Live Validation
Aug/080
A very neat solution to javascript validation..
"LiveValidation is a small open source javascript library for making
client-side validation quick, easy, and powerful. It comprises of two
main parts. Firstly, it provides developers with a rich set of core
validation methods, which can also be used outside the context of
forms. Secondly, it provides your visitors with real-time validation
information as they fill out forms, helping them to get it right first
time, making the forms easier, quicker and less daunting to complete"
Pretty Emails
Jun/080
Now im not the biggest fan of HTML emails but I can understand how they are valuable from a marketing perspective. Microsoft really threw a spanner in the works last year when they released Office 2007 that featured reduced CSS support in Outlook. Much was written on the reasons for this but none the less it has set html emails back a couple of years.
The good folks over at Campaign Monitor have put in a lot of work into evaluating what email client supports what and how well and have produced a great guide.
jQuery Scripts
Jun/080
Ive been evaluating javascript libraries in order to settle on one for most of our future developement. In the end we decided on jQuery for a number of reasons but mainly due to the vast amount of scripts available for it. Im going to use this post to build up a collection of these.
IIS Gzip Compression
Apr/080
With the great variety of Javascript libaries like prototype and jquerry that make javscript easier to code and maintain the main issue is do we want to dish up 100k+ of javascript to users when they first hit our sites. Sure, its cached but that initial download is usually the first impression users get from a site.
One method that takes the sting out of the size of these libraries is gzip compression. From all accounts its pretty easy on apache but untill now I hadn't found a method of doing so on IIS.
This post at Mike Grushin’s blog shows the steps required to get gzip compression it up and running on IIS 6.
Good form design
Apr/080
Forms dont always get the design time they probably deserve. Obviously a form needs to be familiar and easy to use but it shouldnt be imune from the design process.
Smashing Mag have another great showcase article, this time it's forms! They've collected some great examples of creative forms.
Lite Box
Apr/080
The way we implement photo galleries have change a lot since the V2 release of Lightbox. It was smooth and funky and DIDN'T use pop-ups. The only draw back was it was kinda big in size. Lite Box to the rescue. If you dont need the full prototype library it comes in at only 30k.
Planetozh has a good rundown of all the lightbox clones.
Cool AJAX Tools
Apr/080
There is a great article over at Smashing Magazine
that shows off some of the neat effects achievable with a
healthy dose of javascript and CSS.
Their older Ajax & CSS and Photo Gallery articles are also still quite relevant.
photostream
