thepalmcivet

◊ hemacs

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:20:09 -0400

as the budding emacs evangelist i’ve become, i decided to put my custom emacs set-up up on github for idea perusing/scoffing at. lots of ideas were taken from defunkt, al3x, and the emac’s wiki. it’s also been a great exercise in getting accustomed with magit, a great emacs mode for git.

my set-up is mainly tailored for ruby, javascript, css, git, and html. i’m on osx, using apple’s carbon emacs package 2010 and inconsolata is my mono-spaced font of choice.

cached commons

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:46:28 -0400

cached commons:

a collection of cached and optimized popular javascript libraries and stylesheets, hosted on github’s fast CDN. think of it as a more extensive, user-contribute-able alternative to google’s libraries API. an excellent resource for the cloud-minded developer.

css gradient editor

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:29:00 -0400

css gradient editor:

as a general rule: the fancier the css3 property, the more verbose the syntax. this is double true when rgba color values are thrown in. here’s a convenient gradient editor that auto-generates the necessary css.

{via}

less.js

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:36:12 -0400

less.js:

i have been a heavy user of less, the dynamic css processor, for sometime now. it has been an invaluable time-saving and creatively-inspiring tool in my front-end workflow. with less.js, it is easier than ever to get rolling. since less has now been ported to javascript, it can be rendered in the browser - no need to install the gem and watch/render the css file. just include the script and point at your .less file and you are all set =>

and, of course, you can use it load fonts from your typekit account.

html5 audio with flash fallback

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:34:00 -0400

html5 audio with flash fallback:

a nice explanation of how to support html5 audio and flash in the same markup. embedding within doesn’t work as hoped, due to firefox complaining about MP3 being patent-encumbered. the solution? swap the nesting of the and tags =>



  
  
    download

fontfonter

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:17:30 -0400

fontfonter:

a neat tool from the fontshop for dynamically test-driving different fonts on live sites.

css3 for internet explorer

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:10:12 -0400

css3 for internet explorer:

PIE is a very clever and simple way of bringing some tasty treats of css3 to internet explorer 6-8. here’s an example usage =>


#myElement {
    background: #EEE;
    padding: 2em;
    -moz-border-radius: 1em;
    -webkit-border-radius: 1em;
    border-radius: 1em;
    behavior: url(/ie/PIE.htc);
}

IE will read the non-standards ‘behavior’ attribute, serve up the PIE, and take a look around for sibling css3 attributes and emulate them. PIE currently supports border-radius, box-shadow, border-image, multiple background images, and linear-gradient as background image.

{via}

mailtrap

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:30:41 -0400

mailtrap:

personal rails development rule #342: don’t check your email while coding.

mailtrap is a super simple mock SMTP server for rails development. it also comes with a mock pop3 server if you want to use it with a GUI like apple mail, but i prefer to just tail the log file in a terminal window. getting up and running with mailtrap is super easy: =>


# install the gem
gem install mailtrap
# start mailtrap
mailtrap start
# tail the log
tail -f /var/tmp/mailtrap.log

drop shadows with css3

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:16:50 -0400

drop shadows with css3:

i’m a big fan of css3 replacing common png tricks. here’s an interesting way to make that ‘popping off the page’ drop shadow effect =>


article:before, article:after {
	-webkit-box-shadow: 0 15px 10px rgba(0,0,0, .7);   
	-moz-box-shadow: 0 15px 10px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7);	    
	box-shadow: 0 15px 10px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7);	
	position: absolute; 
	bottom: 15px; 
	z-index: -1; 
	width: 50%; 
	height: 20%; 
	content: "";       
	background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7); 
}
		   
article:after {                      
	-webkit-transform: rotate(3deg);    
	-moz-transform: rotate(3deg);   
	-o-transform: rotate(3deg);
	right: 10px; 
	left: auto;
}
		
article:before {                 
	-webkit-transform: rotate(-3deg);   
	-moz-transform: rotate(-3deg);  
	-o-transform: rotate(-3deg);
        right: auto;
	left: 10px; 
}

rvm in emacs

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:29:20 -0400

rvm in emacs:

want your emacs’ rinari rails minor mode to use your rvm’s default ruby version? (answer: probably). it’s as easy as slapping this lisp in your emacs set-up.

sharekit

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:04:43 -0400

sharekit:

a framework for adding the ability to share of various types of content to any number of web services like email, twitter, delicious, facebook, and google reader to your iOS app.

its totally customizable, fully documented, and adding it to your project starts with just 3 lines of code.

{via}

smokescreen

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:35:00 -0400

smokescreen:

a flash player written in javascript. hopefully this will silence all the whiners that want flash on their iphones.

pictaculous

Thu, 27 May 2010 13:16:00 -0400

pictaculous:

pictaculous is a web app that extracts the hexadecimal values of the color scheme from an uploaded image. you can download the adobe swatch file or compare it to similar kuler and colourlovers schemes. you can even use it on your mobile phone by taking a picture and emailing it to colors@mailchimp.com.

cloud zoom

Thu, 27 May 2010 12:06:01 -0400

cloud zoom:

cloud zoom is a snazzy image zoom jquery plugin. a bunch of options are available and the animations are very smooth. works all the way down to ie6 and minified its only 6kb.

{via}

the all-in-one almost-alphabetical no-bullshit guide to detecting everything

Tue, 18 May 2010 11:59:00 -0400

the all-in-one almost-alphabetical no-bullshit guide to detecting everything:

appendix a of mark pilgrim’s dive into html5. no hanky-panky here, just quick javascript bits to test if the browser you’re working in can handle a certain html5 element or attribute.

◊ hifiving

Thu, 13 May 2010 19:00:00 -0400

◊ hifiving:

i’m pleased to announce the launch of hifiving.com, a web application for making lists of things. those things can be videos, audio, links, images, or just plain words. it has been my pet project for quite some time, so i’m glad to get it up and running. please try it out and help spread the word!

in terms of development, the back-end is made with ruby on rails and a handful of other rubygems. i also did the design and front-end development. sprockets and less were heroes here. this is also my first experience using heroku for hosting, which has been great so far.

webkit css properties

Thu, 13 May 2010 18:47:07 -0400

webkit css properties:

wow, 95 in total? good reference for safari, iphone safari, and chrome tricks.

oauth2 gem + facebook graph api

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:23:28 -0400

oauth2 gem + facebook graph api:

RIP facebook connect and good riddance - trying to integrate facebook access to a web application used to be embarrassingly inelegant when compared to something like twitter and the oauth protocol. luckily facebook’s new graph api is fantastically simpler and the oauth2 rubygem makes account access and permission granting a cinch. need proof? check out the sinatra and rails examples.