Please check this out, my friend Gerben just uploaded his 5th free font
Find them over here: FontStruct | gspace | FontStructions. To demo one of them, the 'Klonk Narrow' I used fontsquirel to construct me the different webfonts and the css.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
There is no lower case yet, but he is working on it...
And to celebrate all of these design skills, Gerben has just joined us at Front end heroes. Go and check out his profile...
this is a quick write up of the first part of the onair tour, I will clean this up later...
Ryan Stewart, a Platform Evangelist at Adobe, provides an introduction to Adobe AIR and how it fits into the Adobe technology platform, and the larger RIA landscape.
marketing talk, adobe rules and stuff
focuses on the cross platform strength of air
talks about 'cocomo' and 'pacifica' server side stuff. nice, but still closed source...
air wants to bring the web developers to the desktop, by bringing the good parts of the web there.
shows a air app called uvlayer. Looks nice but still too much eye candy to me.
google analytics app is cool, adds animation in a nice unobtrusive way...
uses flash with html on one screen. pdf is used well, to render a print view.
mapcache is a cool app
why ria on the desktop?
branding, extended functionality. data access. you can use the flash player to access the same information on different platforms (web mobile desktop wii).
how
using existing tools like textmate or aptana.
new
1.1 more languages
post 1.1 three platforms the same...
max 2008 dec 1-4 2008 milan italy
Learn how to setup your development environment and build your first AIR application using Flex 3 and Flex Builder 3.
flexbuilder based on eclipse
configuration in xml looks easy.
flex looks nasty, absolute positioning and stuff
good warning on certification, get a good one if you go commercial
After this session you will know how to setup the Adobe AIR SDK to allow you to develop and package AIR applications from the command line. You will also be able to leverage the Adobe AIR command line tools to enable development of HTML and JavaScript based applications. Finally, the session will demonstrate built in support for AIR development from Adobe Dreamweaver and the Eclipse based Aptana.
shows how to build air apps with textmate and terminal. explains how app development is different than web development. app development has many things in common with java development
application sandbox? javascript is more insecure on the desktop, there is where the sandbox comes in. script injection and eval should be in the non-application sandbox and the application sandbox has the more advanced air js stuff.
html rules
Gain a better understanding of the HTML and JavaScript environments within Adobe AIR, and explore how these technologies can be leveraged in both Flash / Flex and HTML / JavaScript-based applications. JavaScript and ActionScript script bridging will be covered, as well as how to use AIR, Flash Player and ActionScript Library APIs directly from JavaScript.
even flex developers have the java bug, putting presentation in the structure, boe..
maybe it is for demo purposes, but the stupid thing is that tons of people will copy/paste this. so that is why it is important to build your demo's as clean as possible.
As javascript is maturing at a fast rate, so are developers and designers of web applications and pages. At first javascript was a frowned upon language and profession, that has changed. Now we see a situation where javascript is being called upon to help the back end developer extend the functionality. But it can also work in other fields, the user interface design part for instance, in ways that not many people are doing.
Not by creating superficial animations and such, but by understanding the needs of the user and anticipating on them. Today such a situation presented itself to me.
If you want to know what I am talking about you can skip to the demo demo page here, make sure you come back to check out the explanation...
You know of the need to help the visitor of your page with extra functionality. For instance a 'scroll to top' link at the bottom of your page, like this.
<a href="#topP" id="scrollToTop">scroll to top</a>Useful, if it is needed, but rather useless when the whole page is already visible to that visitor. All you do is give the visitor yet another link to be distracted by, not help him. That link should only be visible when it is needed.
That is where javascript comes into play. With a few simple lines you remove the link from the visitor when he has no need for it.
First you need to know the height of you viewport, for that we turn to the infamous PPK with his script that does just that.For the script and the explanation I direct you to his page about this script which you can find on quirksmode.
We then use this script to see where on the page the link is. First we check if the link is one the page, only than we do something. We get the height of the viewport and the y-position of the link and calculate the difference. If the link is above the fold, we give it a class of inViewPort.
>> = linebreak
function hideScrollToTop(){
// we start by seeking the height of the browser
var height = (typeof window.innerHeight != 'undefined' >> ? window.innerHeight : document.body.offsetHeight);
// first we seek the link with class of scrollToTop
var up = getElementsById('scrollToTop');
// if the link exists.
if(up){
// we get the coordinates from the ppk.
var coors = findPos(up);
// we then extract the y position
yPos = coors[1];
// we calculate what's left..
var left = height - yPos;
// if the link is 'above the fold'
// aka if there is a positive number left.
// we give it a class of 'inViewPort'
if( left <= 0 ){
up.className += ' inViewPort';
}
}
}In css we set the display of inViewPort to none and we are off.
.inViewPort {
display: none;
}So there you have it a way of helping users by reducing visual clutter instead of putting up more stuff. You can find the script working on it's own demo page, with all of the javascript needed in the head. Go and play with it.
Technorati Tags:css, html, userinterfacedesign, web
As the title says, david has slain goliath, aka the web development community has gained such a voice that Microsoft listens. Or microsoft has adopted webstandards in such a way that they care about the voice of the community. Lets hope that it is a combination of the two.
Any way, the new default behaviour of IE 8 is to behave as IE 8
I would illustrate the importance of this decision with a bit of history of the discussion, at the bottom of this page. But first go and agree with molly and CELEBRATE
Well, it sure has been a busy month in web development land, starting on februari 22th when the IE8 team announced that the default behaviour of IE8 would be to behave as IE7. If you don't understand, I will repeat it for you more slowly this time.
Internet Explorer 8
would render pages as
Internet Explorer 7
in default mode
Yes, you read it correctly, in order to have ie8 behave as ie8, the original idea was that you had to insert a <META HTTP-EQUIV="X-BALL-CHAIN">
. Much is to say against it, as many did, but the basic reason for the IE team was (flawed) but admirable. They saw so many sites break during the transition of ie 6 to 7 that they wanted to ease the transtion. There is something to say in that the standards aware developer could easily go the extra distance to let IE 8 be a good standards compliant browser
The downside of this was that many sites would not do this and the forward movement of the web would be slowed in the least. As the majority of web developers are not well educated and aware of standards, but frontpage using *^&%$#
Needless to say, that some people were not amused in the web development community, to say the least. There were a couple of people for it, other were clearly against it, some were on the fence. I will give you a couple of responses, in case you haven't kept up with your reading the last month.
Users will see less benefit from upgrading and will be more likely to turn to other browsers.
Technorati Tags:css, html, Internet Explorer, w3c
After long consideration, about 5 minutes that is, I booked for @media 2008, I even got the super early bird discount. After being there for 3 times, including last November's @media ajax, I look forward to attending my 4th @media in a row.
It promises the same conflict the other two (normal) @media's had, two tracks presenting you with the choice which one you will follow. Often the two are equally interesting and offer something for everyone.
I do hope though that the presentations will be more challenging than last years, I had a blast but didn't learn all that much that summer. No offence to the fine people from vivabit though, more a confirmation that I am on the right track maybe...
@media ajax was different though, a very focused two days which left me with my head spinning at times and not just from the beer. The presentations there varied from extremely challenging (Brendan Eich) to hilarious (Stuart Langridge).
Enough said, hope to see you all there, maybe for a few Fronteers beers....
Update, flight and hotel booked. more than 3 months in advance, a record for me...