WordPress Inline JavaScript
Inline JavaScript is possible with WordPress. But users have to give up the WordPress Visual Editor inorder to insure that the onclick= or onmouseover= and other inline JavaScript code is not stripped away by the Visual Editor. So to take advantage of the WordPress auto loading of the jQuery library, users have to give up […]
Isotope.js for Grid Widget Sizzle
Currently responsive sliders are being used in more SPA-Single Page Applications for Mobile clients to replace deep menus and and button driven designs. The idea is to get portfolio/product impressions upfront as a visitor investigates a website. But there is a whole new class of responsive grid widgets that do image sliders one better by […]
Single Page Websites: Grid Layout Options
With the rise of popular frameworks like Bootstrap and the emergence of more HTML based apps, SPA-Single page Apps have become more prevalent on the Web. And for some Portfolio, Event, and Product sales websites, Single page applications make a lot of sense. Like so: HTML Apps designed for mobile clients are especially inclined to go […]
FancyBox 2- Versatile Media Display
In WordPress, Drupal and other Web tools there are a thousand and one JavaScript Lightbox routines. One of my favorites is FancyBox 2 because it features many different ways to popup images or html code blocks. Also FancyBox works well with various Splash page Layout routines like Masonry, Isotope, GridAccordion, and Salvattore. Finally, popular CMS […]
Masonry.js: Portfolio Layout
Masonry is a JavaScript routine that manages html code blocks and images on a Web page area giving them a neatly stacked portfolio layout. masonry works best when the width of the blocks are the same or multiples like 200px, 400px, 800px etc. The height of the blocks can vary but if it is too […]
Dropcaps CSS
Dropcaps in CSS are always “fun” to do for 3 reasons. First, the CSS seems easy enough to do. Use a float styling in a SPAN. Or use a :first-line:first:letter pseudo-class to style not just the first letter but also the first line of text as well. The second reason dropcaps are “fun”is because then you […]
Metro: Whats Killing Windows 8
I love Windows 8 Desktop – it is reasonably fast, rock solid reliable, and runs most of my Windows XP and earlier programs with no sweat. But the biggest Windows 8 advantage is that touchscreen operations, with a good sharp stylus, makes spreadsheet calculations, debugging code, and photo editing so much faster and more convenient. […]
Sliders for the Houston Quilt Show
The Houston International Quilt Show presents a classic web design problem – many gorgeous images but of various sizes and orientations [about equal number of landscape and portrait shots]. Because the images are from various sources extensive captioning is also required particularly for the winning quilts. Finally, the quilting audience is quite broad so the […]
CodePen Canvas Example
Here is another opportunity to show an online HTML/CSS/JavaScript environ in action – CodePen. In this case a Canvas example using the wirelib() library of 3D routines is highlighted: [iframe src=”http://codepen.io/jbsurveyer/pen/rKDkF” width=”100%” height=”550″] More about Wirelib can be found here.
Using CSS Selectors First-Line, First-Letter, :Before, :After
The following is a demo by example of some very useful CSS Selectors. This JSFiddle page also allows developers to try out their own variations, just click on Edit in JSFiddle: [iframe width=”100%” height=”500″ src=”http://jsfiddle.net/jbsurveyer/b7Wcr/7/embedded/result,html,css,js/” allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen” frameborder=”0″] Click on HTML or CSS to see the underlying code.
