Archive for the ‘Development’ Category

Clean & Pretty flash[:notice] and flash[:error] in Rails

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

I’ve been using this little snippet quite often for our Rails applications, so I thought I’d share it. It uses minimal code to output the flash[:notice] and flash[:error] messages in colors correlating to their purpose and then fades them away.

flash notice example

Here’s the CSS used followed by the Erb code I use in my layout:

W3C HTML/XHTML Validator Standalone App for Mac OS X

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Validator S.A.C.

Found this slick little app for validations, Validator S.A.C. I generally would use the one built into FireFox’s Web Developer toolbar or FireBug, but they don’t work for websites running locally. To validate local sites, I would have to go to W3C’s validation website and copy n’ paste my local code. Now I can open this little app with a quick Spotlight keystoke and drag n’ drop files directly on it to validate. They can even be dragged directly from my TextMate sidebar. Cheers to Chuck Houpt!

Google’s Web Development Encyclopedia

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

Google just introduced Doctype, a new wiki-style encyclopedia by web developers, for web developers. Looks to be a valuable resource, and has been added to my personal bookmarks. I especially like that they list browser compatibility for all of the CSS properties.

Check it out »

Google Doctype is an open encyclopedia and reference library. Written by web developers, for web developers. It includes articles on web security, JavaScript DOM manipulation, CSS tips and tricks, and more. The reference section includes a growing library of test cases for checking cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility.

Google Doctype is 100% open.

  • Open source
  • Open content
  • Open to contributions from anyone

The SEO Rapper

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Making us nerds look a little cooler…

YouTube Preview Image

Feeling the Pain

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

Emil Stenström recently wrote about his experiences with Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 (MOSS) entitled, Sharepoint 2007 from an interface developer’s view. This is a task that I am currently undertaking at work, and I couldn’t agree more with his point of view that if you really want a CMS with a custom UI, then you should avoid Sharepoint if at all possible.

I order to progress within this project, I have been forced to revert to the HTML methodologies of yore (table-based layouts in particular), and to write messy code that I am not proud to call my own. I have however manged to produce a somewhat clean Masterpage, and have been able to keep the majority of the presentation coding within the CSS files. Working on this intranet site however, does make me VERY appreciative that the majority of the projects that I’m working on these days are built in Rails.

Get in the KNOW

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

Know TheatreToday I am very excited to show off our most recent site launch here at Barefoot. The Know Theatre is one of Barefoot’s 2007 grant recipients and a large portion of their grant campaign was invested into building a brand new website. In addition to the website, our team designed and developed 6 print ads (featured in City Beat), 4 print guerrilla executions, 3 bumper stickers, and an external theatre sign.

In addition to being a beautifully designed site, it is probably the most technically progressive site that I have had the pleasure of working on to date. Built with Ruby on Rails; we managed to throw in everything plus the kitchen sink. The site features a fully custom CMS, RSS news feed, flickr photo feed, iCal event feed, some Microformat love, and AJAX out the wazoo! Also be sure to check out the nifty animated GIF rollover effects on the main navigation.