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Uniform

Uniform supposedly helps you produce “sexy forms with jQuery.” Essentially, it is a jQuery plugin that styles form elements and provides them a consistent look. A few designs are initially available as themes and it should be fairly easy to build your own from it.

jquery-transmit

jquery-transmit is a jQuery plugin used to produce a flash–based multi–file uploader for your pages, all this quite simply achievable:

$(document).ready(function() {
                $("#transmit").transmit("http://mysite.com/upload/");
            });

Now there’s no need to dive into flash or swfupload configuration files, multi–uploaders can be as simple a few lines of code.

Plupload: Uploading Made Simple

Plupload is an open–source tool that allows you to provide uploading functionality for your website. So what makes it special? It utilizes HTML5, Gears, Silverlight, Flash, BrowserPlus or normal forms, providing some unique features such as upload progress, image resizing and chunked uploads—all this transparently and without the developer’s intervention.

This project is from the guys who made TinyMCE, so I’m sure incremental updates will be regular.

flashblockdetector: Detect Browser Flash Blocking

flashblockdetector allows a developer to use javascript to check if a browser client is using flash blocking extensions. Using this utility, you can inform a reader to whitelist/disable flash blocking for your given site, in case you need flash functionality. I’m sure this is useful for those dreaming of building the next Youtube.

html5media: <video> Tag for Everyone!

html5media is a javascript utility that you can simply call in your page’s header and use the generic HTML5 <video> tag to display videos, without having to worry if your reader’s browser support HTML5 and the <video> tag.

Usage is very simple. Place this code in the <head> section:

<script src="http://html5media.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/html5media.min.js"></script>

After that, embedded movies can be added simply:

<video src="video.mp4" width="320" height="240" controls autobuffer></video>

When HTML5 video is supported by a given browser, the file is served as is. Otherwise, a simple flash movie player is dynamically swapped in its place. Note however that encoding issues are still present, especially the H.264/Theora debate that plagues Firefox and makes it different to other modern browsers.

PHP & Perl Growing In The Enterprise

Graph showing PHP & Perl growth in the enterprise.

Java and .NET has always dominated the enterprise but you’d be surprised at this CNET story that suggests PHP and Perl growing at such an impressive rate:

Overall, we see use of dynamic languages as growing significantly. This is due to several large trends. First, there’s definitely a widespread growth of skills around open source programming languages. There’s also a widespread acceptance of open source in the enterprise that didn’t exist even five to six years ago. And there are various respective inherent advantages of using dynamic languages–speed, flexibility, ease of use for developers, low-cost, and community support, just to name a few–that continue to push usage trends upward.

Now this is perfectly good news for the open source community!

PHP: Keeping Things Simple

A lot of PHP programmers with moderate coding experience tend to get into the trap of “frameworks”. Usually, a newbie learns more and knows enough to create his own CMS, after which he “discovers” that a framework solves a lot of repetitive coding. Sometimes, it does. But you don’t really need all that.

Font Squirrel’s @font-face Generator

Converting fonts to make them better suited for CSS @font-face use has not been exactly easy—until now. Free font library site Font Squirrel has just launched a @font-face generator! Their tool might just be good enough for web designers looking to take advantage of @font-face embedding, allowing for various tricks like subsetting to reduce a font’s file size and make it ideal for web use.

Go on, try it! Just make sure you use a font that allows for for @font-face embedding.

If you play a lot with Compiz Fusion and …

If you play a lot with Compiz Fusion and managed to ruin your config file and now you can’t boot into GNOME, here’s a simple command line fix: gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compiz

“Underscore is a utility-belt library f …

“Underscore is a utility-belt library for JavaScript that provides a lot of the functional programming support that you would expect in Prototype.js (or Ruby), but without extending any of the built-in JavaScript objects. It’s the tie to go along with jQuery’s tux.”

Notes on @font-face

In my struggle playing with @font-face at my personal blog, I’ve learned that right now, it really isn’t worth it yet. Unless if your design really requires it. Here’s a bunch of links I’ve used while trying it out though: