Programming Links

MobileReadyFramework - Not had much time to play with this but its aiming to make developing mobile versions of sites faster

Perfecto Mobile – Perfect way to test your mobile websites, you use actual phones, remotely.

Smush it - Image file size optimiser, good idea for mobile sites

Scriptiny - Tiny javascript scripts, better than using overkill frameworks on mobile sites

Other Misc Links

Killer or Coder - Fun quiz, I scored 8/10, post your score in the comments

Over the past year I have been involved in prototyping, developing and deploying several mobile websites, some of which I will be adding to my portfolio soon. In this short series of posts I plan to provide you with steps that I take when developing a mobile website, the considerations I have to make and the assumptions I am forced to make.

There are many challenges  in mobile web development, three of the key issues are:

1. Large number of test devices – many different OS, screen resolution and browser combinations
2. Lower technical specs – Smaller screens, slower processors
3. Slower internet connections – the size of the website needs to be minimal

Over a short series of posts I plan to explain the process I go through to build a mobile site, the first part can be found by reading more.

read more

The developer web browser of choice Firefox has been updated to version 4 as of yesterday but before you update you need to remember to check the following:

1. The add-ons you regularly use are going to be compatible (One I use Dustme selectors is currently incompatible)
2. You have backed up your bookmarks in case the installation goes wrong

Once you have done this you can download Firefox 4 over at the Mozilla website.

First Impressions

My first impressions of the browser are that its much faster than its predecessor, it loads really fast on my system while Firefox 3.6 had taken its time to open. Due to the long beta testing period the majority of extensions are ready for you to dig your teeth into. All of my sites continue to work flawlessly in Firefox 4 but I think its important that developers don’t assume their sites will work and ensure they test their own sites.

Update: Firefox 4 Download Stats

Programming

HTML5 Boilerplate 1.0 with customisation – Ive posted about this before but the HTML5 Boilerplate website has been updated to allow you to customise the template before you download it.

Javascript Event Delegation – I heard about Event Delegation and then found an article recently written by one of the developers I follow, very nice.

Other interesting bits

Dear web design community, where have you gone - Very interesting article about the web development community

Photoshop Etiquette Manifesto – An interesting look at how designers should be layering their psds

I recently read Microsoft’s 9 reasons to get Internet Explorer 9 and have compiled my own list to counter this.

• Sites are not ready – Many sites are not ready for you to use IE9 so they just won’t work – see article
• Does not support basic CSS 3 – Microsoft doesnt support stuff like text-shadow - see article
• It is not cross platform – Only works on 2 operating systems, Windows Vista and Windows 7
• Plugins – You wont be able to get a dancing bear plugin for IE9. The number of and quality of plugins for IE9 compared with firefox and chrome looks poor.
• It is not open source - The other two leading browser engines Webkit (Chrome and Safari) and Gecko (Firefox) are open source
• No automatic session restoration
• 64 bit less polished than 32  bit – It can’t be made the default browser, and it doesn’t include the new, high-performance scripting engine.
• ACID3 not passed – This has become a must have, not a should have - see article
• HTML5 Test – Performs worst out of all the modern browsers – see article

Web Development

W3Fools – Until I came across this webpage I regularly recommended the W3Schools site for web development tutorials but from this I have learnt that much of the content is incorrect or outdated.

HTML5 and Flash – As people who know me most likely know, I have very strong beliefs that websites should no longer be using flash, but this article does put a strong case to where it can still be used.

Internet Explorer 9 – Yes its out, download for testing as now its compulsary

Cool Javascript

3D JS – The most impressive use of javascript ive seen

Recently I have been asked to provide a functionality to allow panels of content to be hovered over and to show related links. While this could have been achieved easily using standard jQuery code I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to create my first jQuery plugin.

I have uploaded a demo of jQuery Hover panels for you all to checkout

I already have plans for more jQuery plugins which will be more complex so keep an eye on this blog for my future developments.

Update: This plugin can now be found on both github and on the jquery website http://plugins.jquery.com/project/hoverpanels

I am happy to announce I have launched a new open source project, as of tuesday it can be found on github.

qAdmin is a admin panel for a MySQL database that you are already using to collect data from your websites and enables you to view the data in an attractive way. This can be easily added to any MySQL database by running the install.php page which will install the admin panel onto the database, this allows you to setup a username and password and then you are ready to go.

This project is very much work in progress, the first version currently on github was an initial release and has along way to go before we reach v1.00. Please comment on this post or in the git repository wiki on github with any comments you have.

Planned features:

CSV Export
PDF Export
Theming
User control

Just thought I would start posting weekly links

Web Development

CSS3 Browser Support – Current state of CSS3 support, very useful to know

Stunning CSS3 - A book that looks really interesting, it describes itself as ‘A Project-based Guide to the Latest in CSS’

IE Specific CSS – CSS which is specific for Internet Explorer

Protocol-relative URL - This is old but not enough people seem to have heard of this yet, a great way to develop on http:// but then have the site work on https://

Impressive CSS Zen Garden Design – I think this is a really impressive design, post your thoughts in comments

General Tech

Possible iPad Leak - Apple will be pissed if this turns out to be the real iPad 2

Update – The iPad leak was incorrect, checkout the real iPad 2