Advanced CSS Design Resources - last-child.com » Online Resource http://www.last-child.com CSS Toys for Professional Web Developers Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:30:15 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 Design for users with Cognitive Disabilities http://www.last-child.com/design-cognitive-disabilities/ http://www.last-child.com/design-cognitive-disabilities/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:58:08 +0000 Ted http://www.last-child.com/?p=296 Ruth Ellison created this presentation about cognitive disabilities. It’s difficult to design for these users due to the wide spectrum of disability impact and what helps one person may cause problems for another. However, there are some solid suggestions in this presentation that will help you create a more accessible web site.

Designing for cognitive disabilities
View more presentations from Ruth Ellison

It helps to view this on slideshare to view the presenter’s notes on each slide.

]]> http://www.last-child.com/design-cognitive-disabilities/feed/ 0 Best Practices for Creating JavaScript http://www.last-child.com/best-practices-for-javascript/ http://www.last-child.com/best-practices-for-javascript/#comments Sun, 03 Oct 2010 22:02:47 +0000 Ted http://www.last-child.com/?p=254 I’m on a mission to relearn JavaScript. My limited skills are from trying to shoehorn scripts into pages without completely understanding the theory. Christian Heilmann, a developer evangelist for Yahoo!, is a great resource for not only learning how to code but also why you should use method A over B.

This presentation by Christian sheds a lot of light on how to create re-usable, maintainable scripts.

Maintainable Javascript carsonified
]]> http://www.last-child.com/best-practices-for-javascript/feed/ 0 How to include a copyright symbol in any language http://www.last-child.com/include-copyright-symbol/ http://www.last-child.com/include-copyright-symbol/#comments Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:59:14 +0000 Ted http://www.last-child.com/?p=248 I found this page today while trying to find the proper way to add a copyright symbol ( © ) with XSL. Copyright Symbol Webpage is simply a good reference to how and why to use the copyright symbol.

Here’s a snippet on how to use it in XSL

Unicode Copyright Symbol – Programmers, please NOTE:

Unicode is required by modern standards such as Java, XML, ECMAScript / JavaScript, CORBA, WML, LDAP etc.

Pretty much all of the questions about Copyright Symbols for standards that use Unicode will require the © input. however, this may differ such as for XSL as listed below. We have tried to collate what we can for you – if you can’t work out the answer from here…keep on searching – and please write to us with any information that you think would be useful on this site.

Java Script / JSP Copyright Symbol

In Java use the unicode © or © to get the copyright symbol. One common mistake is typing the © into the code, which will not work.

XML Copyright Symbol

In XML use the unicode © or © to get the copyright symbol.

XSL Copyright Symbol

If you were to use the ‘©‘ entity with XSL, you may well come across the complaint of “Reference to undefined entity ‘copy’.”

In XSL always use ©

Copyright Symbol Webpage

]]> http://www.last-child.com/include-copyright-symbol/feed/ 3 Cross-browser HTML5 video tag with fallback for Flash users http://www.last-child.com/cross-browser-html5-video/ http://www.last-child.com/cross-browser-html5-video/#comments Sun, 13 Jun 2010 17:00:44 +0000 Ted http://www.last-child.com/?p=235 Apple’s lack of support for Flash on the iPhone and iPad has forced people to reconsider the value of HTML5 and its video tag. It’s no longer something to put off until the future. However, adding HTML5 video support to your site AND continue to provide a Flash option for older browsers (I.E.) is not as simple as you might expect.

While the video tag has been standardized, there is a lack of consensus for supporting the codecs used to package the videos for distribution and playback. Some browsers are supporting the OGV format, some support the more popular but licensed mp4 format. Others, such as Chrome, will support both. To make it even more exciting, there is a new version under development to make a truly open-sourced format: WebM.

This means your video tag needs to define multiple movie sources to make it playable on all browsers. It sounds complicated because it is. Luckily, Kroc Camen has written a great article and code pattern for adding a cross-browser video tag with fallback to Flash for the older browsers: Video for Everybody!.

The article is full of great advice from a programmer that has learned the stuff the hard way. Here’s an explanation of how you’ll need to adjust your htaccess file.

Ensure your server is using the correct mime-types. Firefox will not
play the OGG video if the mime-type is wrong. Place these lines in your .htaccess
file to send the correct mime-types to browsers 


AddType video/ogg  .ogv
AddType video/mp4  .mp4
AddType video/webm .webm

Video for Everybody! – Kroc Camen

Related Resources

]]> http://www.last-child.com/cross-browser-html5-video/feed/ 0 Dive into HTML5 should be everyone’s intro to the standard http://www.last-child.com/dive-into-html5/ http://www.last-child.com/dive-into-html5/#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:30:50 +0000 Ted http://www.last-child.com/?p=224 I just found out about the Dive Into HTML5 tutorial. It’s downright amazing. I wish all specs were so carefully described. Don’t miss the first chapter on the history of standards creation. It gives you a good understanding of why the HTML standards are quirky and why HTML5 is progressing the way it is.

I especially like the way they test your browser for its ability to handle the various components you are reading about. Take an hour or so to go through this tutorial. It’s the best read you’ll have for the week.

Another good tutorial is The Best HTML5 Slides Ever, but you’ll need to view it in Safari. It doesn’t work well in the standard Firefox and forget about IE.

