...more recent posts
I've been integrating blueimp's jQuery-File-Upload scripts into my software. It's a really nice package. But I had to spend all morning tracking down a weird inconsistency in iOS. Turns out that even with the file upload form set to auto upload through javascript (so no need for an actual submit button,) Mobile Safari seems to require that button be present in the form. Without it the file picker won't even be clickable. Weird. And it doesn't throw any errors to Web Inspector so this was pretty hard to find.
BrowserStack is another virtual machine driven browser based web site testing service. Looks like it might be the most polished of the bunch.
From the Twitter team: typeahead.js, a fast and fully-featured autocomplete library.
From the LinkedIn team: 5 techniques for smooth infinite scrolling in HTML5.
Nice collection of responsive design patterns.
Parsley looks like a nice javascript form validation library.
Seems like Safari under iOS strips out most EXIF data when uploading photos. I guess I can see why they do this but it is a real bummer for me.
Posthaven is a soon to launch blogging platform from two co-founders of Posterous (which was acquired by Twitter in 2012 but is now being shut down). We have no details about the platform, other than it being a for pay hosting model ($5/month to start), with no ads, and a "pledge" to keep it running, and keep your blog's URL permanent, "forever".
How will they do it? They can't say, exactly, but I like the idea in general. If people want to own their data, have easy exportability, not have ads inserted into their pages, etc..., they probably need to pay for the service. Not exactly rocket science. We'll see how the details shake out. But clearly this is the general direction from which to attack FaceBook and Twitter and others who give you the platform for free in exchange for a fairly significant loss of freedom.
I'll write more about it soon, but there is a new image upload system for this site. Assuming you have upload privileges, you can access it here:
/upload2/
Unlike before, this will resize your photos for you. I'm doing this to make it easier, but also to get the full resolution images onto the website (when I resize them I save the originals into a subfolder.) Because screen resolutions are increasing dramatically - on mobile devices and on retina display MacBooks - we will want higher resolution images one day (soon). So now we will start saving them so we can be ready. The downside here is that uploading a 4MB images takes a lot longer.
Unlike before you can now upload multiple photos at once. This is assuming your browser supports it. On the Mac just command-click on as many files as you want in the file browser window instead of just clicking a single file like you used to do. On Windows it's probably a right click. This works from iOS too (where not having to resize before upload makes posting from there possible.)
And finally, unlike before, when the upload is done you get a page showing thumbnails of what has been uploaded, followed by a textarea posting box that is already populated with the code for posting the images you just uploaded. Select the page you want to post to from the drop down menu. Add text or rearrange photo order as you see fit. Then click post and you'll be taken to the page where the post was made.
I'd love feedback on this. It's still rough. No layout or styling has happened yet. But it looks like it is functional.
I rely heavily on jQuery, which is basically a layer on top of javascript that makes writing javascript easier as well as more consistent across browsers. One of the best things about it is the large developer community that makes their own little "widget" type modules available for others to use. These are called plugins. Need a photo gallery? Calendar? Form validator? Someone has already coded one, and hopefully the community has helped the best rise to the top for your choosing. I follow a ton of blogs for the sole purpose of keeping up on new plugins, and there are literally dozens of new ones released every day. Well, now there is a central repository: jQuery Plugin Registry. This should be very useful.