by Rob Larsen
Get a technical introduction to Ajax programming, and discover the core JavaScript code and popular library implementations. This article presents a brief history of the technology, then outlines the technical basics of Ajax interactions using core JavaScript coding as well as three popular JavaScript libraries.
by Rob Larsen
In it, I make a small argument for using HTML5 as a generic marketing term. I’ll be following up on that a little later, here on this blog.
Anyway, check it out. The resources section is worth it alone.
HTML5, CSS3, and related technologies.
Web standard development and marketing
It’s a great time to be a web developer. After a long period of hibernation, the standards bodies and browser vendors have been extremely busy over the past few years, generating a torrent of exciting technology. Developers are greedily seizing on this work, producing demos and full-blown applications at a steady pace. Fed by this activity and further boosted by the growth of their standards-capable mobile browsers, companies like Google and Apple are using these new standards to market their products and services. The wider press is also seizing on this wave and pushing standards hype well beyond the normal circle of web developers and browser vendors.
This volume of discussion has obvious benefits, of course. People getting excited about web standards is a positive development for everyone in the industry. From that perspective, the persistent use of blanket terms, especially HTML5, as a sort of brand shorthand for “emerging web technology” is a useful shortcut. It allows nontechnical people to grasp—in a generalized way—the exciting work being done in the standards space right now.
Interestingly, even the W3C has gotten into the act, using HTML5 and its associated logo (see Figure 1) to publicize the “web platform.”
by Rob Larsen
The standard published under the dry title ECMA-262, 5th Edition hereafter referred to as ES5, is the latest version of the ECMAScript specification. ECMAScript is the standard upon which JavaScript—the single most important language on the web today—is built. Because the language also serves as the basis for Adobe ActionScript in addition to other flavors, it’s fair to say that the ECMAScript standard is central to the present and future of interactivity on the web.
Published in December 2009, ES5 represents an incremental improvement in the language, arrived at through a lengthy, and occasionally contentious, process. Still, whatever friction there might have been in the development of the specification, the end result contains some excellent enhancements to the language. This article outlines the long history of the specification’s development, then steps through many of its important new features and concepts.
by Rob Larsen
Check it out:
Tours and guided world travel adventures available at Tauck.com.
Here’s a press release:
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by Rob Larsen
I wrote an article about getting started with HTML5 Boilerplate. It’s live at IBM. Check it out:
Kick-start your web development with HTML5 Boilerplate.
I’ve got some more content coming up on IBM over the next few months on some pretty exciting topics. I’m in the middle of a deadline for one right now, actually…
That begs the question- when will I sleep?
Answer: never.
by Rob Larsen
So… the site I’m working on has one of those “increase text size” controls. On this project it’s turned out to be one of those features that shows up in comps and somehow falls through the cracks until later on in the project cycle. Situation normal, really, as it isn’t a big feature. It’s just one of those things that needs to be buttoned up before the site can go live.
Anyway, I was thinking about how to do implement it the other day. I haven’t done one of these in a long time and the only other time I did one it involved crafting separate, albeit small, style sheets for the larger text sizes. I didn’t want to go that way again. Basically, I just didn’t want to write new style sheets- even small ones.
What’s a fella to do?
So, thinking about it a little bit, I seized upon using the non-standard CSS zoom property. Supported in Internet Explorer (zoom:1 is often used for a hasLayout toggle) and Webkit browsers, it would represent a simple (1 line!) CSS solution to this problem. It’s also one that I like better aesthetically as the site looks the same, just bigger. I figure there’s a reason all browsers have moved to this behavior when hitting ctrl+.
The problem was figuring out an equivalent for FireFox and Opera which don’t support zoom
A little searching and experimenting later I came up with the idea of using CSS Transforms and the scale value to approximate zoom in browsers that lack support.
Let’s see how I did it.
As you go through the following keep in mind this hasn’t actually gone through testing yet so something weird could yet shake out. I just wrote this code yesterday, so you guys can be my sanity check.
Also, is anyone else doing this?
by Rob Larsen
We finally launched the new Isobar North America site. It had been in a soft-launch phase for several weeks as we worked out the kinks. Now it’s official.
I worked on it and, amazingly enough for an internal project I’m happy with it.
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by Rob Larsen
The latest version of HTML5 Boilerplate was released and the build script I worked on is included as a beta feature. I’m happy to see it in the wild even though it reminds me that I’ve got a couple of outstanding enhancements I want to take care of at some point (soon? *fingers crossed*)
Anyway, check it out and definitely take the build script for a spin. Know Ant and want to help out? Want to port it to another build system (that would be awesome)? Dive in. We’re happy for the help.
by Rob Larsen
I did the conversion last week. As I’ve talked about blogs and HTML5 are so natural the whole conversion probably took no more than 8 hours. Of course, that 8 hours was spread out over a few days. Which is one of the big reasons I didn’t post anything last week. I was busy getting this site moved into the future.
I’ve now got 3 sites running on the shiny new futurespec and I can now say I officially like the new semantic elements. I also feel like I’m getting a good handle on them.
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by Rob Larsen
I launched the redesign of DrunkenFist.com last night. It’s my second HTML5 site. I took a lot of what I learned from the work we did on A Wider Net and applied it to a much larger project. Fun times.
A couple of notes.
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