Web Design on Justin Carmony

Videos & Slides on Usibility & Persuasive Design by Andy Budd

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:00:12 +0000

For a long time I’ve been a fan of Andy Budd because of his book CSS Mastery. It basically was one of the core reasons I was able to switch to to 100% CSS standards and compliance. I talk a lot more about his book and CSS in general in a previous post. He is one of the key people over at the company Clearleft in London, and is a popular speaker any many conferences. He specializes in usability and persuasive web designs, helping companies making their websites and user experiences better.

jQuery UI - Disable Title On Dialog

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 05:56:35 +0000

For some reason, this was turning out to be kind of hard to accomplish, and everyone on the internet wanted to do it with JavaScript hacks. My issue was if the JavaScript hack didn’t execute fast enough, causing the title to flash for just a second, so I’d much rather do it with CSS. Unfortunately, there are no built in ways to hide it in jQuery. However, there is an option you can pass in the .dialog() method: dialogClass. This places a custom class in the main div element, allowing you to do something like this:

My 2009 Technology Recap

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:55:31 +0000

Its been two years now that I’ve been a more or less “serious blogger.” I had using the term blogger, since when people hear about blogs, they think of people either detailing their entire lives, or pumping some angel. For me, blogging has just been a way to share information with people I know locally, and those I don’t even know who find my blog via searching. I’ve had a few spurts where I blogged quite frequently, but for the most part it was just here and there.

Article: 5 Things Your Clients Should Know

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:45:13 +0000

I read an interesting article on teaching your clients about web design. It brings up some great points on helping your client understanding their role in their website’s development. While its not in inclusive list, it brings up some good points. I’ll share a few quotes:

This is not a criticism of clients, however. There is so little information that clearly defines their role. Sure, there is no shortage of material on usability, accessibility, online marketing and copywriting, but who has the time to read all of it?

"Nerfing" a PHP Object

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:26:35 +0000

I was trying to think of something with PHP I could blog about that would be short and sweet. Then I thought of something that a good friend of my taught me: nerfing objects.

The Problem

Many times while working with PHP and bigger frameworks, you’ll have classes that extend classes that extand classes. We have an ORM system that interfaces our Database with PHP classes. This makes accessing and updating information easy for us. So lets say we have a class called “Post” that stores a blog post. Our ORM class just takes a few lines of code to hook up our “Post” class to the “posts” database tables. We just extend our base DataObject, which contains all sorts of references to other class isntances. Long story short, this PHP code is awesome, but there is one issue.

jQuery Tip: Better Toggle

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:28:05 +0000

For many web developers, jQuery is the most awesome JavaScript library out there. For me, it has turned JavaScript from being a nightmare into a power tool. I love JavaScript now, where as before I truely hated it. Takes all the hassel out of most compatibility issues across browsers. I spend less time debuging it and more time writing it. While I’m on my goal to write more blog posts, I’m going to share a few jQuery tricks.

So You Want To Be A Web Developer?

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:54:35 +0000

This last week I’ve been talking with my brother Brack, who to say the least, absolutely abhors his job. Well, maybe abhor is a little strong, but he is extremely frustrated and unsatisfied. He works at a air force base in the human resource department and he basically helps provide statistical data for departments on who, what, and where to hire new help. Since he is a “wiz” at solving problems, computers, and making this more efficient, he has streamlined his work process with several nifty Excel spreadsheets and Java programs. He can now take a weeks worth of work and do it in one morning.

Steamlined Web Development Presentation Video

Wed, 27 May 2009 14:41:26 +0000

Alright, it looks like the Victor at UPHPU has gotten my presentation up on Steamlining your web development. Since it was the first night Victor had tried to capture video & audio to mesh them together, the video on the presentation is a little bit further ahead than the audio. However, I think the presentation went quite well. You can view all the UPHPU meeting videos here. Here is the presentation I gave:

Memcached: Simple, Effective, and Powerful

Wed, 20 May 2009 16:12:01 +0000

Realizing once again I haven’t written a blog post for quite some time, I thought I would just write a few smaller posts on things I’ve learned these last few months. Hopefully I can get back into the habit of blogging regularly again.

