Quexim

Add a Google+ button to your site

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

You can add a Google+ button to your site really easily, with some pre-generated Google code. Visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/ to customize your own. Offline developers beware: the button requires a live web environment to render, so won’t display offline.

If you want to remove the ‘Post to Google plus’ message, simply change

to

How to fly in minecraft

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

It took me a few minutes to work this one out, so I thought I’d post the link: http://www.xboxmb.com/forum/100-minecraft/27675-zombe-mod-installer-minecraft-flying-mod-installer-update-1-7-3-a.html

Simply download the installer and run it (make sure you run as an administrator on Vista & 7). Select your options and you’re done!

You’ll need to run Minecraft from the downloadable .exe file (available on the Minecraft website) rather than from your browser.

Don’t forget, this only works with 1.7.3!

Looping and good taste = beautiful music

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

This girl’s awesome, came across this on teh’ interwebs, it needs sharing:

Simple, free shopping with OpenCart

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

Choosing an online shopping solution is often a tricky thing.  There are literally thousands of carts, stores, plugins and systems for e-commerce.

There are plenty of high-end systems ideal for large-scale e-commerce, but if you’re just starting, your budget is often limited or sometimes non-existent.

ZenCart and it's somewhat clunky admin interface

Cheap or Open Source systems have a reputation (not always unfairly) for being a little hard to use. Anyone who’s used ZenCart will be familiar with the feature overload when navigating the back end. When you’re setting up for the first time, the last thing you really need is to spend months trying to convince a system to do what you want it to.

OpenCart is a neat, efficient system. Whilst not overflowing with features, it’s a breeze to navigate, and does contain all the core features you’d look for when setting up a shop:

• Unlimited Categories
• Unlimited Products
• Unlimited Manufacturers
• Multi Currency
• Multi Language
• Product Reviews
• Product Ratings
• Open Source
• Free Documentation
• Templatable
• Automatic Image Resize
• 20+ Payment Gateways
• 8+ Shipping Methods

If you have Installatron or a similar set up on your server, you can install OpenCart with a click of a button.  OpenCart itself has a beautifully clean interface, meaning that you can start using it immediately without having to customise it to look clean or modern.

The default OpenCart template

A custom OpenCart template

OpenCart plugs cleanly into PayPal and other commonly-used systems for instant payment setup.

You can have a play with OpenCart on the website’s demo area at: http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=demonstration/demonstration

OpenCart is open source and free and you should download it from http://www.opencart.com

Firefox goes into overdrive

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

Firefox 4 has just gone into beta 11, hopefully the last beta to be released before a release candidate.  This release, like the 4 before it is for bugs, as Firefox 4 has been feature complete since beta 6.

A recent draft of the continued development of Firefox has shown plans (still in the planning stages) for Firefox to release another 3 versions in 2011, taking it to version 7 before the end of the year.

These developments follow criticism that Mozilla was too slow in releasing new features through 2010, with version 3 only upgrading to 3.5 despite a wealth of new features that many argued would easily constitute a big enough improvement to merit version 4 status.

Firefox beta 11 sports a new minimalist-inspired launch page

Each new browser release will contain major improvements, but focus on them in a more linear progression, so that one milestone can be achieved at a time, so that releases aren’t held back by trying to hit too many targets at once.

Google Chrome already follows a similar pattern, being on version 9 at time of writing, despite being younger than its Mozilla counterpart.

You can download the latest Firefox beta at: http://www.mozilla.com/en-GB/firefox/beta/

Log me in: free remote computer access

Saturday, February 5th, 2011

Log Me In lets you access your PC or Mac for free. Sign up at: https://secure.logmein.com/UK/

Having a tool like this is an essential must-have for any computer user, simply access their website and you gain access to your computer from anywhere in the world.

Getting started with CSS3 rounded corners

Friday, February 4th, 2011

CSS3 is very much something that’s being developed live, it’s supported in part on some browsers, though often through browser-specific code.

