Pull quotes, lift-out quotes, or call-outs are a handy method of drawing reader's attention to a section of text. Recently, on a couple of client projects, I've seen the need to enhance large blocks of text so the user could skim read them without missing the really important parts. Pull quotes seemed perfect for this, so I created a small jQuery script to take care of them.

In this article I demonstrate an easy method of creating pull quotes from a block of text using jQuery (a JavaScript library), CSS, and the html span element. I hope you find this method useful.

Recently I’ve been searching for a method of creating nice looking rounded corners with Javascript & JQuery.

First I found the “JQuery Corner” plugin for rounded corners, but was disappointed that it did not include smooth, anti-aliased corners.

I then did some more google-trawling and found this post, which contained a modified version of Curvy Corners for use with JQuery. Now this script was much much better.

However…the filesize was a massive 40kb, way too big for production use, and to make things worse the code was not compatible with packer so I could not reduce the filesize.

Well, I got busy, and fixed the errors. It is now fully packer friendly meaning easy rounded corners in JQuery at only 9kb 8kb 15kb (I removed “packers” overhead so it runs faster, repack for the smallest filesize if you wish). Excellent. Read more for the download link.

Continue reading “Anti-aliased Rounded corners with JQuery” »

As promised last week, this week we are looking at fetching RSS feeds with Magpie RSS.

Magpie is an PHP based RSS feed parser; I.E. It fetches RSS feeds to display in other places, which gives it many uses.

Unknown to many, wordpress has the magpie RSS parser built in, this article will teach you how to use it, and also how to fetch and show someones del.icio.us bookmarks!

Continue reading “Wordpress development techniques #2 - Fetching RSS feeds with wordpress” »

In this first edition of “Wordpress development techniques” I will be talking about one of the most useful classes available for use in wordpress: wpdb.

The wpdb class (WordPress DataBase class) is based on the ezSQL class, and handles database connections and queries.

Why use it? You can make all sorts of custom queries, and pull information from the wordpress database, including posts! Read on for more information on this useful class…

Continue reading “Wordpress development techniques #1 - Running custom queries using the ‘wpdb’ class” »

Widgets are a cool new feature built into wordpress version 2.2, and allow you to drag mini plugins into your widget-enabled theme’s sidebars.

They have all kinds of uses, searches, polls, you name it.

This article will show you how to create a customisable Recent post widget for yourself.

Continue reading “Create a Wordpress Recent-Posts Widget” »

This week Ive been trying out a lot of image replacement techniques in main headings, and their are quite a few available. If you have a graphical header logo on a website, with the sites name, often you wont want to have another heading as plain text. Yet, you should want to have the heading readable by screen-readers, and you also want the SEO benefits of the heading.

Ive rounded up my favorite methods, and this entry will show you how to use them, and when to use them.

Continue reading “Using Image replacement techniques” »

When developing websites there is one thing I have never kept consistent; the method of clearing floats. It seems every project I take, I seem to do it a different way, well Its about time I sorted it all out in my mind.

For those with no clue about what I’m rambling on about, with CSS layouts, when you have a float inside an block-level element, it will collapse in most browsers, since floats have no dimensions. So for instance, if I had a div container with a blue background, and a float inside it, the blue background would not surround the float (and the floats contents), due to the div ignoring the height of the float.

To fix this you need to ‘clear’ the float, so the container recognises the fact the float is there, and adjusts its height accordingly.

There are many methods of doing this, personally in the past Ive used most of them, so in this article I will compare the main ones and rate them in terms of:

• The extra markup
• The Amount of CSS
• Cross Browser compatibility (I’m limited to IE5-7, Opera 9, Firefox)
• Ease to implement

Continue reading “Experiments with floats: whats the best method of clearance?” »

Recently ‘Microformats’ has been a major buzz word in the web design community, but what are they all about? If you are feeling lost then this article is for you. This article explains what Microformats are, the benefits of using microformats, and how to implement them.

This article focus’ on the microformats hCard, and hAtom; both of which are used on the Blue Anvil site if you hadn’t noticed.

Continue reading “Introduction to Microformats + a look at hCard & hAtom” »

Most sites on the web are coded using pixels for widths, which is acceptable, however these sites make it harder for users with poor eyesight to increase the text size whilst keeping the layout in place and usable.

That is where ems can help. This guide will explain ems, and show you how to convert a layout to utilize ems.

Continue reading “Going elastic with ems, layout techniques” »

Many people make the mistake of using tags for appearance only in their websites, but with semantics you get the benefit of describing your data as well. This makes it more accessible and of a higher quality, and of course fulfills the main objective; separating content from presentation.

This article is aimed at semantic mark-up beginners, including clients who want to learn more about code so they can ensure their sites are semantically correct. It also shows the mark-up available and it’s usage.

Continue reading “Guide to Semantic Mark-up” »