Perishable Press

Toggle Element Visibility via JavaScript

Recently, while restoring the popular Jupiter! WordPress theme, which several readers use to “skin” the Perishable Press website, I found myself searching for a simple, effective JavaScript technique for toggling element visibility. Specifically, I needed to accomplish the following design goals: Users should be able to toggle the visibility of any division containing post-meta information The post-meta information should remain visible by default and ...

Unobtrusive JavaScript Dynamic Clock

In this tutorial, I present an easy way to add a little extra flair to your site by adding some dynamic clock functionality. Using unobtrusive JavaScript, a bit of (X)HTML markup, and a dash of PHP (optional), we will create a dynamic clock that degrades gracefully to a static date/time-stamp when JavaScript is unavailable. No need to get all verbose with this one, ...

Optimizing Google Analytics Performance

It has occurred to me lately that I no longer use Google Analytics for Perishable Press. Instead, I find myself keeping an eye on things using Mint almost exclusively. So, the question now is: do I continue serving the GA JavaScript to keep the profile active just in case I ever need the additional stats? I mean, Mint already does a ...

Quick JavaScript Tip: Auto-Highlight Form Inputs and Textareas

I realize that probably everybody already knows this elementary and absolutely dead-simple JavaScript tip, but I was surfing around the other day and encountered a page that made great use of some auto-highlighted textarea content. The idea is simple, include a snippet of JavaScript to enable users to automatically highlight/select upon focus any chunk of text located within a form input or textarea element. I would imagine this trick works with just about any element — buttons, ...

Protect Your Site Against UserCash and Other Scumbags

In this brief article I explain the atrocity that is UserCash and then provide the JavaScript needed to protect your site. What is UserCash? UserCash is an online advertising program that uses redirects and frames to exploit your site with advertisements. UserCash customers link to target sites using rewritten URL’s generated via the UserCash “generator/compiler.” There are two types of these rewritten UserCash links: Links that use frames to create banner-like ads above your pages Links that ...

RefreshMints: Refresh Stats Bookmarklets for Mint 2

Last week, I finally got around to upgrading to Mint 2.14. The new version is quite impressive, and well worth the time (and cash) spent upgrading. In the process, however, one of my favorite, most heavily used bookmarklet things ceased to work. Before the upgrade, I had been enjoying the highly useful Refresh-All ...

Open External Links as Blank Targets via Unobtrusive JavaScript

Beginning with this article, I am serving up a short series of unobtrusive JavaScript functions that I use to enhance the functionality of Perishable Press. In this post, I present a comprehensive JavaScript method of opening external links in new windows (or tabs, depending on the browser). One way of opening links in new windows is to insert the HTML target="_blank" attribute into all necessary anchor ...

Prevent JavaScript Elements from Breaking Page Layout when Following Yahoo Performance Tip #6: Place Scripts at the Bottom

By now, everyone is familiar with the Yahoo Developer Network’s 14 “best-practices” for speeding up your website. Certainly, many (if not all) of these performance optimization tips are ideal for high-traffic sites such as Yahoo or Google, but not all of them are recommended for smaller sites such as Perishable Press. Nonetheless, throughout the ...

The Ultimate JavaScript Library for Embedding Flash Content

[ Keywords: swffix, javascript, library, embed, embedding, flash, object, content ] Earlier this year, Geoff Stearns and Bobby van der Sluis teamed up to create the “ultimate JavaScript library for embedding Flash content” into web documents. For those of you familiar with techniques for embedding Flash, these two names are instantly recognizable. Geoff Stearns is the author of SWFObject ...

Slideshow Code for Dead Letter Art

Pardon this post! I am posting this information online for personal references purposes. I may need to revisit this code at some point in the future, and if I post it here I will always know where to find it (trust me, it would disappear into the abyss if I tried storing it offline). So, although it is intended solely for myself, feel free to extract and use ...

Another Mystery Solved..

Recently, after researching comment links for an upcoming article, I realized that my default values were being submitted as the URL for all comments left without associated website information. During the most recent site redesign, I made the mistake of doing this in comments.php: ... ... Notice the value="[website]" attribute? It seemed like a good idea at the time — I even threw in a ...

