LessFussDesign blog

Posts Tagged ‘web development’

21 Oct 2009

PHP mail() & Fasthosts

After three days, 14 WordPress contact form plugins and a lengthy support email dialogue, here’s a post on what you can do – other than repeatedly punching a wall  – if you want to use WordPress with a simple contact form on a Fasthosts server (or any other provider with strict mail server settings). Continue reading »

13 comments
08 Oct 2009

HTML housework: get proper closure

This might seem obvious to anyone who regularly writes HTML, but it’s really helpful if you comment your source code to explain which elements you’re closing. If you’re debugging someone else’s source code (or your own code you wrote some time ago), there’s nothing worse than coming across this:

<p>What follows will really make you scratch your head:</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

By commenting which element you’re closing as you write it, it’ll be far easier to work out later on exactly what’s being closed off – and therefore easier to work out which is the offending element for any problem you’ve got. By closing and commenting everything as you write it, there’s also less chance you’ll miss closing something off, and the world of pain that brings with it.

So, commented, the above would look like this:

<p>What follows may make you scratch your head less:</p>
</div> <!-- end: div.article -->
</div> <!-- end: div#content -->
</div> <!-- end: div#main -->
</div> <!-- end: div#wrapper2 -->
</div> <!-- end: div#wrapper1 -->
</body>
</html>

There you have it. Next time you’re in the zone and dropping divs in like there’s no tomorrow, spare a second to comment them as you close them off. Quick and simple, and you could save some poor dude a lot of hassle when he/she comes to look at your code in a few years.

Of course, the tag soup above is to illustrate a point. I’d never write such bloated HTML. *Cough*.

3 comments
22 Aug 2009

Typeface JS & font weight

Rather than exporting individual images or using PHP image replacement as I normally would, I recently tried out Typeface JS [external link] – a method that uses javascript to embed fonts – to make use of a non-standard typeface in the headings of a web design. Typeface JS is pretty easy to use, but there’s one thing to be wary of: how you use the font-weight property in your CSS. Continue reading »

2 comments
28 Jul 2009

BBC Glow

When Alan Partridge asks Tony Hayers what he thinks of regional detective dramas Shoestring, Taggart, Spender, Bergerac and Morse, and Tony Hayers says “There’s too many of them”, Alan replies “That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is, ‘People like them, let’s make some more of them’”. The BBC has a similar attitude when it comes to javascript libraries, it seems. A few weeks ago they released Glow [external link] under the Apache license, giving us all a chance to spread some of the magic dust that goes into the BBC site over our own creations. But far from being another framework for wow-effects, Glow has the edge in two important areas: cross-browser support and accessibility. Continue reading »

1 comment
03 Jun 2009

Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS – putting a plaster on the Achilles heel

I’ve been taking a look at Andy Clarke’s new solution to the old Internet Explorer 6 problem – using one universal CSS file for all sites [external link] (with ‘a little branding here, or a touch of customization there’) – and I’ve decided I don’t really like it. I don’t like it because it serves web designers and developers, rather than the right people – clients and users. And because I think it will promote laziness when it comes to testing sites in IE6, which – like it or not – will most likely be around for a while yet. Continue reading »

5 comments
02 Aug 2008

Notes on a WordPress 2.6 upgrade

After you’ve been through the upgrade to WordPress 2.6 it says to post about the experience – so here I go. It went smoothly enough for me, but left me with two questions: 1) can I upgrade easily without the fear of overwriting my themes & plugins, and 2) Aaggh! How do I turn off post revisions! Continue reading »

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