JSON Feeds For Fun and Profit Part 3- wherein Eval() kind of bums me out

Posted on by Rob Larsen

(and several months later I finish my little JSON series…)

So far my exploration of JSON has been a fun-filled walk in the park. Moonbeams and rainbows. All that.

This last post on the subject is slightly less cool as I get into one of the least attractive components of the whole JSON thing- the use of eval() to transform a text response into a proper JavaScript object. The use of eval() is one of the reasons I originally was a little shy about using JSON. Why? eval() is slow and I try to stay away from slow if at all possible. That and the idea of eval()-ing code from some third party makes me wary.
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Belt and Suspenders- Flash Embed With SWFObject and Conditional Comments

Posted on by Rob Larsen

If you’re using Flash and you want the best possible coverage (meaning it works with users who don’t have JS turned on) while still using something like SWFObject where possible to get around the “click here to activate and use this control” ActiveX message in Internet Explorer, then take a look at the ridiculous pattern below.

Warning- not for the squeamish…
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A Three Column CSS Layout Using Just an Unordered List

Posted on by Rob Larsen

Why do such a thing? For fun, of course- and to expand on a point I made today at work…

Some background- I’m working with a new guy who is not so savvy to modern HTML/CSS layout techniques and today, while talking to him about some potential techniques he might use for an upcoming site, I remarked – “With CSS you can make practically any element do whatever you need it to do, so don’t always assume you need to wrap things in a DIV* to make a layout work.” The point related to the dangers of DIV-itis and my desire** to pare down markup to its absolute (meaningful) minimum. But it also illustrates a basic idea that, once fully understood, opens up all sorts of options for problem-solving.

So, anyway, chewing on the exchange on my way home from work I was struck with the idea of doing a simple three column layout using nothing but an Unordered List. My original comment was about a UL used as a menu and tweaking it to behave like a bunch of divs (which was his original idea for the menu) or something, so I thought it might be interesting to go all out use a UL for the entire layout, tweaking the LIs in a whole bunch of different ways to suit my needs. If that doesn’t illustrate my point, nothing will.
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Did you know- 8 Bit PNG transparency is just like an old school transparent Gif

Posted on by Rob Larsen

Don’t believe me? Check it out:


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Automatically Track Outgoing Links in Google Analytics with Javascript

Posted on by Rob Larsen

I’m currently reading the O’Reilly Google Analytics book, so of course I’m going to sandbox some stuff (albeit not here at this site.) One of the first things I seized on was the ability to track outgoing links by calling the urchinTracker() function onclick. Taking a few minutes out of my morning I put this together:
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