MainelyDesign.com Blog

Lessons Learned: Going to Mobile Website Development

Posted on 07/08/2013 at 12:39 pm | Viewed 17,989 times | 0 comments

I've recently taken the plunge and learned about CSS Media Queries and Responsive Web Design.  We launched a new ordering site and made the whole website, including the checkout process, mobile-friendly.  It's really opened up my eyes to the possibilities of mobile web design.  I started out wondering why responsive web design was all the rage, now I prefer to order and checkout using the new Site Avenger mobile shopping templates.  It's pretty easy to retrofit with an existing Site Avenger website and all new E-Commerce websites have the option of being mobile-friendly from the start.

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Must Have Tool for Screen Capture: Greenshot

Posted on 02/25/2013 at 12:31 pm | Viewed 13,615 times | 0 comments

I'm attempting to better document some of the tools and utitlites I use on a daily basis to make worklife just a little bit easier.  Something I find myself doing more and more (especially with my new focus on documentation) is taking screen shots.

First, for a primer on capturing your screen and saving it or emailing it to someone, please read this support post.

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Best Way To Get Transparent PNGs Without Any Hacks

Posted on 10/21/2012 at 10:27 am | Viewed 14,038 times | 0 comments

I avoided PNG images for quite a while, mainly because I could accomplish almost every task with transparent GIFs (if not, I could change the design ever so slightly).  Fast forward a few years and web designs are far too complex and textured to only use transparent GIFs, plus it's so much cooler to say "ping" than "gif".  Another reason I avoided using transparent PNGs was due to the ability to make IE (Internet Explorer) crash (suprise!).  Finally, I avoided using PNG images on my website because their filesize was ridiculous (what I could do in 10kb using a Gif, would take 71kb as a PNG).

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Best CSS Method for Using Image as Submit Button

Posted on 02/03/2010 at 12:17 pm | Viewed 21,574 times | 2 comments

I came across an interesting issue with web forms and CSS.  Surprisingly, the end result is much better than I expected.  I knew that using an image instead of a traditional form submit button (<input type="submit">; instead of <input type="image"> or <input type="button">) would be a little challenging.  I like a challenge, plus I wanted to use the submit button because it's the standard approach to forms and I remember reading somewhere that input's of type image or button do not submit when you press enter...a usability faux paus in my opionion.

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Using Jquery for target="_blank" and strict xHTML

Posted on 12/28/2009 at 03:27 pm | Viewed 15,328 times | 0 comments

If you like to see the little green check mark that HTML Validator shows when your HTML is 100% valid, you'll love this little trick. Thanks to badlydrawntoy.com. 

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12 Essential Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

Posted on 12/21/2009 at 05:05 pm | Viewed 12,519 times | 0 comments

I remember about 7 years ago watching my friend use Adobe Illustrator.  He was a communications design major and used his keyboard more than his mouse.  I was blown away when I realized how much time you could save by learning keyboard shortcuts for Adobe's products.  This is my list of the best Adobe Photoshop keyboard shortcuts for web designers.

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CSS Min-Height Hack in Internet Explorer

Posted on 12/15/2009 at 10:18 am | Viewed 14,404 times | 0 comments

Another day of web developing with CSS and another day of needing a hack for IE6 and IE7.  This isn't really a hack so much as it's a method of ordering statements in your CSS declaration that yields a working min-height declaration in Internet Explorer.  Well, I guess it's a hack (but I hate using them).

CSS min-height will be used in browsers that support it

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Jquery Accordion Menu - Expanding UL Menu

Posted on 11/17/2009 at 01:25 pm | Viewed 33,307 times | 0 comments

I looked around and found some interesting examples and existing plugins for creating an accordion menu in Jquery.  What I was looking for was a nested unordered list (UL) that would collapse and expand based on which menu item was clicked.  If there wasn't a child UL, then the menu link should be clickable, instead of an accordion.  Sounds simple right?

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CSS Small-Caps Working in IE Not in Firefox

Posted on 09/24/2009 at 11:03 am | Viewed 15,238 times | 0 comments

Another IE/FF Inconsistancy?

I thought I had ran into an interesting (and new) CSS bug.  I was using Trebuchet MS as my font for my H2s.  It was rendering perfect in Internet Explorer but not in Firefox.  In Firefox, all caps.  In IE, small-caps.  What gives?

Small-caps only working in Internet Explorer?

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A Really Good Implementation of Captcha

Posted on 09/22/2009 at 02:45 pm | Viewed 11,637 times | 0 comments

Awesome Captcha Implementation

I just experienced a version of Captcha that I actually like.  Instead of having to type in jumbled letters and phrases or answering simple questions, Service2Client actually asks you to identify the color of the letter in a certain position.  Not only does it fool spambots (I would assume anyway) but it's pretty easy to understand.

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Changing Filetypes Shown in SWF Upload File Browser

Posted on 08/25/2009 at 04:17 pm | Viewed 16,672 times | 0 comments

It's easy to change which file types are allowed to show up (and are displayed) when you browse for files to upload through SWF Upload.  SWF Upload makes it easy to upload multiple files in PHP.

I just had to hunt through some source files until I found this in my SWF Upload config. (goes in the new SWFUpload() function)

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Cheatsheet for Creating .MOV Files from .VOB files (DVDs)

Posted on 07/30/2009 at 11:38 am | Viewed 11,764 times | 0 comments

Every now and again I need to take a video from a promotional DVD and put it on a client's web site.  I use a handy utility that will convert almost any video file into a flash video (.swf/.flv).  The hard part usually comes from having to rip the video from the DVD. 

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TinyMCE Doesn't Work in IE8

Posted on 07/24/2009 at 11:54 am | Viewed 26,753 times | 4 comments

I was training a client how to update their web site using Site Avenger when the strangest thing happened- no copy was showing in TinyMCE.  No matter what I pasted the tiny editor would remain a nice, plain white.  I didn't think to try typing directly into TinyMCE.  No matter, a click on the HTML button to view the source revealed the content was in fact there, just not being shown within the TinyMCE editor.

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Phantom Whitespace Below Img in Firefox

Posted on 07/22/2009 at 10:24 am | Viewed 12,824 times | 0 comments

I've come across this thing a few times before- there's a strange space below images in Firefox, but not in IE.  I finally found a nice explanation as to why it happens, which I wanted to post here.

Images are displayed inline by default.  When you are using an image as a block (like when you want an image to take up the entire top half of a page) you'll get some mysterious white space below the image, but only in Firefox.  For once, IE actually seems to render the CSS appropriately.

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Faking min-width CSS style in IE6 and IE7

Posted on 07/16/2009 at 01:50 pm | Viewed 13,029 times | 0 comments

It's a hack... but it's needed to make a truly cross-browser fluid layout.  It's simple, if you want to implement min-width in IE6 and IE7, use the following CSS code: (I didn't create this originally, sorry, lost the source)

/*********************
**	IE 6.0 min-width hack
********************/
* html div#contentWrap {
	width:expression(((document.compatMode && document.compatMode=='CSS1Compat') ? document.documentElement.clientWidth : document.body.clientWidth) < 1000 ? "840px" : "85%");
}

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