Gen X Design | Ian Selby

All Things Web 2.0

Archive for March, 2008

Free Stock Photography

That’s right, free stock photos, and they don’t suck! Discovered this via one of my rss subs (sorry, I don’t remember who you are), and it seems to have lots of good stock. Check out FreeRange:
www.freerangestock.com

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  • Filed under: Asides
  • markItUp! is a JavaScript plugin built on the jQuery library. It allows you to turn any textarea into a markup editor. Html, Textile, Wiki Syntax, Markdown, BBcode or even your own Markup system can be easily implemented.
    markItUp! Site

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  • Filed under: Asides
  • The 960 Grid System

    Cool concept for web design.  Basically, a bunch of tools (from paper to psd templates, to css frameworks) that allow you to rapidly develop a site based on the commonly accepted width of 960px.  Check it out:
    http://960.gs/

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  • Filed under: Asides
  • JavaScript & MySQL With Jaxer

    Wouldn’t it be cool if you could work with MySQL within your JavaScript code? Think about it, you wouldn’t have to spend extra time writing extra server-side code for connecting to, querying, and parsing results, you could just write a little bit more code in your JavaScript and be done with it. Of course, we wouldn’t want any of this SQL exposed to the end-user, as that would be a major security issue, but what if that problem was solved as well? You might also raise the point that you’d still need the ability to prepare your SQL statements that take dynamic input to prevent SQL injection attacks, but if that weren’t an issue, wouldn’t that be awesome as well?

    Seriously, take a look over an existing AJAX app you may have written. You’ve probably got a bunch of different functions for making AJAX calls to PHP scripts (or something similar), which process the input, and deal with the database, then return either parsed results, or results to be parsed by JavaScript. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could consolidate all that stuff into some smaller, simpler JavaScript code? Fewer files, less overhead… sounds good to me.

    That’s one of the great things about Jaxer. If you’ve done any reading, you probably know that Jaxer works with SQLite out of the box, and you might be aware that it’s also able to work with MySQL, but most of the people I’ve talked to have stopped there. Aside from the above objections (which I’ll smash shortly ;)), I’ve also heard that they simply don’t want to learn another complex API. Well, the time for silly excuses is over, and I’m going to show you how easy all this stuff can be. I would suggest that you first set up Jaxer with XAMPP so you can follow along, but if you want to use the stand-alone Jaxer and Apache, you’ll be just fine. Let’s get our hands dirty…
    (more…)

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  • Filed under: JavaScript, Jaxer
  • Jaxer 0.9.5 Released!

    As promised, here’s my notification that it’s out.  All sorts of new goodness for you including the autoload tag and MySQL support on the Mac
    Get it Now!
    Release Notes

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    See Me @ AjaxWorld '08 West

    AJAX RIA - Server-Side JavaScript - All the Cool Kids Are Doing It!

    PhotoStream

      Griffin Playing in Alamo SquareThe Painted Ladies, and the City in the BackgroundThe Painted LadiesMore Golden Gate Bridge GoodnessAlcatraz IslandThe Golden GateGive Mommy KissMommy & Griffin Playing at Crissy FieldDaddy and Griffin Leaving Crissy Field

    Asides

    • Firebug Lite 1.2 Released

      If you've ever used Firebug for JS development, you know how indisposable it is. If you haven't, you're insane, and you need to start using it now! Firebug Lite was created to be able to embed a more limited version of the library in non-firefox browsers. Previously, you couldn't do much with it outside of the console. functions and use a JS command-line. Looks like that's a thing of the past with the new release. It's pretty much as functional as the actual Firefox extension, and is well worth checking out:
      Firebug Lite 1.2 Released (via Ajaxian)

    • BgPatterns.com - Cool Background Image Generator

      While its generally not my style, I would have loved to have something like this several times in the past. Slick, easy, classy, fun, and actually worthwhile. Check it out:
      www.bgpatterns.com

    • savethedevlopers.org - Save a Developer. Upgrade Your Browser

      "Say No To IE 6!
      Our current campaign focuses on assisting users in upgrading their Internet Explorer 6 web browser. This campaign will result in former IE 6 users having a more enjoyable experience on the web while (hopefully) creating a less stressful and complicated environment for web developers by hastening the retirement of an outdated browser."

      http://www.savethedevelopers.org/

    • Evernote - Awesome Note Capturing Software

      I know, yet another note capture / organize program... but this one's different. It's got really powerful OCR software (it will pull text from images, even handwriting) that automatically finds words in your images and indexes them, making it easier to find later. Works on the web, your mobile phone, and PC or Mac. Best of all, it's free!
      Evernote - Capture. Sync. Find

    • Magic Toolbox - High Quality JS Tools

      Nice little suite of JS tools... they're commercial, but reasonably priced. The names kinda imply what they do: Magic Zoom, Magnify, and Thumbs. Definitely worth a look:
      Magic Toolbox

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    About Me

    Gen X Design has been my freelance development and design company for some time now, and my services are sometimes available.

    Recently, I've been too wrapped up in work to pursue my own interests. To that end, I've made some changes in my life, re-worked this site so I'm happy with it again, and have decided to get back to writing and developing.

    I have a passion for all things Web 2.0, love shiny icons and gradients, and live in the San Francisco Bay area. I work for Aptana.