The agency I’m working at has just launched it’s new website. It’s a full flash website with a full HTML equivalent for people without flash and to help SEO.

It’s our first attempt at making a flash website fully SEO friendly, which is pretty cool.

Since I don’t do any flash I wasn’t implied in the main site development, I have been in charge of the HTML version development.

To view the new site just go to: http://www.cloudraker.com
To view the new HTML version of the site go to: http://www.cloudraker.com?noflash=true

When you first launch your IE6 machine to debug and it’s nearly perfect.

It’s the first time it happens to me and god was I happy. I guess I just had a glimpse of the day IE will be better.

UPDATE: Please refer to this post for support/updates on prettyComments

Here’s a small jQuery plugin that allow textareas to strech as content is put in. If the content goes over the defined height of the textarea, the textarea will stretch.

So no need to more scroll up in that cramped space to take a look at what you wrote 10 lines before.

It’s really easy to use, just download the file pretty-comments.js and include it in the html page where you want to allow the comment box stretching. Then put that bit of code in that same page to include the script:

<script src=“the-path/js/pretty-comments.js” type=“text/javascript” charset=“utf-8″></script>

You can then play a bit with the options which are located at the top of the javascript file, you can define if you want to have it animated or not and the speed of the animation.

Then put that bit of code in the same page you have your comment box, you need to pass the comment box id as a parameter for it to work.

<script type=”text/javascript” charset=”utf-8″>
$(document).ready(function(){
prettyComments.init(’comment’);
});
</script>

That’s really all there’s to it, if you want a demo, just leave a comment, you’ll see the box stretch

Files: Un-compressed (3kb,options)
Packed (1kb, animated, no options)

Demo: Right in that page, just enter a lot of content in the comment box.

If you notice any bug, need any support, just leave a comment, I’ll do my best to help you!

Note: You also need the jQuery library in order to use this plugin

Update: Version: 1.1 relased! Now the textarea can shrink back to it’s original size when you delete content from it!

No I’m not talking about world of warcraft, but of those moments where I get impressed by something that’s out of the ordinary, innovative.

This wow moment happened when I tried the firefox plug in PicLens, basically this plug in transforms your firefox in a fullscreen slideshow viewer. What’s so nice about it is the nice navigation they implemented in it. It’s so easy to browse images and so well integrated into the browser takes image browsing on the web to a new level.

The only thing is that it doesn’t support every sites, the main ones are there (Flickr, Facebook, Google Images …), but still, at several occasion I thought I’d like to have PicLens support on that particular site.

Try it, it’s really worth it!

Blogged with Flock

It has been a little while now since I started thinking about where I was a year ago and where I am now in term of productivity. I made various improvements and think I can still improve.

Over the next weeks, I’ll try to post my various tricks and tips as of how you can boost your productivity in making good use of the slice tool, how to indent your CSS properly, how to optimize you class names in your CSS and more if they come to my mind. You are all welcome to share your own productivity tips, always help to work a bit faster and more efficiently!

I’ll even start with the Tip #1!

Make good use of your development software. I personally use textmate, this program is full of keyboard shortcuts, snippets, macros to help you boost your productivity. As every software if you only knows it surface, you won’t be able to fully use the built-in functions. I won’t go into much details as of how you can make textmate work better for you, simply because there are already a bunch of useful tutorials just for it. But one thing for sure, the more I learn about that software, the more I love it and the faster I get.

Tip #1 done! Number 2 will come, how to properly indent your CSS.

Blogged with Flock

I’m back! I mean fully back, I officially came back to work last week, but it’s the kind of week where you only get back up to date and set things back so you can be ready for full steam work the week after.

And god did I have to get up to date, it was the first time in ages I hadn’t open my computer for over a week. I really wanted not to be on a computer during my holidays, for the sole reason that I spend over 90 hours a week on one, everyone needs a break I even nearly had to re-learn how to use a mouse, I found my mouse so fast at first!

It got me to think how important internet has become, I mean, when I got back online I felt left behind, like this worlds hasn’t stopped moving and at the speed it’s moving, a week is a lot of time.

But anyway, I’m happy I took that time offline, only helped me come back stronger and better.

You ever did it?

Blogged with Flock

I know I haven’t been in the business for a long time. But over my short career I noticed one “small” thing. Years of experience don’t mean as much as we might think.

One general thing I noticed is that junior people tends to be more aware of what’s coming and what are the best practice to use. They usually produce incredibly clean code with tidy CSS associated to it. As of more experienced people seems to be affected by divitis.

Here’s my little theory, the web is not what it used to be, it changed so fast, not only what we see, but the back end is now so much different than it used to be that what you learned 10 years ago is not gonna help you much today. My point is that you need to be constantly evolving, you can’t just stop at what you know, you need to keep aware of the new stuff and that’s what seems to be the weak point of more experienced people.

I worked with that girl once, she got hired for a web developer position, had 10+ year of experience. I was excited (it was actually my first encounter with an experienced developper), not only cause it was a cute little girl, but because of all the knowledge she carried. Well it turned out she had to learn everything all over again. I actually knew more than her on the actual web and I was the one doing the teaching. Eventually she got up to par and produced clean code. But in the end, what did those 10 years of experience meant? Nothing.

I know I generalize, some people with lots of experience are incredibly good, for one reason, they followed the trends (or pushed them).

Keep updated, don’t sit on what you know!