If you use Mozilla Firefox or Apple’s Safari Browser (read more about browsers) you can appreciate some of the benefits of CSS3, including rounded corners, drop shadows, gradients and clever transformations.  All features that have previously been accomplished with images and JavaScript – which significantly increased loading times.

CSS3 means you can offer far more attractive interfaces and designs with often no need for images.

.welcome-box {
-moz-border-radius:10px;
-webkit-border-radius:10px;
border-radius:10px;
}

Wuh? Why so repeat-y? Well, most browsers are still in the middle of implementing CSS3, and will be for some time.  This means that Mozilla broswers (think Firefox) and Webkit browsers (think Chrome and Safari) have their own prefixes.  We finish of the code with a standard declaration.  This is so that once the standard is completed the most recent, finished declaration will override the older browser-specific ones.  Nifty.

You can specify specific corners like so:

.welcome-box {
border-radius:10px 10px 5px 0;
}

The order is top-left, top-right, bottom-right, bottom-left. Don’t forget that you don’t need to specify a unit of measurement when using 0 as a measurement – zero is zero!

Unfortunately, the majority of the world aren’t quite as up to date.  Internet Explorer 9 (in early-ish beta at time of writing) will implement CSS3 rounded corners (using the border-radius declaration rather than another browser-specific one) but 6-8 are still in wide use.  I’ve found DD Roundies to be an ideal solution.  It’s a script you can include which lets you add a rounded class to your rounded corners so they work in IE. Awesome. http://www.dillerdesign.com/experiment/DD_roundies/

Firefox 4 is useable now

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Firefox 4 is usable right now. At time of writing it’s in beta 10, a big improvement over beta 9.  If you’re the brave sort, why not download and have a go?

You can download from: http://www.mozilla.com/en-GB/firefox/beta/

You’ll find many of your favourite plugins are not compatible with Firefox 4, however the majority update quickly and many have betas of their own which are.

One warning though, if you wish to use the browser for secure uses, be aware that the bugs that still need ironing out include security bugs.

jQuery TOOLS

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Often need to incorporate multiple interactive elements on a page? Tired of different scripts conflicting or swelling your page? Look no further than jQuery elements, a collection of tools including tabs, tooltips, overlays, scrollers & forms. The best part is it’s only 4kb!

Check it out: jQuery TOOLS

Become a better web developer in 5 minutes

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

Firebug

If you’re not using Firefox for web design, you really – really – should be. Besides being standards-compliant and supporting thousands of useful plugins, it also supports Firebug. Firebug lets you dig into your coed in real time and try out edits and changes as well as giving you a whole range of debugging tools. What’s more, Firebug also supports Yslow a Firebug plugin from Yahoo! thyat’s pure gold. It gives you accurate readouts of your page download time and has built in tools for getting more code and minifying images by using All Smush It to reduce image size without degrading quality.

Filezilla

FileZilla is an open-source FTP client which supports sFTP. FileZilla is stable, easy to use and fast. Don’t pay for an FTP client when FileZilla is available.

Download FileZilla

Snippets

Every time you write a clever line of code, discover a unique new tool or find an elegant way to write something you should save it. In the future this will save you more and more time as you go on. You should try and keep your snippets up to date and replace them as you find better alternatives. At the very least, consult a site like CSS Tricks which has a massive, ever-growing collection of freely available web design snippets.

Frameworks

Consider looking at using a framework. In CSS BluePrint is a fairly well-known standard for preventing yourself from writing repetitive code. Perhaps you’d rather use something simper? There’s plenty out there. I use a modified version of WhiteBoard CSS for WordPress, a framework which I add to with snippets I collect.

What does the client need?

The most important thing in my experience is to balance a client’s needs with your desires and their intentions. What I mean by this is that if a client needs a website selling microwaves they need it to sell, you’ll naturally want it to look fantastic and so will they, but you will be doing a better job by making a website that works rather than one that lives up the imaginary ideals of what a ‘good website’ is in your head. A good-looking, well-coded website that sells nothing is a bad website.