Toluu

Snook.ca

Tips, tricks and bookmarks on web development

ReflectionsJanuary 1

It's that time of year when people see the big number roll over and decide to reminisce over good times and bad, and talk of where they plan to go until the big number rolls again. This blog post will be no exception.

On the Personal Front

It's interesting to look at last years pontificating. In some ways, things haven't changed.

I am getting better at managing my time but in a weird sort of way. I still often stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning but I've offset things by allowing myself more leisure time throughout the day, whether it be going out to lunch with friends or just playing a game or two at home. On my to-do list for 2009, I'm hoping to expand my hobbies by learning to draw or paint, or maybe learn to play guitar or piano. My hobby right now is building web applications and even then, I spend more time on sites like Delicious.com and Reddit than I do working on my own projects. That's definitely something I want to change.

I still want to get more exercise but haven't made any steps to accomplish that goal. Maybe this is the year I get it done.

On the Freelancing Front

Last year, I hinted that I wanted a change but hadn't really decided what that meant. That feeling has settled a bit as I've come to accept my life as a freelancer. I've learned a lot about who I am, what my strengths and weaknesses are, and how I can manage that.

I wanted to ju

Slicing in Photoshop and FireworksDecember 19 2008

Last night, I put together a really quick screencast on exporting slices from Photoshop but decided this morning to put something together that I thought might be even more interesting: exporting slices from Photoshop and Fireworks.

Over the years, I've been a fan of Fireworks and export any of my own work right from Fireworks but I've aso had to work with designers who use Photoshop. In order to get their designs sliced, I stick with using Photoshop.

So, in this quickie screencast, you get to see how I slice up a file from both Photoshop and Fireworks.

View Slicing Screencast.

If you guys like it, I'll definitely look to put together some others. I did this using Screenflow and exported into a Quicktime format. Let me know if you have any problems viewing the screencast or have any recommendations on how to improve for next time.

Mail.app vs EntourageDecember 12 2008

It's been a few weeks since I've been on this lovely MacBook Pro. It's a fabulous little laptop. And probably one of the tasks I've spent the most time doing is sending and receiving email.

Keep in mind, this is from the point of view of a die-hard Windows user of many years. I've been using Microsoft Outlook and had really gotten to like the most recent version in Office 2007.

My default view in Outlook 2007 gave me all of my information at a glance: my inbox, a list of favourite folders that I used to track current projects, a quick view of upcoming appointments, and my to-do list which included flagged emails (which could be further categorized by colour).

Mail.app

My first idea was to skip having to use Office for the Mac altogether. I paid for iWorks which gave me all the apps I felt I'd need in the beginning. Mail.app fit the bill, for the most part. Some things, though, were different from what I was used to. I didn't like that email, the address book, and the calendar were all separate apps. I used to do all of this within a single application.

I do like the design of Mail.app. It's clean and easy to navigate. It's also simple and straightforward and really gets out of your way, focusing only on the important task: the email.

I don't like that Mail.app nor Calendar.app send responses to calendar appointments that I confirmed and it stops me from moving an event on my schedule that was created by somebody else. In Outloo

Alpha PNGs in Internet Explorer 6December 8 2008

That elephant in the room is losing some weight. The forever scorned IE6 has always had issues with alpha PNGs, those semi-transparent images of goodness. The market share of IE6 is surprisingly big, especially for more mainstream sites and web developers such as you and me are still left holding the bag to support them.

Stoyan Stefanov, one of the people behind Smush.it, has posted the fifth installment of image optimization on the the YUIblog. This time on AlphaImageLoader. Stoyan discusses the performance issues involved in using the IE-only filter with some really interesting information. It's definitely worth a read.

Drew Diller, of whom took my VML rounded corners to the next level with DD_roundies, is back with another script, specifically aimed to fix the alpha PNG issue. After noticing that the VML supported alpha PNGs, Drew took on the task of isolating the functionality and to ensure that background-position and background-repeat were properly supported as well. Check out DD_belatedPNG for more info and lots of examples.

Rounded Corners in Internet ExplorerDecember 3 2008

You may remember my recent expirement with getting rounded corners in Internet Explorer to work with VML. I tried to come up with a way to mimic border-radius and to be able to implement simple rounded corners into a design.

The first implementation I saw that tried to do this in a seamless way was Remiz of HTML Remix. The implementation uses an HTML control (ie: an htc file) that can be easily bound to any element which should have rounded corners.

Drew Diller has pointed me to his implementation, DD_roundies, which he has just released. His code has the added benefit of allowing tiled alpha PNGs without using AlphaImageLoader (an unexpected discovery).

Here's hoping, once again, that IE8 will magically support border-radius.