Psyked*

it’s easy once you know how.

Pseudo-AJAX loading with CSS

Posted by James - 28/10/07 at 03:10:55 pm

Widgets, scripts and all that fashionable stuff is great - you sign up to the service and you can start pasting their code into your pages. Voila! you have a new stat counter - or popularity counter, whatever. They’re great, but the practice of loading external javascript files outside the header of your documents isn’t one that’s too friendly on the page-display times. In a sense, it’s just like whacking a great big image onto your pages.

Luckily, there is an equally fashionable method for improving the effect that these scripts have on the page. Using a simple animated graphic such as those from ajaxload.info and some CSS Wizardary, we can idenitify areas of the page that take a while to load, style them appropriately, and sit back in smug satisfaction.
Continue reading Pseudo-AJAX loading with CSS…

Fast and fresh loading graphics with ajaxload.info

Posted by James - 21/10/07 at 02:10:29 pm

Here’s a neat little site - ajaxload.  There’s nothing better than letting your user know when they’re waiting for something, and although a simple animation can’t tell them the exact progress, or how much longer they’ll have to wait - it’s often the thought that counts.  Your preloader / loading animation is that little extra bit of finessé for your creations.

And ajaxload has a lovely little generator to knock some graphics up for you, in a variety of formats and completely customizable colours.

ExternalInterface not working in Firefox?

Posted by James - 20/10/07 at 11:10:39 am

Here’s a wierd one. Let’s say you have a flash navigation - one of those old DHTML style drop-down ones, but done in flash and layered over the top of your page content. You can stick the wmode to transparent and have a transparent background for your flash.

That’s dandy - but in most browsers (ie. firefox) you’ll run into problems interacting with the content underneath your flash movie, particulary hyperlinks. Hyperlinks and form fields just become inaccessible. Setting the wmode might make things transparent, but it doesn’t help the ‘click-through’ aspect of transparency. So, what do you do? The solution I’ve been using is a JavaScript function which resizes the flash movie, activated using ExternalInterface. Continue reading ExternalInterface not working in Firefox?…

XHTML, Hyperlinks and separating content from style.

Posted by James - 15/10/07 at 09:10:51 pm

XHTML is the attempt to purify the traditional mishmash of HTML standards, separating content from appearance, and to create a more elegant solution, for a more civilized age.

That’s great in theory - but unless you’re armed with a plethora of cross-browser scripts and an iron will, moving to XHTML 1.0 Strict is a hard, bumpy road. And often one with little discernable gain. Did you know you can’t use target attributes in link tags? Or alignment tags? Ok, so the alignment tags is a non-issue - we can do the same with CSS styles. But how, pray tell, do we achieve the feats we take for granted in HTML - target=”_blank” ?
Continue reading XHTML, Hyperlinks and separating content from style….

Mastering Photoshop with psdtuts.com

Posted by James - 08/10/07 at 09:10:26 pm

Psdtuts (Photoshop-document tutorials) hit the scene a little while ago on digg, and I’ve had it on my RSS subscriptions ever since. Off like a dynamo with the Photoshop tutorials, I’d certainly keep an eye on it - looks to have potential to be another Smashing Magazine. (i.e. A big hit)

Now, my knowledge of Photoshop is ok, certainly on-par with those I work with, but Psdtuts? I’m a complete novice against them. I tried to do a couple of their tutorials as a demonstration, but they didn’t turn out so good. They make it look so easy, but I guess you need some mystical, innate knowledge if you’re going to compete.

Continue reading Mastering Photoshop with psdtuts.com…

Debugging Flash Movies with Fiddler 2

Posted by James - 07/10/07 at 10:10:19 am

What is Fiddler?

From the Fiddler website:

Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet.

Simple really. Introduced to me by Chris Preece, this is a Microsoft-made debugging tool which shows you all of the header information and file requests that your browser makes. It’s works with IE, and also claims to work with other browsers (I’ve never tried this though) Continue reading Debugging Flash Movies with Fiddler 2…

“getURL doesn’t work!”

Posted by James - 01/10/07 at 01:10:17 pm

Ever used getURL(); for loading new pages in Flash? That’s how you load a new page. Obvious, huh?

In 97% of situations it works fine. The other 3% it doesn’t* I’ve had a rough ride with getURL unexplicably not functioning. Turns out that it works if you omit target parameter of the function call, it works. Remember that next time you get stuck…

* Please note, statistics are made up on the spot.