Sam’s random musings

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p>Automatically Version Your CSS and JavaScript Files: “

Because we’re always on the look out for ways to speed up our web application, one of my favorite tools for optimization is the YSlow Firefox extension. Based on rules created by research done by Yahoo engineer, Steve Souders (his book High Performance Web Sites is a must read for anyone interested in front end engineering), the tool hooks into Firebug and helps you diagnose issues that can shave seconds off your pages’ load times. While we were able to implement most of the suggestions fairly easily, Rule #3, which specifies adding a far futures Expires header required a bit of elbow grease that some of you might be interested in.

There are some good tricks in here, but sometimes I think that designers and developers really get into the ‘optimization phase’ way to early. There are so many sites to my mind that really could use some more time spent in who are they being built for, how are they being used and what can I do to make the experience more streamlined and useful.

Recently I noticed that the Bank of Americas around my house started replacing the ATM machines, and there seems to of been a lot done to make the experience much faster, not the machines being faster but the experience. And it really makes a difference….

(Via Particletree RSS Digest.)

A date parsing ninja of a javascript: “”

Really nice parsing of things like

today           tomorrow    July 2008
next friday     last April  2004.08.07
6/4/2005        8:15 PM     22:30:45
+5years      

(Via .)

In All Fairness … Internet Explorer Still Stinks

This is the story of how SitePoint tried to give Internet Explorer a fighting chance … and it lost anyway.

The title says it all….

(Via SitePoint’s DHTML & CSS Blog: Stylish Scripting.)

Server Switcher :: Firefox Add-ons

Server Switcher is a navigational help tool for web developers. It allows you to easily switch between sites on your development and live servers, so that you can immediately see the differences…

Great tool for developing sites

(Via Koke.)

Prototype 1.6.0 and script.aculo.us 1.8.0 released: “

New versions of the JavaScript libraries that ship with Rails, Prototype 1.6.0 and script.aculo.us 1.8.0, have been released. You can find out about the numerous changes on the Prototype blog and on mir.aculo.us. If you’re running Edge Rails, just svn up and run rake rails:update:javascripts to install the latest versions into your application automatically.

Also of note: Christophe Porteneuve’s Prototype & script.aculo.us book is now out of beta and available for purchase from the Pragmatic Programmers. It’s up-to-date with all of the new features in both libraries, so be sure to check it out if you’re using Prototype and script.aculo.us in your applications.

(Via Riding Rails.)

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p>PopBox! - A Javascript Image Magnifier: “

WebAppers has a nice post about a JavaScript image magnifier called PopBox!:

<blockquote><p>PopBox is an image magnification javascript solution for dynamically moving and resizing images on your web page. Javascript? Yes - I know it’s nothing new and that you’ve been able to move and resize things in Javascript for years, but only now is there a prepackaged solution that makes it as easy as 3 lines of HTML without knowing a lick about positioning!</p></blockquote>

nice simple for zooming up a little image to big,

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

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p>New UI library for Prototype in the works: “

Sébastien Gruhier, author of the VERY cool Prototype Window class has started a new initiative to build a complimentary UI library for Prototype. Accompanied by Samuel Lebeau, Juriy Zaytsev and Vincent Le Moign, the team aims to build easy to implement UI components that will enhance the user experience in web applications.

<blockquote><p>At the beginning of the project, it was only a full rewrite of Prototype Window but it became quickly a UI library based on <a href="http://prototypejs.org/">Prototype 1.6</a> and <a href="http://script.aculo.us/">script.aculo.us 1.8</a> to include all my previous components like <a href="http://prototype-carousel.xilinus.com/">Prototype Carousel</a> ….</p></blockquote>
<p>The current version is still in early stages but already provides some nice components:</p>
<ul>
<li>window
<ul>
<li>skinnable</li>
<li>shadowing system independent from window and skinnable</li>
<li>div based</li>
<li>resizable from all borders and corners</li>
<li>custom buttons</li>
<li>Dialogs (like it’s done in <span class="caps">PWC</span>) are not yet implemented but will be done soon</li>
</ul>

• carousel: only HTML content (no Ajax content)
• dock (experimental)
• shadow: a simple class to add shadow on any element with a absolute position.

<p>Full details of the project can be found on <a href="http://blog.xilinus.com/2007/11/4/prototype-ui-beta-version-pwc-reloaded">Sébastien’s blog</a>.

This looks like a great start for those of us who like to use stuff that just works

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

Creating a Visual Language:

Amazon has a clear visual language for shopping-related buttons. (Figure 1) While the buttons vary in size, color, text, and iconography, they clearly share enough of the design elements that the variety enhances their purpose rather than complicating it.

• Color
• Iconography
• Context & Flexibility
• Copywriting

Worth reading if you do things like buttons and pretty things in your work. I tend not too, I’m the guy who builds the pigs I don’t put the lipstick on them

(Via Garrett Dimon.)