Alex Jones: Web Technologist, Barbecue Acolyte, Information Junkie, Austinite

Debugging Safari

Check out this post by rakaz, which provides a quick walk-through on enabling the debug menu in Safari for Windows, which provides the ability to access JavaScript exceptions, show the JS console, enable a runaway JavaScript timer and turn off “Site-Specific Hacks”. This should make life a bit easier.

Posted in JavaScript, Safari & Tagged: Safari, Web Development, Windows

Firebug Beta 1 Released

The beta of Firebug 1.0 has been released and comes with some amazingly useful features. For those unfamiliar with this Firefox extension, Firebug provides a wealth of tools for developers to debug, monitor or edit portions of a site. Portions of it overlap the Web Developer’s toolbar, and in several cases, Firebug surpasses it hands down. Some of the features include:

• Inspect & edit HTML & CSS within the browser to see how changes will impact the current page.
• Visualize CSS metrics, including box model shading, measurements for each edge of a box (and the ability to edit those measurements in-line) , rulers and guides
• Monitor network activity to see why a page takes too long to load, broken down by type. You can also see which items are cached or not and examine HTTP headers and XMLHTTP Requests.
• Debug JavaScript, including the ability to set breakpoints and conditional breakpoints and line-at-a-time code execution. Additionally you can view JS stack traces broken down into the functions within the stack. Use tooltips to see the value of any variable within the JS, log function calls and profile the performance of the scripts. The improved JavaScript logging is amazing in its own right.
• Explore the DOM and edit as you go (including auto-complete) with handy JS code navigation.
• Vastly improved error handling and details.

This extension will actually reduce the need for several others you may have installed.

Posted in CSS, Firefox & Thunderbird, JavaScript & Tagged: CSS, firefox, JavaScript, web design, Web Development, XHTML

Automatic pullquotes with JavaScript and CSS

Automatic pullquotes with JavaScript and CSS provides “a way to add pullquotes without having to duplicate text in the markup“.

Posted in CSS, Design & UI, JavaScript & Tagged: CSS, JavaScript, web design, Web Development

Mmmm Code Snippets

Code Snippets is an online resource, providing a central user-writable repository for chunks of reusable code. A stroll through the language-agnostic site provides a plethora of tasty bits and bytes from many programming languages and frameworks. Each snippet can be tagged and each tag can be followed via RSS. Users can comment on snippets as well, which is invaluable for anyone deciding whether or not they want to try out a piece of code.

Posted in CSS, JavaScript, PHP & MySQL, Ruby, XHTML & Tagged: CSS, JavaScript, jsp, mysql, php, Ruby, ruby on rails, XHTML, xml

FlashObject

FlashObject “is a small Javascript file used for embedding Macromedia Flash content. The script can detect the Flash plug-in in all major web browsers (on Mac and PC) and is designed to make embedding Flash movies as easy as possible.”

Posted in Flash, JavaScript, Quick Links & Tagged: Flash, JavaScript

Nifty Corners Cube

Nifty Corners Cube is an image-free way of building rounded corners!

Posted in CSS, JavaScript, Quick Links & Tagged: CSS, JavaScript, web design

Docking boxes

Docking boxes (dbx) “adds animated drag ‘n’ drop, snap-to-grid, and show/hide-contents functionality to any group of elements. And … in what might be another world-first for brothercake - dbx is fully accessible to the keyboard as well as the mouse, an action I’ve dubbed “press ‘n’ move”.” This looks interesting, and may well join my tool box for future sites. Though I need to compare its functionality with some of the other JS tool sets that are AJAXified, I’m very excited about the fact that it is keyboard accessible, and hope that it degrades nicely for screen readers.

Posted in CSS, Design & UI, JavaScript & Tagged: JavaScript, Web Development

Animated Live Search

Animated Live Search is a great tutorial written by Steve Smith, which discusses how he has built his site-search. The cool thing is that the search presents its results immediately in a handy container within the current page instead of a new page. Tasty demo included.

Posted in Design & UI, Featured, JavaScript & Tagged: JavaScript, Web Development

JavaScript Libraries and Patterns

Over at SitePoint, Kevin Yank discusses JavaScript Libraries and Patterns, running through packages offered up by Yahoo and others. While a bit short on details, it is a good overview and an ideal point form which to dive into the options.

Posted in JavaScript & Tagged: JavaScript, Web Development

JavaScript says “Moo”

moo.fx is a nice, compact JavaScript effects library, which appears to be a great alternative to some of the larger libraries like script.aculo.us. Check out the demo if’n you’re interested.

Posted in Design & UI, JavaScript & Tagged: JavaScript