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]]> http://www.last-child.com/dive-into-html5/feed/ 1 HTML5 Helpful Links http://www.last-child.com/html5-helpful-links/ http://www.last-child.com/html5-helpful-links/#comments Sat, 03 Apr 2010 18:55:45 +0000 Ted http://www.last-child.com/?p=216 I’m starting to hack away at HTML5 and I’m finding that I need to start bookmarking more and more pages. There are lots of good resources out there. Here are a few:

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]]> http://www.last-child.com/html5-helpful-links/feed/ 1 New Yahoo! BOSS Hacks web site http://www.last-child.com/new-yahoo-boss-hacks-web-site/ http://www.last-child.com/new-yahoo-boss-hacks-web-site/#comments Sat, 02 May 2009 17:00:31 +0000 Ted http://www.last-child.com/?p=196 There’s a lot of information about Yahoo! Boss on the official site: Yahoo! Developer Network. However there is still a need for a more informal portal for quick reviews of BOSS-based mashups, helpful hints, techniques, and upcoming events.

BOSS Hacks is an unofficial Yahoo! BOSS Site that does exactly that. I started it last week as I noticed this site was becoming less about standards based markup and more about how I was working with Yahoo! BOSS.

This site will feature shorter, more succinct blog posts. I’ll save any large posts for the YDN blog. Please feel free to visit the site and send me notes about what you would like to see or any new BOSS-based sites that should be mentioned.

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]]> http://www.last-child.com/new-yahoo-boss-hacks-web-site/feed/ 0 Quick and Free Online PDF Creator http://www.last-child.com/quick-free-online-pdf-creator/ http://www.last-child.com/quick-free-online-pdf-creator/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:25:06 +0000 Ted http://www.last-child.com/?p=188

I needed to create a .pdf document for a paper submission to an upcoming conference. Unfortunately I do not have Acrobat Writer on m laptop so I needed a quick fix.
PDF Online has a very simple tool for generating .pdf documents: Doc2PDF.
you simply upload your document, give it a name, your email address and its delivered in less than a minute.

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]]> http://www.last-child.com/quick-free-online-pdf-creator/feed/ 3 Yahoo! Boss now features keywords and more language support http://www.last-child.com/yahoo-boss-features-keywords/ http://www.last-child.com/yahoo-boss-features-keywords/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:33:32 +0000 Ted http://www.last-child.com/?p=168 Yahoo! Boss search APIThe Yahoo! Developer Network blog just published a blog post with new Boss features: Yahoo! Search BOSS Releases Key Terms. There are a few key details in this article.

  • Key terms are now available: Each result now includes the keyterms Yahoo’s search index has assigned to the web page. This is the same information Yahoo! uses for search suggestions. I was trying to recreate this by using key term extraction in Yahoo! Pipes. But this would have involved multiple requests and slowed the page down. Boss’s inclusion of keyterms opens a whole new world of semantic search options. I’m using them to display related results on V3GGIE.
  • Extended language/region support: I was in Romania a couple weeks ago discussing Yahoo! Boss with some students in Bucharest. I noticed we didn’t support the Romanian language in Boss. I was able to send a few emails asking for support and voila, the Yahoo! Boss has not only added Romanian, but also Turkish and Hebrew! That is some fast turn around and shows their commitment to the users.
  • Boss made easier: Christian Heilmann has been creating Boss plug-n-play projects. You can get a JavaScript Boss badge, grab all the keyterms in one arrray, and recently a build your own site search in 3 easy steps lesson.
  • The article also has a link to a new site I’m developing: Tartin3. This is still in the development stages and is a prototype for a much larger site InsiderFood.com. I’m hoping to take the covers off Insider Food within the next couple weeks.Insider Food is now Live – but in Beta mode as I fix bugs and make enhance the search logic

Disclaimer: I work for Yahoo! but I’m not on the Yahoo! Boss team. I’m their “customer”, as I use Boss for multiple projects outside Yahoo!. I also am a member of the International Yahoo! Developer Network, which allows me to demonstrate and teach some of the Yahoo! API’s and services.

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]]> http://www.last-child.com/yahoo-boss-features-keywords/feed/ 0 Make a niche search engine with Yahoo! BOSS http://www.last-child.com/niche-search-engine-yahoo-boss/ http://www.last-child.com/niche-search-engine-yahoo-boss/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:05:26 +0000 Ted http://www.last-child.com/?p=163 The Yahoo! Developer Network blog just published an article I wrote about Yahoo! BOSS. It discusses how to use the search filters and query attributes with the BOSS API.

I’ve used these methods on V3GGIE.com, a vegetarian search engine and will be launching a new niche search engine in the next few weeks.
Yahoo! BOSS plus your ideas make a unique search experience

Update

Insider Food badge for featured expertsI’ve just taken the covers off my latest search engine project. Insider Food is a regional search engine powered by local bloggers, chefs, and restaurant fanatics.

It’s a wee bit slow right now due to a multitude of API requests to Yahoo! Boss, Yahoo! Pipes, Flickr, Amazon, and more. Look for some upcoming posts about the construction of the site. Hopefully I can even describe caching and threading. Once somebody teaches me :) .

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