No margin for errors

I’ve just put online the new version of prettyPhoto. This release include a bunch of fixes and improvement that makes it much, much better, it is recommend to update your current version if you are already using it.

Here’s a list of updates:

• New button design;
• Fixed a glitch on image resizing;
• The images bigger than the viewport are now resized to fit;
• The pictures now follow the scroll when the gallery is opened;
• CSS has been tweaked a bit.

To view a demo or download the latest version, go to: http://www.no-margin-for-errors.com/projects/prettyPhoto

Feel free to leave your suggestions/comments!

About 2 weeks ago John Resig, the maker of jQuery, released processing.js, an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. Porting it to javascript made it available to a wider audience. I saw the processing project about 2 years ago but didn’t see much use at the time since it was open source but required a software to code it.

In the near future it might not change much things, but as it becomes better known and people start working/improving it i’m pretty sure we have a strong Flash/Silverlight killer here. First of all you don’t need to install any 3rd party application, it’s straight javascript. Secondly, developers won’t need to buy expensive licenses to work with it. And third, the javascript community is already pretty big, once people starts jumping on the wagon, the train will be hard to stop.

The main problem right now is that you have Silverlight that tries to steal market from Flash, but Flash penetation is so big that it’s nearly impossible to overcome. Developers simply won’t start developing Silverlight applications because no one asks for it. This is where processing.js come in play, the penetration is even stronger than flash, and you don’t need any kind of license to develop it.

In my opinion, at the moment, the only real use for Flash on the web is for video/audio players. And it’s something that might change in the near future since HTML 5 already has a video and audio element planned what will be the use of flash?

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

I’ve just finished prettyPhoto, a lightbox jQuery plugin.

You can find it here: http://www.no-margin-for-errors.com/projects/prettyPhoto/

My new jQuery plugin is on it’s way, it’s done, tested, I just need to make it ready for wide usage. That means, clean up the code, optimize the css, dynamize the images, basic stuff like that. Nothing like the hell I went through the past couple of days to make it work in IE…

Basically it’s a lightbox clone for jQuery (yes, another one!). The reason is simple, the clones already available either don’t reproduce lightbox close enough, or were not flexible enough for my needs. So I went ahead and created one of my own!

Release is expected to be around mid-week next week. I really do hope to get the same feedback as the ones I got for my Pretty Comments script.

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.

Let me say first off, that I’m am more than happy with the response I had for my pretty comments jQuery plugin. More than 1500 people visited my blog last month and more are coming just for that bit of code. Really, I am impressed, never tought I’d get such response.

I have been on vacation for 2 weeks, I’ll be back at work and in fully working shape next week. That means I should get more active. I’m currently working on another jQuery plugin that takes the standard browser drop downs (we all know they can’t really be styled with css) and give you the ability to customize them. The script is started, pretty advanced, I only have some issues with accessibility and needs to test it some more to make sure it doesn’t break anything in the forms when you use it. The name? Pretty dropdown You can see I am very inspired
Thanks again for all the positive feedback!

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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!

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That’s right, the World Wide Web War 1 has started.

For those of you who are not aware, last week, a leaked Scientology indoctrination video has been leaked on You Tube, the cult of Scientology contacted You Tube to ask them to remove the video from the website, claiming it was a copyright infringement. Also, several news stories related to that video has been removed from digg. If you want to see the video, Gawker still has a version live.

This incident fired rage from a bunch of hackers, well hacker is quite big word, let’s just say script kiddies. A group who call themselves “anonymous” (FEAR THEM) posted this video on You Tube. The group threatens to bring Scientology’s online presence down for their years of lies.

Over the past weak, several Scientology websites has been victim of DDoS attacks, which brought them down.

What’s interesting in that story, the enormous proportion this story is taking, the story made the news, several websites reported the attacks. It’s big!

Brings me to think talk about the power users have online. This fired the rage of a bunch of users and the reacted! Companies/Individuals have to be very about how they act online, because it is still relatively easy for users to show their dissatisfaction.

It is so hard today for people to raise speach and talk about those events on traditional medias, that’s why the internet is so fun! The space is not yet sold to big corporation, it is not yet moderated and let’s just hope it stays that way!

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