Buyer Beware Software Downloads
Downloading the free Adobe Reader I suddenly got more than I had bargained for – an unwanted copy of McAfee Security Scan Plus. So I had to stop the download. Check the conditions – sure enough, I had left the “install free McAfee Plan” button checked. And so I nearly got what I didn’t want […]
My Kingdom for a Good Diff
With all the coding playpens, browsers powerful Element Inspectors and the availability of great debuggers in Eclipse, CodeLobster and NetBeans, one can easily forget how useful a Diff file comparison utility can be. And now that JavaScript and SQL, and CSS code starts to run into hundreds of lines and team connections can mean several […]
Python Renaissance
Python is enjoying a sort of renaissance – and I am not talking about all those foundling pet pythons in the swamps of Florida. This open source, cross platform programming language has been popular in academic circles for its simple syntax but robust functional programming. Here is the the key philosophy of Python: “PEP 20 (The […]
WordPress Slider Usage
Now that sliders for WordPress and general Web Development have become rich and varied in their features and reliable in their performance, it is worthwhile reviewing how sliders can be effectively deployed in your WordPress websites. Two Standard Usages First, because most sliders readily handle captions and live links for each page, they are usefulttools […]
Chinese Hack Attack Super Highway
The spate of recent Chinese hacks into major US media at NYTimes and the Wall Street Journal among others are a cogent reminder of how vulnerable US organizations and institutions are to Chinese Hack attacks. The underlying problem is the Chinese hack attacks on Google in 2009-2010 revealed that the Chinese hackers likely have the complete Internet Explore […]
Google Doodles in HTML5 Canvas
The Google Doodle today is an animation in honor of Frank Zamboni’s 112th birthday and his hockey arena fixture the Zamboni ice surface smoothing machine. Warning to Google Doodle collectors – it does not appear universally on Google search engine URLs. Goto google.ca for a currently appearing Doodle. But what the Doodle does do is […]
WP Sliders: Nivo Slider
Image sliders are becoming de rigeur for many WordPress powered websites. And the basic jQuery-powered slider technology that has a solid reputation is the Nivo Slider with its many features including some nifty transitions between slides. However if you search on the WordPress plugins page for Nivo Slider you will get more than 2-dozen plugins listed. […]
Reddit’s CrowdTilt Group Funding
Reddit, the Slashdot/Digg clone, has a new web app devoted to group funding called CrowdTilt. Currently CrowdTilt is only available in the US but Crowdtilt promises to expand into foreign markets. The concept is really quite simple. One or more people organize a campaign to collect money for a group event, charity or cause. Druring […]
Google Dart Update
Google’s Dart has been designed to shore-up JavaScript for large scale programming. Google argues that by tuning up the syntax of JavaScript and borrowing C-like contructs Dart can be made to scale and perform better than JavaScript.. The current version of the Dart Editor: Note there is no UI objects or Visual Editor for Dart […]
Challenging Sports Web Design
Imagine you have to report on an event which is moving through the countryside often at 40km/hr with nearly two hundred participants constantly jostling and taking new positions while a global audience of close to half a billion fans wants to know the latest. That is le Tour de France. As a fan I have […]
Mozilla WebMaker Project: Thimble
Thimble is the Web Page creation tool in the Mozilla WebMaker Project, a learning experience for fledgling Web Developers. This is very worthy project to foster web development skills. But Thimble is well named because for an ambitious project like WebMaker, Thimble is a)way too underpowered and b)too annoyingly intrusive during page development. I had […]
SQLFiddle:Demo and Testing for SQL Databases
Previously, JSFiddle was featured here as a very handy JavaScript demo and testing environ on the Web. I use it when I don’t have my own machine but want to test out a Web Page that has JavaScript code. Well now the same testing capability has been created for SQL – and its called SQLFiddle. […]
Google Blockly, MIT Scratch, and Google to MIT App Inventor
There is a family tree here its just not obvious who inherited exactly what. Lets Start with App Inventor, the Google program developed with the Media Lab at MIT. App Inventor is designed to allow anyone, including people unfamiliar with computer programming, to create software applications for the Android operating system (OS). It uses a graphical interface, drag and drop operations […]
Google Blockly Winners, Losers
First and foremost, lets consider the winners from our last Google Blockly posting … err the Google Blockly Maze Problem Winners – Jon Henson and Uncle Bear. Jon’s Solution does not use Wall to Right or Wall to Left tests UncleBear’s Solution Its hard to say who got the Maze finished first – I should […]
Google Blockly – A Visual Programming Language
In a week when Apple continued to go thermonuclear against anything Google and Microsoft continued to steer Windows 8 astray, Google announces Blockly a visual programming language and computer programming learning tool. Here is a screenshot of Blockly in action: The Blockly demo of a Maze solver is a wickedly tough programming task because users […]
The Bizarre Browser Bazaar
Browser Bazaar, Browser Bizarre, Browser Bazaar – one can hear the hawker touting full-lunged at the amazing and bizarre things happening in the browser marketplace in the past few weeks. Surprise, surprise it is Chrome not Firefox that displaces IE as the number one browser in use Worldwide on the Internet. But Firefox contributed mightily […]
JSFiddle: JavaScript Test and Demo Environ
In our review of the top ten books on jQuery, I recommended W3schools.com JavaScript and its jQuery pages as the place to go for testing out the code you find in the various book pages. However, there is another and perhaps better option for testing and demoing your JavaScript framework code -JSFiddle. JSFiddle provides the […]
The Blog Becomes The OpenSourcery Home Page
Reality is being reflected: The OpenSourcery.com Blog KeepOpen is now the Site’s Home Page The old website start page is here and can also be accessed from Old Website menu item. All theopensourcery.com web pages are untouched and intact. You should be able to access them with their existing URLs with no problems. However, making this move […]
Best Smartphone Comparison Data
There are two places that I go for phone comparison data: PhoneArena It is fairly simple to setup the comparison – and the review ratings are often bang on. GSMArena goes tellingly further, offering just great camera comparisons like the following: Note the camera comparison is truly robust – click on the Gray Chart tab on the bottom of […]
Programming Language Popularity Measured by Social Media
Red Monk has a superb chart measuring Programming Language Populairity. This post is definitely worth seeing. Stephen O’Grady is following the changes in programming language popularity by watching It compares and contrasts the rankings of programming languages on GitHub[measure by no of Git projects] and Stack Overflow [measured by the number of queries on the language […]
Apples Educational Annoucement in NYC:Update
There is a 2 in 5 chance of this. If CEO Time Cook does not do the announcement at today’s conference then the odds plummet down to 1 in 100. But it would be a brilliant “one more thing”, certainly fit the educational move Apple is making and gain for Tim Cook a large measure […]
Adobe’s New Mobile Apps
Adobe has had to make some wrenching decisions of late. It has chosen to abandon its Flash player technology on Mobiles. It has also closed down it Flex development by releasing Flex to Open Source much like HP did for webOS. Adobe appears to be trying to see if they can get freebie development and […]
Who Said C++ Is Horrible
I just ran across a posting on Reddit which certainly caught my attention because it discuses the merits of C versus C++. It also revealing about a major player in software development: On Wed, 5 Sep 2007, Dmitry Kakurin wrote: > > When I first looked at Git source code two things struck me as […]
Apple Clones Amazon Tactics
Apple is determined to win back the leading market share in smartphones . So Cupertino took a took a page out of the Amazon playbook and nuked smartphone prices. Look at what this means: ZDNet says it all – Apples Pricing Nukes the Smartphone Market And so this feature comparison raises a question about feature […]
Firefox 7 : Faster, Less Memory, No HTML5 Improvements
Just installed Firefox 7 and it runs faster than Firefox 6 with less memory usage . Windows Task manager is reporting on the same sequence of browsing steps ending up at Google.com that Firefox 7 is using 32% less memory than Firefox 6 required for the same operations. But the HTML5test.com results were identically the […]
New Look for Keep an Open Eye…
If you are a loyal reader, you will notice a dramatic styling change to Keep an Open Eye Eye, Sir. There are three motivations for these changes. First, the change is designed make the blog more readable through slightly larger type plus a wider and more comfortable line spacing. Second, the change is also to accommodate using […]
New WordPress 3.1
The updated WordPress 3.1 is out and adds a lot of capabilities which will delight developers – yes, its one of those behind the UI screens updates as seen in the screenshot below: WordPress users who have updated to WordPress 2.9 will have an easy install/update to 3.1 [one of the key competitive advantages of […]
FastStones Very Fast Image Browser/Editor
In web development scouring through hundreds of images is one of the biggest delay-in-game penalties. To avoid the problem, ye Editor uses a special directory scheme and reliance on a very fast image browser/editor. But ever since Jasc Paintshop Pro version 8 and ACDSee 10 passed their prime, ye Editor has been looking for a […]
Mashables Christina Warren Does a Fox News “Story”
One of the constant supplies for Jon Stewarts “self-skewering” stories on the Daily Show is Fox News where it is ridiculously easy to catch the network lying, prevaricating and otherwise speaking falsehoods with unbridled carelessness. See the Nazi Icons spoof or the many roastings of Glen Beck. Well I was surprised to see the same […]
Chrome OS Questions
Chrome OS has generated more questions than answers since its announcement. And the questions [doubts] are relevant: 1)InfoWorld – Will Chrome OS collapse under the weight of its own Web browser? 2)Information Week – describes several challenges including Desktop/Cloud integration 3)Information Week – good analysis of the strategy/positioning of Chrome OS 4)PCAdvisor – Is Chrome […]
Who Is This Rabble Rousing IT Website?
