So I’ve been reading the change log for jQuery 1.6 and it’s a doozy, with tons of great improvements (performance particularly) and some nice changes. There’s been a bunch of performance optimizations to both .attr() and .data() functions, which I use often in my projects, so that is definitely welcomed. Not to mention the more clear separation of attributes and properties for DOM elements, which should get rid of some of the weird behaviour I sometimes see with checkboxes and radios buttons when I manipulate their state with JavaScript. On top of that there are improvements to animation performance and a kitchen sink of other changes. Needless to say I’ll be switching my codebase to 1.6 ASAP.
Optimizing JavaScript and jQuery
I’ve been working on a new project — a web application of sorts. Basically, unlike a regular web site, everything in this web applications occurs on the one page. Moreover, due to the nature of the webapp there’s a lot of javascript code handling everything from keyboard input, through DOM updates and to Ajax requests. While not time critical, it is nonetheless essential to keep this webapp working smooth and fast, and so as part of my development work on it I have been delving deeper into the “science” of optimizing javascript code, and also more specifically optimizing jQuery.
I have always been very performance conscious. It probably comes from my work as PC game developer where a single line of non-optimized rendering code could mean the difference between getting 60fps and 20fps during gameplay. In any case, I really enjoyed discovering some new tricks to squeeze more performance out of my code, and admittedly remembering some old ones as well. So I wanted to share some of those tricks, both the basic, but essential ones and the more advanced techniques. Read more »
New blog design is up
The new blog design is finally up. It’s still not finalized, as there are some features and content missing, but even at this “beta” stage it’s already a big improvement over the old one. I already talked a bit about some of the changes made to the design, the layout and the content, but the new look is just a small part of the redesign, a lot of work has been done on the back-end as well and as you might have previously read a lot of it has to do with using semantic HTML5 elements to structure the website. On top of that I made several changes to how I manage and organize content, as well as, optimized the code. Read more »
Moving the world off Internet Explorer 6 — the right way
Even Microsoft is sick of Internet Explorer 6, and they have finally started making a real push to get people to stop using it and upgrade to a better browser. They even started a website dedicated to tracking the, hopefully dwindling, use of IE6 — http://ie6countdown.com/. On this website they encourage people to spread the word on twitter via the #ie6countdown hashtag, and they also offer a banner you can put on your website, that would only appear to IE6 users and it encourages them to upgrade to a better browser. Naturally the better browser being IE9. Or is it? Read more »
How to do a header without a header — tiny solution to a big problem
I recently had a post in which I talked all about how the name of the site should really only use <h1> on the front page, and on the other pages it should take a backseat to whatever header the content has (post title for example). Well, I just ran into a problem related to that approach with the new design. Before I proceed though I must confess, the title of this post is sensationalist because the problem isn’t big. The issue is with the category pages — my design does not include a category title on a category page. Read more »
Site redesign update
So I already talked about the HTML5 rewrite of my blog’s code, but now I want to go over the design and the layout — what’s different and what’s new. Before that I’ll just quickly say that I’m making great progress — basically the main structure and the front page are done and working, on my local server; now I just need to do the individual pages, as well as the single-post page and it’ll be ready to go.
So in terms of the design itself, the new theme is still dark (i.e. white on black) but instead of the bright yellow as one of the main colours, I’m now using pale blue. Despite that the site actually seems to be more colourful. This is because in the current theme I feel that yellow is much too strong to use for titles or links, which means that all the text is white and looks very bland. With the more subtle blue I am able to use it for titles, links, as well as other elements on the page — giving the whole thing a livelier look. In addition to that I plan to use more post images, hopefully infusing the front page with a bit more colour, while still preserving the two-tone theme. You can check out the preview on the left for a closer look. Read more »
Site name shouldn’t use <h1> on every page. Duh!
Unless it’s on the home page of course.
I’ve been using <h1> for site name in my designs since forever, and somehow, with all the reading up on SEO and best practices that I’ve been doing, I still managed to miss the fact that that shouldn’t be the case unless it’s on the home page. Of course it completely makes sense and is so obvious I should smack myself upside the head for not seeing this sooner. Read more »
Re-writing my blog with HTML5
I have recently started working on a new design for my blog. Initially the idea was to just refresh the look and make the layout more flexible (the current über minimalistic layout doesn’t lend itself easily to adding more types of content, like blogroll for example), but as the design phase was wrapping up and I started thinking about the code I realized that this was a great opportunity to do something I wanted to do with it for a long time — convert it to HTML5. Below I go over the new redesign and some of the ideas and reasons behind the things that I do and the way I do them. Read more »