Recently, a client who is a wedding photographer, asked me about including some eCommerce facility so he could sell prints from his website. He has a client area built using WordPress and galleries were being delivered through the NextGEN Gallery plugin. Finding a way to sell images from a gallery in WordPress turned out to be a challenge on this occasion…
‘CSS’ Archives
Colour Formats and CSS3
Having worked with HEX colours and RGB in web design for some time now, I am intrigued by how successful the new HSLA format will be. As of yet, it is supported in most modern browsers, but have a guess which one does not support it?
Adding Images to Links
Using images with links provides a visual cue that lets you know something about the link such as, what type of file it links to, whether it takes you off-site or even just as a way of displaying a logo next to specific link destinations.
Changing the Text Selection Colours on Web Pages
Here’s a useful bit of css. If you have a site with light coloured text and you want to select and copy some of it, it might not be so easy to see what you have highlighted.
On this blog I have used the following code to make the selcted text more legible:
*::-moz-selection { background-color: #390; color: #FFF; }
*::selection { background-color: #390; color: #FFF; }
This works on Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera. Internet Explorer does it’s own thing (as usual) and gives you blue on white by default.
Adding Images to Your Signature in Mail
Here’s a quick way of adding a signature with a graphic to your signature in Apple Mail. Please note, this will show the image as an attachment in Outlook etc and will only work if the recipient has html emails enabled.
Opera Mini Browser for iPhone
The new app arrived today, and I’ve just installed it.
Tried out a couple of jQuery sites and promptly uninstalled Opera! Just like the desktop app, it doesn’t display sites as well as Firefox, Safari or Chrome.
Sorry Opera, but you have joined Internet Explorer in the category of “web browsers for testing only”.
IE8 and the Acid3 Test
This morning I saw a web banner ad which actually made me laugh out loud. No surprise then that it’s for Internet Explorer… The ad is for the latest update to version 8 and carries the strapline “Why settle for second best?”
Windows Browser Choice
After having dominated the web browser market for several years, Microsoft have finally been forced to offer their customers a choice.
A European Commission Decision has made Microsoft now offer users of the Windows operating system the ability to choose which browser they want to use. This choice will be available to anyone buying a new build of a Windows 7 PC after February 19 2010, and anyone who downloads a new Windows update.
Browser Choice Screen
The panel above opens when you (re)start your system and clicking the OK link gives you a choice of the top 5 browsers:
Browser Options
Finally, there is the possibility that more people will choose a web browser that respects their right to privacy, isn’t riddled with security flaws and displays web pages as intended…
Hopefully, this is a time for change and some of the new css 3 standards can be enjoyed by considerably more people, making the web a bit more exciting again.
Testing Web Pages for the iPhone
I have come across a couple of iPhone browser simulators that are intended to help you see how your pages look on the device. However, in practice, they seem to show Flash content, which a real iPhone doesn’t at present.
Here are the culprits:
www.iphonetester.com – recommends using Safari for best results.
I’ve been working on some Flash-replacement scripting and wanted to debug. Both these are showing different results from a real iPhone.
Edit WordPress Themes Easily With Dreamweaver
Following my post yesterday, I received an updated ThemeDreamer extension by email which I have quickly tried. How great is that – a company that takes customer feedback and responds so positively!
This new version (061) works like a charm on my system. For those of you who don’t know about this extension check out this link: http://www.themedreamer.com.
If you work with Dreamweaver and want to edit your WordPress themes visually, without having to spend too much time poking around in the theme folder to work out what to edit, this is for you. I’ll add some more info about using it when I get a chance, but for now, why not try out their 15 day trial and look at the resources on their site.