Who is responsible for these articles on Friday July 17th 2009? They certainly do not mince words or pull punches. One flatly asks Google where is the economics behind Chrome OS? A good question as Chrome OS or Google Android certainly could take a big chunk of Netbook OS market share. And Netbooks in turn […]
Kindle is a Netbook
The following Business Week article confirms the nearly obvious – Kindle is going to be a SmartTablet or NetBookPhone or whatever you want to call it. And Amazon is getting into the broader Kindle-selling game. It is preparing Kindle selling apps for other smart devices. What is absolutely amazing is that Kindle eBooks displace Adobe’s […]
Required Book Reading in Redmond – Customer Winback
The following book, Customer Winback : How to Recapture Lost Customers–And Keep Them Loyal, should be required reading in Redmond. The problem with Vista is that Microsoft has gone about systematically ruining its Windows brand. So one would think that Microsoft would be in “customer winback” mode. And the book is quite explicit about the […]
RIA Irony
RIA – Rich Internet Application are designed to show off what is possible to do both online and offline with the latest Internet enabled programs and interface design tools. Many developers are looking at tools like Adobe Air, Java+JavaFX, Microsoft Silverlight, Trolltech Qt and other tools to provide not just Online but also Offline savvy […]
Pre Gets Positively Available
Now that the Palm Pre is set to launch (Saturday June 6th 2009), the final reviews are coming in and … well you decide on how good the Palm Pre is: David Pogue, NYTimes – very discerning reviewer of electronics is very upbeat Luigi Lugymar, I4U – wonders about the effect of the iPhone revelations, […]
RAIA=RIA++
RAIA=RIA++ This blog is instituting a new category, RAIA=RIA++, which means that RAIA goes well beyond simple RIA . RAIA=RIA++ will track all the latest doings in the world of RAIA – Rich Anywhere Interactive Applications. RAIA eliminates the confusion around RIA. Some vendors like Curl and Microsoft with Silverlight are saying that delivery on […]
Windows 7 Free Beta
Just for the sake of clarity here are some of facts on the Windows 7 “free” beta: 1)the free downloads are here and pay attention to the Redmond cautions. This is a significant amount of work and will require a large spare machine. 2)The limit is now no longer 2.5million downloads but rather the cutoff […]
The Ultimate HTML Reference by Ian Lloyd:Updated
This book is not the Ultimate HTML Handbook for two reasons. First, much of its content is already dated with the rapid change in HTML and browser capabilities making Ian’s good work on compatibility with browsers unfortunately out of date(he does not know of IE8, FireFox3, Google Chrome, Opera 9.6, …). It also lacks, for […]
Welcome Back – Pix of Toronto
Welcome to Pix of Toronto on WordPress 2.7. Our Toronto blog was down out for the count for the past few days. But thanks to some help from the WordPress people we have been able to restore Pixof Toronto.com to its full resplendent state! In addition we have added some new postings long overdue. Please […]
Vista Performance:The Last Word
Randall C Kennedy at Infoworld sets the record straight on Vista and its performance. Here is the final word on Microsoft Vista performance relative to other Microsoft operating systems – go to the site for the complete story and documentation: Vista runs 40% slower than Windows XP Vista runs 17% slower than Windows Workstation 2008 […]