DEfusion.org.uk

Recently I’ve been trying to catch up with a huge backlog of my Podcasts and while listening through these recently one of them made me emotional enough to shout at my radio in the car. So I figured if this was something that had the ability to get me that emotional, maybe I should share my reasons for this with others, so here I am, I’m a sharing kind of guy (unless it’s my round).

The topic in question that got me shouting at my radio and making fellow commuters stare ahead more intensely than before was Object Orientated Programming, more specifically the use of some of the basic data OO patterns within Coldfusion.
Continue reading this entry »

…it’s all about the effects.

Today I came across the new script.aculo.us website, I will point here out that I really like the script.aculo.us library, my first thoughts were along the lines of "Ugh" or some other onomatopoeic word which in English would translate to "My eyes, it burns!".

As I said just now, and would like to re-iterate, I really do like the library and even extend it in one of my code projects.

I suppose the gratuitous use of the available effects is meant as a show-case of what you can do with script.aculo.us. But the site’s tagline, it’s about the user interface, baby! is the real kick in the giggle berries for me, this is exactly what it should be, a show-case of how script.aculo.us can enhance the UI, not how it can make it inaccessible and difficult to use while concentrating on the effects. The fact that they didn’t manage to do both is what really bothers me in the end.

Just a quick note to say that the JavaScript Image Cropper UI has been updated to version 1.1.3.

This adds the requested feature to allow you to set dimensions & position for the cropper on load, for example if you want to start the cropper with a previously selected area for a given image, say when the rest of a form this is part of doesn’t validate, this will allow you to do that.

As well as fixing a tiny bug in the CSS I’ve fixed a slightly larger one where pressing ‘remove cropper’ twice in IE removed the image from the source altogether.

I was hoping to get more things from the bug/feature request list into this release, but unfortunately I haven’t had time. As usual, please us the JavaScript Image Cropper UI code page to leave comments & bug reports etc. on the cropper UI.

Behold the beauty that is now DEfusion.org.uk, version 4 or 5 I think. As I mentioned a few weeks back:

…when I was releasing the JavaScript Image Cropper UI I really noticed how much this theme had begun to bug me, mostly for it’s lack of definition and space. It’s a tweaked version of a great WordPress theme, it has served me well, but I feel it’s time for a change. So I have created a design from scratch…

So here it is in all it’s glory and on a new server to boot, as since the launch of the Image Cropper UI and the resulting traffic the old server has been up and down like a yo-yo. Luckily plans were already in place for the new server and the build was completed late last week.
Continue reading this entry »

If you’re anything like me (read: anal and a perfectionist) then when dealing with multiple programs in Windows you may like to have your programs in a given order in the task bar. For example if I’m testing some CSS/JS in multiple browsers I usually have them in order of Firefox, IE 5.5, IE 6 and Opera (maybe a couple of versions of Opera) from left to right (that list included IE 5.0 until recently), another situation is when I have multiple file transfer windows open to each of our clustered web servers.

In the browser example if one of those browsers crashed, usually IE 5.5 or 5.0 in the hacky multiple browser setup you need to do for IE, then they’d be out of order and it really bugged me. Well it bugs me no more, thanks to the wonderful (and free) Taskbar Shuffle, which allows me to reorder taskbar entries. If you too like to keep your taskbar in order then this download is a must for you.

I was notified yesterday by a friend of mine Martin Laine that Ben Forta had blogged about a interview with me on Web Wire.

First of all, wow, Ben Forta – so it was just a passing mention, but for anyone working in the CF or Flex development fields Ben Forta is a very important and influential figure. Secondly, I still find it amazing how quickly the web moves, I received the final copy of the interview copy in my inbox on Thursday afternoon and by Friday morning it had been picked up by Ben Forta and relayed to myself via Martin.

Finally the interview on Web Wire appears to have been edited a little, I’ll try and get my hands on the original and post it here.