin and resize them each.
Juitter – Live jQuery Twitter Feed: http://www.juitter.com
I created some of my own styling, but used the jQuery based Juitter plugin to have a live view of a customizable Twitter feed. Although not perfect, it was one of the best Twitter integration options I could find at the time.
A few things to know, before clicking through to the live preview:
- You should be able to click on the lists and start typing, deleting, etc. Refreshing, and even closing/opening the browser should leave all your content intact. I’ve even tried clearing browser history/cache/etc. and suprisingly the content stayed there. Read my word of warning below for more on this.
- Given that this uses localStorage, you will not see your changes on a different machine, as it only shows what is stored on the machine you are using at the time. My hope is to eventually turn this thing into something that PHP based with MySQL integration so that it can be accessible from different machines to show the same information, as well having a database you can easily backup in case of disaster to prevent losing the to-do’s. If someone is interested in helping me do that, drop me a note.
- I recommend you use Google Chrome in Full-screen mode on a monitor resolution of 1920×1200. This was specifically designed to be run this way, so it will not appear correctly in other resolutions, and perhaps even other browsers, especially non-webkit based browsers.
- You will see that depending on the size of the individual lists, the lists may actually wind up going completely off screen. I haven’t created a fix for that (it’d be nice to be able to drag-drop the lists to different positions). For now it’s my way to stay on top of my to-do list so it never gets out of hand!
- The weather does not seem to be working at the moment. I believe it is my host that isn’t allowing it to work, as it works running locally on my machine, as well on the plugin page that is mentioned above.
- The default font for the lists themselves is American Typewriter, which should be loaded up on Mac’s by default. For non-Mac viewers, it should default back to Times.
- Twitter feed is currently only displaying tweets about/from Keys That Click
- A word of warning. If you want to use this LivePreview as your own actual to-do list, please know that it experimental, and I cannot by any means guarantee that your to-do list will not just one day disappear! I myself don’t know what to expect when using localStorage.
Well without further ado… click the button below to launch the live preview:
My Very Own Panic-inspired Status Board
Posted in Design, on April 13th, 2010 by Carlos.
[Update: You can check out a Live Preview of the Status Board by reading my post, Panic-Inspired Status Board Live Preview Using HTML5 and contentEditable.]
I recently picked up a beauty of a monitor (Dell U2711) which left me with my 24″ Samsung looking for a home. Given that the displays are very different, I wasn’t truly digging the two monitor side-by-side idea, but did want to do something with it so I would have it handy in case when having two monitors makes life easier (working with presentation documents seems to make me wish I had the second monitor).
Anywho, I started to think about the Status Board that Panic created and blogged about a while back and thought I could do something similar to replace the white board I have next to my desk. In fact my second monitor is currently blocking the view of my white board, so I only found it appropriate! I basically wanted a glorified to-do list split up by clients, while having some handy information at my fingertips (time, weather and Twitter feeds). I had and still have some delusions of grandeur which would make this thing fully AJAX enabled where I can drag and drop items and lists, but I had to start somewhere, and I’m not quite there yet. The DIV’s that contain the lists do expand as you type more in, and the DIV’s themselves will automatically position them self in the page columns as the lists grow. It is by no means done, as I have several more tweaks I’d like to make to it.
I will likely break out how I created the Status Board over a few blog postings so I don’t glance over too many of the details, but here’s a quick overview of the elements I used to create it:
- The Status Board is really just a HTML page set to full-screen at 1920×1200 resolution . I had to use Chrome for this as other browsers/methods failed with the two displays. I also wanted to keep it based on Webkit, so I didn’t look at any Mozilla alternatives.
- Several helpful jQuery scripts and plugins including:
- The really nifty HTC-esque clock and weather that is displayed in the corner (jDigiClock)
- Real-time Twitter feed using Juitter
- HTML5 properties such as contentEditable to make the lists editable right on the screen, and localStorage to keep a copy of the list stored on the local machine (really only did this as I need some assistance with saving it to a mysql database)
- CSS3 layout properties such as columns, rounded corners, opacity and shadows
I must say, designing a site that you can control the audience, browser, resolution – everything – was fun, but surprisingly challenging. Old habits die hard, I suppose, but I really shouldn’t get use to developing sites for only one platform.
I’m hoping that this will provide a clever use of a secondary display and that I actually do wind up using it! I’ll do my best to share my findings as I enhance the web app further, at the same time asking for help if anyone is willing to provide it!
Look at what you can do with CSS3
Posted in Web, on March 31st, 2010 by Carlos.
This image created over at Neography was actually generated in a web browser using @font-face and text-transform techniques that are available in CSS3. If you’re using a modern browser (i.e. not IE), than you can take a look at the page yourself. I wonder if we’ll one day code our posters rather than use software like InDesign to lay them out? [Neography via Smashing Magazine Tweet]
How Microsoft Can Get Web Designers (that usually hate IE) to Promote IE9
Posted in Web, on March 17th, 2010 by Carlos.
Yesterday, Microsoft posted some new information about Internet Explorer 9 on their IEBlog. Tidbits from the posting include the support for hardware accelerated HTML5, as well as CSS3. Although they are making strides to reach the level of standards compliance that other browsers already have, they still have a way to go. My hope is that they get there by the time they launch.
Why not just hope IE dies and everyone can live happy lives with Firefox, Safari or Chrome? First, IE won’t die. Second, after working with many a client that only ever uses IE, I found that it’s often difficult to convince them to use a new browser. And frankly, I don’t push the subject much anymore unless they are still using IE6. But imagine that you could recommend to a client – just upgrade to IE9 (assuming IE9 works) and know your site will look/behave the way you had originally intended. It wouldn’t be a tough sell really (except for those IT department governed corporate clients). Microsoft could then use the very legion of individuals that could not stand them (web designers/developers), to work for them. Sure we’d still have to test for antiquated browsers like IE6 and IE7, but I think we’d be more willing to recommend an IE product that works, because the sell would be that much easier.
Will a standards compliant IE make developers switch back to IE? Probably not. But if they are OK with their clients using IE9 because, at the end of the day their site looks/behaves the same way that it does in other browsers, then all the better. It would make our lives easier, and for that, I would be more than happy to recommend Microsoft.
Update: Damn. Well… what I missed to mention as I just found this out, is that IE9 won’t run on Windows XP. I guess that easy sell just got a lot harder. You’ll now need to recommend a new OS, just to get the new browser. Damn you Microsoft… Although I agree with letting old software die to encourage upgrades to newer software, I know that won’t happen easily. Sunnava.
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