Absolutely Fabulous Browser Bookmarklet Things

..Or something. Frankly, I just needed an excuse to post these steaming little beauties online. Please note that I don’t lay claim 1 to most of these browser bookmarklet/favelet tricks, but I do find them extremely useful. They are posted here for the sake of convenience and for reference purposes, so use at your own risk (i.e., I am not ...

CSS Throwdown: Preload Images without JavaScript

Clean, easy, effective. You don’t need no stinking JavaScript to preload your images. Nope. Try some tasty CSS and (X)HTML instead! Here’s how.. (only two steps!) Step 1 — Place this in your CSS file: div#preloaded-images { position: absolute; overflow: hidden; left: -9999px; top: -9999px; height: 1px; width: 1px; } Step 2 — Place this at the bottom ...

Compressed JavaScript Compression

[ Keywords: javascript, compression, compress, php, htaccess, gzip, ob_gzhandler ] In this article, we extrapolate our favorite CSS-compression technique for JavaScript. Below, we outline the steps required to auto-compress your JavaScript documents via gzip and PHP. Two different compression methods are presented. The first method does not require htaccess, but rather involves the manual editing of JavaScript files. The second method employs htaccess to do ...

Embed Flash or Die Trying

[ Keywords: Flash, embed, object, nested, cooked, satay, SWFObject, UFO, methods, standards ] Embed Flash or Die Tryin’ Web designers and developers looking to embed Flash content into a web page currently enjoy a wide variety of methods from which to choose. The most common methods vary along several key dimensions, including standards-compliance, user-friendliness, and universal support. Some methods make it easy to provide alternative content, others enable ...

Flash-Detection Triple-Threat

In our previous article, Alternate JavaScript Slideshow for SlideshowPro, we present an elaborate method for providing alternate content specifically for SlideshowPro. Although the method points toward a more generalized adaptation, its overall functional implementation remains focused on the presentation of slideshows. This article explores the generalization of the previously defined method for providing alternate JavaScript content when Flash support is not detected. Using skyzyx.com’s excellent Flash-detection script, ...

Alternate JavaScript Slideshow for SlideshowPro

For the unenlightened, SlideshowPro (SP) is a Flash-based slideshow-authoring system that delivers full-featured, high-end, Flash-based slideshows. Websites featuring SP slideshows present content in sophisticated fashion, inspiring users with elegant captions, beautiful transitions, and intuitive navigation. However, many visitors are unable to experience SP slideshows because they lack the requisite Flash support. SlideshowPro-based slideshows currently require Flash 7 or better to function. And, although Flash 7 is quite common, it is far from ubiquitous. In the ...

Go Back via JavaScript and PHP

Use this simple code as a button that will return users to the previous page: Here it is as a simple text link: « Go back You can make things easier by serving PHP and printing the link automatically. Here is the button link: echo ""; And here is the PHP code to print a "Go back" text link: echo "...

Maximum and Minimum Height and Width in Internet Explorer

Behold the seventh wonder of the virtual world: max/min-height and max/min-width properties are possible in Internet Explorer! Indeed, by taking advantage of IE’s proprietary CSS attribute, expression, you too can whip IE widths and heights into desirable proportions. The CSS expression attribute enables JavaScript commands to be executed within Internet Explorer. JavaScript via CSS? Thanks, Microsoft! Why is this so great? Well, because in other, standards-compliant browsers, max/min-height and max/min-width properties are easily accomplished with this simple bit ...

Industrial-Strength Spamless Email Links

In our previous article on creating spamless email links via JavaScript, the presented method, although relatively simple to implement, is not the most effective solution available. Spambots, email harvesters, and other online scumbags relentlessly advance their scanning technology, perpetually rendering obsolete yesterday’s methods. In the case of spamless email links created client-side via JavaScript, many spambots now are able to decipher certain email addresses hidden within the JavaScript code itself. Spambots scan ...

Auto-Focus Form Elements with JavaScript

After digging through the WordPress source code, I stumbled upon this very useful JavaScript method for auto-focusing form elements upon page load. Here is the JavaScript code (place within the document head): function formfocus() { document.getElementById('element').focus(); } window.onload = formfocus; ...and corresponding (X)HTML markup (abbreviated for clarity): In this example, the first form element ...

Preloading Images with CSS and JavaScript

Fast-loading pages reduce errors, conserve bandwidth, and please visitors. One way to decrease loading times and enhance performance involves maximizing image display efficiency. Your mantra for achieving image efficiency should be "reuse, optimize, and preload.". While each of these methods plays an important role, this article will focus on methods for preloading images. Consult your server error logs to identify web pages that may require image help. Note: preloading images does not reduce bandwidth! It only decreases ...

One Link to Open Them All

Welcome to Perishable Press! This article explains several methods for opening multiple frames with a single link. For more excellent (X)HTML information, check out the (X)HTML tag archive. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to Perishable Press for a periodic dose of online ...

Customize WordPress Quicktags

Note: This condensed tutorial assumes you are working with WordPress 2+ and are familiar with editing .php and/or .js files. WordPress quicktags1 provide shortcuts for adding certain bits of code to your posts. The default set of quicktags includes some handy shortcut buttons for tags such as , , and , as well as a few others. While the default set of quicktag buttons is occasionally useful, a quick bit of quicktag customization can easily transform your personal ...

Auto Clear and Restore Form Elements

Using a small bit of JavaScript, it is possible to auto-clear and restore form elements when users bring focus to them. Simply copy, paste, and modify the following code example to achieve an effect similar to this:   ...

Optimize Convoluted Code via JavaScript

Search engines loathe crawling through convoluted lines of code. Oceans of complex JavaScript scare away the priceless indexing and archiving efforts of most major search engines, which will generally abort a crawl upon encountering such mess. The good news is that search engines actually do not deploy JavaScript, so it is possible to use JavaScript to hide those miles of messy code by using the fundamental document.write function. Place this function in an external JavaScript file, “navmenu.js”: function navMenu() ...

Spamless Email Address via JavaScript

Let’s face it, spam sucks. Give spammers the figurative finger by using this nifty bit of JavaScript to hide your email address from the harvesters. Here is an easy “copy-&-paste” snippet for including a spam-proof email address in your web pages. Although there are a million ways of doing this, I am posting this for the record (and because I just can’t stand deleting usable code). This ...

Conditionally Load WordPress Pages

Need to load a WordPress page conditionally? For example, perhaps you need a “special” page to appear for search results? Yes? This simple PHP/JavaScript solution may be just what the doctor ordered! Simply replace “condition” with the required condition (or delete the if (condition) {} qualifier entirely), and then change the path and file names to suit your specific needs:...

sIFR Notes Plus

Here are a few sIFR Notes for Perishable Press. Just what are we looking at here? Well, first it is important to understand the sIFR variables and the order in which they should appear: (sSelector, sFlashSrc, sColor, sLinkColor, sHoverColor, sBgColor, nPaddingTop, nPaddingRight, nPaddingBottom, nPaddingLeft, sFlashVars, sCase, sWmode) The variable, sFlashVars consists of the following sub-variables (these should be seperated with an & sign: # Align Flash text block textalign=center # Moves text any number of pixels to the right...

Lightbox + FancyTooltips Bug Fix

For those of us enjoying the stylish functionality of Lightbox or any of its many incarnations, images "magically" overlay the window and unfold, revealing navigational buttons, image count, and of course the image titles. For those of us enjoying the stylish functionality of FancyTooltips or any of its many incarnations, title and alt attributes manifest as stylish displays of CSS brilliance. However, ...

Website Cluster Graphs

Ever imagine your website represented as a cluster graph? Well prepare your DOM and check out Sala’s Websites as Graphs project. Each map represents a single website page, each dot represents a different tag, and each color represents a different set of tags. Here is the graphical representation for Perishable Press: Perishable Press DOM Graph

JavaScript Notes Plus

Welcome to Perishable Press! This article covers a plethora of useful JavaScript tips and tricks. For more excellent JavaScript information, check out the JavaScript tag archive. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to Perishable Press for a periodic dose of online enlightenment ;) Nifty JavaScript Design Tricks Clickable divs Standard design practice dictates that the ...

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