September 15, 2007
UPDATE: (Oct. 26th, 2009): I’ve just released a new version of Coda-Slider. Check out the details here. The original version referred to in this post remains available for download.
These last couple of weeks in work I’ve been getting to grips with the jQuery JavaScript library to provide some cool effects on an interface I’ve been building. One effect I hoped to create was a tabbed sliding div type thing, like Panic have on their Coda site. I couldn’t find anything quite like that ready-made with jQuery, so I went about doing it myself. Using Gian Carlo Mingati’s excellent slideViewer as a starting point, I was able to achieve the desired effect. At the risk of getting sued, I’ve called it Coda-Slider.
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September 4, 2007
I have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to web development. There’s unexpected pop-up windows, auto-play music, sites that tell me what browser I should use to best view its pages, resizing the browser window, screwing with my browser scroll bar, PDF links that aren’t labeled as PDF links… I could go on and on and on. Indeed, some people have taken the time to list many similar grievances (like here and here).
One that I rarely see mentioned but really bugs me is mailto links. These little feckers are supposed to open up your e-mail client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird) and have a readily-addressed blank message waiting for you to fill out. Problem is, I don’t use an email client. I use this thing called Gmail, and I’m guessing there’s a few dozen other people with a preference for web-based email too.
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August 24, 2007
I have Eircom’s 1mb broadband package at home, and it’s been driving me absolutely mad recently. The connection is so unreliable, that trying to spend a chunk of hours working from home is pretty much impossible. I haven’t even bothered calling Eircom about the problem, because I know what the problem is. Our house is too far from the local exchange, resulting in what they call a long line issue. This means the signal is very week by the time it reaches us, and we therefore get cut off whenever there’s a heavy load on the line.
I worked at AOL broadband technical support for a while, and this was a common problem for rural customers. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution. The only thing the ISP can really do is try get the line upgraded, but I’m sure there’s a lot of expense in that and it probably isn’t worth their while doing it just to satisfy a handful of nagging customers.
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