This last month I finally broke down and learned how to use memcached. While I have known about memcached for a very long time, I just never got around to using it. While I heard it was beyond easy to implement, I still assumed it would take a few days to get the hang of it and figure out its quirks. However, when the forces of high load on a webserver and the file-based caching system that I have previously used were found to be too I/O intensive, I had no choice but to take the plunge.

Data Backups - There Are No Excuses

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:04:48 +0000

Today I just had the terrible experience of having a database lose data, need to restore, only to not have a recent backup. If you haven’t had this experience before, please, take this serious. My wife was home for lunch as it happened, and she watched as the blood drained from my face. It only took a few seconds for the loss to happen, and immediately I knew exactly what the repercussions where. The immediate second thought that passes through your brain is “Where are my backups?” That is when I realized I didn’t have my nightly backups set up on this server. I quickly checked the file date on the last known backup I had.

New Blog Design

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:08:21 +0000

I’ve finally gotten around to putting up my new blog design. It based off the Carrington theme for WordPress. It isn’t 100% complete yet as I have a handful of more tweaks to do. The archive pages aren’t formated correctly, and I’m sure I’ll find some more changes to make. I’m still playing around with the side menu to find a nice balance for all the content there.

XAMPP for Mac - My Frustrations & Solutions

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:15:34 +0000

These last few days I’ve been trying to get XAMPP to work on my MacBook Pro these last couple of days and it has been frustrating! It seemed I kept running into more and more problems. For those who don’t know, XAMPP is tool for developers to run a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) on your machine locally. I’ve been running it on my Windows machines for years, and I have been running my production servers on Linux.

Aptana Studio – PHP IDE Alternative to PDT, Zend Studio

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 05:09:53 +0000

The other day I ran into another option as an IDE for PHP. If you’ve been following my blog, I’ve been a big user of Eclipse PDT (http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/) and Zend Studio (http://www.zend.com/en/products/studio/). There is a third one to add to the list, Aptana Studio. It is built on-top of the Eclipse framework, like PDT and Zend Studio. It has several extensions: Python, Rails, PHP, and others. If you’ve read my post on Consumer Linux, I talk a lot about “Power & Polish.” Here is my definition:

Software Development With Clients In Mind

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:05:56 +0000

Why does it seem so hard to deliver quality products to clients? Sometimes it feels like clientseither don’t appreciate quality, or they have their priorities all mixed up. To help us understand, here is a wonderful sketch from Monty Python called “The Architect’s Sketch.”

I’ve been searching for awhile for a good example for this subject, and when I saw this sketch, I knew this would be perfect. It outlines two large problems with developing solutions for clients: quality & suitability.

List of 50 PHP Tools

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:08:58 +0000

Found a great article listing popular tools that every PHP developer should be away of. Here is an excerpt:

PHP is one of the most widely used open-source server-side scripting languages that exist today. With over 20 million indexed domains using PHP, including major websites like Facebook, Digg and WordPress, there are good reasons why many Web developers prefer it to other server-side scripting languages, such as Python and Ruby.

PHP is faster (updated), and it is the most used scripting language in practice; it has detailed documentation, a huge community, numerous ready-to-use scripts and well-supported frameworks; and most importantly, it’s much easier to get started with PHP than with other scripting languages (Python, for example). That’s why it makes perfect sense to provide the huge community of PHP developers with an overview of useful tools and resources that can make their development process easier and more effective.

CSS – I’m 100% Converted

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:01:35 +0000

It has been a hard, long road. But these last few days, I’ve finally have reached a realization of a great step in my life as a web design: I’m 100% converted to CSS layouts, and have forsaken tables. 5 years ago I would have believed that would be impossible, and that I would love and use tables for my layouts until the day I die. I remember hearing the lectures and heated discussions on using CSS instead, but I couldn’t bring myself to using CSS for layouts. Don’t get me wrong, using CSS was amazing for formatting and styling, such a color, size, bolding, etc. I love it every second and my conversion to CSS for those scenarios was very quick. However, the positioning of content, headers, footers, side menus and navigation was a nightmare for me at first. I just didn’t get it.

New Dating DNA Front Page

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 07:04:16 +0000

Since we’re still pending in the Apple iPhone App Store for review, we wanted a new fresh image for the Dating DNA website front page. Kevin, the CEO, threw together a simplified new front page. He is pretty good with Photoshop, and knows how to slice up a layout for image and put it into HTML. I know he did it using tables (I know, every serious web developer alive is chringing right now), which works for now. I like the general idea and execution. I think we can polish and refine it a great deal more, but I thought I would get people’s opinions.

