When designing sites, it is often useful to identify different pages by adding an ID attribute to the <body></body> element. Commonly, the name of the page is used as the attribute value, for example: <body id="about"></body> In this case, “about” would be the body ID for the “About” page, which would be named something like “about.php”. Likewise, other pages would have unique IDs as well, for example: <body id="archive"> </body><body id="contact"> </body><body id="subscribe"> </body><body id="portfolio"></body> ..again, with each ID associated […] Continue reading »
One of the oldest JavaScript tricks in the book involves providing a “print this!” link for visitors that enables them to summon their operating system’s default print dialogue box to facilitate quick and easy printing of whatever page they happen to be viewing. With the old way of pulling this little stunt, we write this in the markup comprising the target “print this!” link in question: Continue reading »
With the recent Feedburner service outage, many sites across the Web experienced severe drops in their Feedburner subscriber counts. Apparently, Google is requiring all Feedburner accounts to be transferred over to Google by the end of February. In the midst of this mass migration, chaotic subscriber data has been reported to include everything from dramatic count drops and fluctuating reach statistics to zero-count values and dreaded “N/A” subscriber-count errors. Obviously, displaying erroneous subscriber-count data on your site is not a […] Continue reading »
Earlier this year, I posted an article explaining how to implement an unobtrusive JavaScript dynamic clock. While not completely earth-shattering or cutting-edge or anything like that, the dynamic JavaScript clock has received some great feedback from users who found the script to be exactly what they were looking for. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, Bill Brown went above and beyond by taking the time to improve the script with some great new features, including a “blinking seconds separator […] Continue reading »
I recently wrote about how to remove unwanted link outlines using a pure-CSS method that works on every modern browser except (wait for it) ..Internet Explorer 6! Yes, that’s right, another reason why (almost) everyone is pushing hard to eliminate Internet Explorer from existence. Nonetheless, removing those pesky unwanted link outlines in IE6 is not possible with CSS, but it’s a snap with a little JavaScript. Here are four unobtrusive JavaScript techniques (plus one CSS-only method thrown in for good […] Continue reading »
A great way to save bandwidth is to take advantage of Google’s AJAX Libraries API to serve your favorite open-source JavaScript libraries. Here is how Google explains it in their official documentation: The AJAX Libraries API is a content distribution network and loading architecture for the most popular open source JavaScript libraries. By using the google.load() method, your application has high speed, globally available access to a growing list of the most popular JavaScript open source libraries. Continue reading »
![[ Screenshot: Example Photo Styled with swfIR ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/misc-chunks/swfir-example.png)
In this ultimate guide to swfIR, you will learn how to use swfIR to replace your ordinary images with richer, stylized graphics. swfIR enables efficient, practical and scalable application of drop-shadows, rounded corners, and even image rotation to any number of specified images throughout your site. From concept and application to examples and recipes, this guide covers everything you need for successful swfIR implementation. The Challenge.. There are many ways to enhance the visual presentation of your images. Popular visual […] Continue reading »
As announced at IE Death March, I recently dropped support for Internet Explorer 6. As newer versions of Firefox, Opera, and Safari (and others) continue to improve consistency and provide better support for standards-based techniques, having to carry IE 6 along for the ride — for any reason — is painful. Thanks to the techniques described in this article, I am free to completely ignore (figuratively and literally) IE 6 when developing and designing websites. Continue reading »
In an effort to organize my pile of offline notes, I will be posting a number of quick, “to-the-point” tutorials on a number of useful topics. In this post, I share an excellent method for auto-clearing and restoring multiple form field inputs using a bit of unobtrusive JavaScript. This method was discovered at xy.wz.cz. There are two steps to this technique, which should take no longer than five minutes to implement. Continue reading »
This was just too juicy to pass up. Blogstorm recently blogged about an easy JavaScript technique for making any website editable. After checking it out for myself, I just had to share it here at Perishable Press. Here it is: javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0 Paste that single line of code into the address bar of any modern browser and have fun editing the page. Obviously, any changes will only apply to the page as seen in your browser, not the […] Continue reading »
![[ Mint Icon ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/fluid-mint.png "Have a Mint")
Recently, I spent some time addressing a few of the performance issues pointed out by Yahoo!’s very useful YSlow extension for Firebug. Working on performance tip #3, Add an Expires or a Cache-Control Header, I encountered some difficulty while trying to get the JavaScript used by Mint to cache as desired. Apparently, the HTAccess directives used to cache my other scripts do not effect the two PHP-generated JavaScript files used by Mint. Although I am not entirely certain, I suspect […] Continue reading »
![[ Screenshot: Toggling Metadata (visible state) ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/toggling-divs/toggling-metas.gif)
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: Continue reading »
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, so let’s dive right in.. Continue reading »
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. Continue reading »
![[ Screenshot: broken footer positioning in IE 7 ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/script-tags/ie-incorrect.gif "a rather 'loose' footer as seen in IE 7")
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 current site renovation project, I have attempted to implement as many of these practices as possible. At the time of this writing, I somehow have managed […] Continue reading »
![[ Preload Images with CSS ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/preload-images-css.jpg)
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 to do it with only two easy 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 of your (X)HTML document: <div id="preloaded-images"> <img src="https://perishablepress.com/image-01.png" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <img src="https://perishablepress.com/image-02.png" width="1" height="1" alt="" […] Continue reading »
