jefferyrainey.com » web design

Interesting new search engine, WolfRam|Alpha

Jeff — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:03:57 +0000

Well, its not really a search engine, it is a “computational knowledge engine,” but I will just say search engine since you are searching the knowledge base for things. WolfRam|Alpha officially launched yesterday and it is really quite amazing. Type in a word or query and WolfRam|Alpha spits out what it knows about it. My first name for instance came back with information on rank, fraction of people with that name, years it was popular, the age of others with that name, etc.

But, the real power comes when you begin combining queries to do things like math equations, stock comparisons, or sports comparisons. I think the real value of something like this would be if they offer an API for programmers to call for real time information. Oh, wait, I just looked and they are doing that too!

IE Now Behaves Properly: IE7-js

Jeff — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:07:39 +0000

So here is a little gem that I wish I had found before now, called IE7-js. IE7-js is a JavaScript library has been written to make Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE5, IE6, IE7 and IE8) behave like a standards compliant browser.

It fixes many HTML and CSS issues and makes transparent PNG work correctly under IE5 and IE6.

I am just getting my feet wet with this and currently working with it on a new project. I will post an update on how the experience goes. Thanks to Craig Quillen for showing this to me.

10 Photoshop Brushes I am Downloading

Jeff — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:08:26 +0000

So I have been seeing many Photoshop Brush lists lately and have picked out a few that will be downloading and trying out. So, I guess this is my top 10 picks from the Photoshop brush lists that I have seen recently, in no particular order.

dot splatter vol.4 – by brushing up

Oil Stains – by Room 122

Light Beams – by Obsidian Dawn

Fire Brushes – by Resource42

Grungy Wings – by bitbox

Lightening Brushes – by Scully7491

Winter Breeze – by Axeraider70

Light Brush – by anodyne-stock

QuadGrunge – by env1ro

Watercolor Brushes – by BitBox

Cheers!

CSS 3 Border Radius

Jeff — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:01:50 +0000

Border-radius is one of my new favorite additions to CSS 3 and it is already supported in some browsers. Border-radius allows designers to apply radius corners on elements on the page. There are a few drawbacks to this approach.

Users browsing with IE8 and below and a handful of other browsers (Roughly 50% of your audience), will not see the intended effect. These people will see the content, just without the rounded corners.
The pixels on the corners do not render out as clean as I would like them, so it may be a good idea to keep any border colors closer in value to the background color.

So, with that in mind I’ll move on.

Example 1:

This is an example of a div using border-radius.

CSS:
-moz-border-radius: 20px; -webkit-border-radius: 20px; border: 1px solid #ccc; padding: 15px;

Example 2:

Maybe we can give it some color and depth.

CSS:
-moz-border-radius: 20px; -webkit-border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid #5c6528; border-top: 1px solid #8b983c; border-left: 1px solid #8b983c; background-color: #c7db4f; padding: 15px;

Example 3:

Maybe the corners need to be different sizes. I used shorthand below where the sizes start at the top left and work around clockwise. This could also be done like this:
-moz-border-radius-topleft:20px; -webkit-border-top-left-radius: 20px
-moz-border-radius-topright:20px; -webkit-border-top-right-radius: 20px
etc.

CSS:
-moz-border-radius: 20px 20px 40px 40px; -webkit-border-radius: 20px 20px 40px 40px; border: 2px solid #5c6528; border-top: 1px solid #8b983c; border-left: 1px solid #8b983c; background-color: #c7db4f; padding: 20px 20px 40px 20px;

So anyway, I was curious about this and thought what I found might be useful to others.

Tweetbacks Installed

Jeff — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:50:19 +0000

This is pretty cool stuff and could reshape commenting on sites as we know it. TweetBacks by Dan Zarrella searchs twitter for tweets about your url. After collecting this data, it displays them on the page, much like comments. This idea rocks and I can’t wait to see where it goes.

TweetBacks is still very new and in beta. I like how quickly it runs and how easy it was to get up and going. However, it is currently setup to run from Dan’s environment and my quick attempt to get it working in mine gave me incomplete results. I will continue playing with this later. I would like more control over look and feel as some styles are already defined inline, making it difficult to override them.

Overall TweetBacks is a great tool and like I said I can’t wait to see where this goes.

UPDATE: Dan just took care of the styling issue with a parameter that can be added to remove them. I don’t feel the need to run in my environment if I have control. AWESOME!

UPDATE 2: I just painlessly switched to the TweetBacks WordPress Plugin just released. Working great!