PHP Singletons, Sub-Classing, and HAS-A Relationships

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:37:53 +0000

I’ve been very busy these last fews weeks and have neglected making any posts. While there are a variety of subjects I’d love to post about, they’ll most likely have to wait until the next year. However, I thought I might be able to throw up a quick example of how to use PHP Singletons and extending public classes.

The Singleton Pattern “is a design pattern that is used to restrict instantiation of a class to one object.” (Wikipedia) In PHP, a singleton is created by making the constructor protected or private. “How do you create an object then?” Its done in two parts. First, you make a static class variable that is private, to hold the instance. Second, create a static function to return the instance. Here is an example:

Streamlined Web Development: In-Depth

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:26:44 +0000

Note: This is a work in progress. I will finish the rest after the presentation. I just wanted to publish the post to link to. If you have any questions, please post them below I will try to answer them as fast as I can. I probably won’t have time to finish this until Sunday, due to several critical projects that are due ASAP.

This in the “In-Depth” part of my presentation on “Streamling Web Development with SVN & Trac.” I can’t possibly cover all the aspects of this topic. I like to post a “in-depth” article right after my presentation with links, tutorials, and all my resources used for the presentation. This allows for me to spend more time on questions & answers. I’d appreciate any feedback on the presentation, and if you have any questions feel free to ask. This article is an extension to the presentation, so I suggest listening to the presentation first if it seems like there are any pieces missing.

Speaking: Utah PHP Usergroup – Streamlined Web Development

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:41:51 +0000

Next Thursday, November 20th, at 7 PM Mountain Time (9PM EST, 6PM PST) I will be speaking at the Utah PHP Usergroup meeting on “Streamlined Web Development.” I will be speaking with Kevin Carter from Code Greene. Here is the annoucement on the UPHPU website:

I’m very pleased to announce the topic for November’s UPHPU Meeting : Streamlined Web Development using a VCS (Version Control System) and Trac.

Starting the meeting off will be Code Greene’s Kevin Carter. Kevin, who has used Git in a production environment for several months now, will be presenting a primer on how to get started with Git. Additionally, he’ll cover the advantages of distributed source code control and possibly some topics on using git in an svn eniroment. His blog can be found at http://dexterthedragon.com.

CSS – ID vs Class

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:22:20 +0000

After hacking apart & cleaning up code for the better part of the day, I’ve decided to set the record straight about CSS, IDs, and Classes. The question is “when should I use an ID, and when should I use a class?” Is it that big of a deal?

The big issue is that people who just write Cascading Style Sheets usually won’t run into problems if they are more lax with their use of IDs. Its the people after who coming in trying to add advanced JavaScript features that will end up becoming very, very frustrated.

WordPress Carrington Theme - I'm Impessed

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:43:04 +0000

I just read over at Matt Mullenweg’s blog about the annoucement of the Carrington Theme for WordPress. For those who don’t know, WordPress is a PHP/MySQL based blogging system and is the one I use for my blog. I’ve installed the Carrigton Theme and I really like it. Over the next few weeks I’ll be checking it out and playing around with it. I’ll keep everyone posted!

Update: I guess some people are having an issue downloading the Carrington theme, so I’ve uploaded it to download from my site. Hopefully it won’t kill my bandwidth, but I should be good.

Web Design & The Cookie Jar: When Dealing with Clients

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:34:57 +0000

I saw this YouTube video and I couldn’t help but post about it. Here is the video, and I’ll add my thoughts at the end:

I’ve seen this happen so many times it isn’t even funny. You have a company with dozens of individuals giving their input on how something should be designed. As in the video, the end result is usually the same: a product that doesn’t accomplish it’s goal. This is what I call the “Cookie Jar” effect, when you have too many “hands” in the cookie jar.

Blog WordPress Theme Experiment - Grunge Style

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:42:39 +0000

So I if you looked at my website within the last few hours or so you might have seen a very different theme. It was a grunge like style. My goal was to try and use PNGs for different layering and styles. Evenually I wanted the background to dynamically change depending on a post’s categories and tags. However, I ran into some obvious drawbacks.

Here is a screenshot of the design: