Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Rounded Corners on Images in Drupal

Trying to apply rounded corners via CSS to images in all browsers is painful. Apparently several versions of Firefox (3.6 +) added to the pain when -moz-border-radius stopped working... until FF 4.0.

Then you have the dreaded IE browsers...ughh... CSS is not ready for a bullet-proof solution.

Solution: Why not pre-process the images on load-time? excellent... no need for an image editor to modify images manually.

If you are using Drupal... you are in luck:
Enter Drupal's Imagecache... except native imagecache doesn't handle rounded corners... so.. enter Imagecache Actions... an extension module to Imagecache.

In the D7 version, there is this problem where the rounded corner processing only works with PNG files. Excellent, Imagecache actions also offer the ability to convert the image to PNG.

so... a combination of actions like such...

Rounded
RT: http://drupalcode.org/project/imagecache_actions.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/docs/ro...

 

Using JQuery in Drupal 7

Looks like adding custom JQuery scripts in Drupal 7 just got harder.

The $ is no longer specific to JQuery as it allows flexibility to other javascript libraries.

Therefore, to get a JQuery script to be recognized in Drupal 7, you need to wrap the code in an anonymous function... like this...

(function($) {
   $().ready(function() {
         //...
    });
})(jQuery);

eBooks Are Temporary

Ebook

In case you haven't noticed, in the last several years there has been an explosion of ebooks and ebook readers (Kindles, Nooks, iBooks, etc...). The objective is obviously to provide a digital option for reading books, since people now have the devices to do so.

The problem however is that the ebook technology is doing it's best to mimic the traditional paper model, which looks somewhat odd in a digital world. - do we really need to simulate page turning when there are no pages?

I happen to work for an education publisher, and we provide eBook versions of all of our textbooks. The beauty of course is that we also provide a digital layer of audio, video, activities, assessment, etc... which enhances the book... but... it still follows the printed book structure. So, there is a 'table of contents', glossary, index, chapters, pages... etc.

To be fair, the textbook objective for eBooks is a bit different because the digital version does need to correspond to the print version (for students to correlate) so retaining the structure is necessary, but the eBook enterprise as a whole is really just a digital copy - a digital version of the same text with search and bookmarking.

I am not arguing against this ebook model though... because it makes sense. People understand how a book works, you turn pages to go from one end to another end; you bookmark what you like; you reference an index to find something. So, to get people to read in a digital world, it's important to keep those conventions in place, ...people understand the association.

But it's all temporary.. ebooks are just transitional until the next generation of readers come along and don't really care about paper model simulations.

Sequential pages are nonsensical on a digital display; long connected sequences of chapters may not be the best way to provide a reading experience; pages with numbers; etc... I am guessing that "the book," whatever that means in a digital world, will look very different soon.

 

Not Just Mobile First... Mobile Enhanced

Mobile-web

The phrase "mobile first" in the context of web design seems to be everywhere now. The idea of course, is that with the incredible surge of mobile devices and the quantity of people accessing the web via mobile, the web design initiative should be focused primarliy on mobile first.

The problem however, is not that the mobile web should be prioritized differently, like one browser channel over another browser channel (mobile + desktop + tablet etc...), but the mobile device is really a different animal.

The mobile device has a lot more features then a desktop computer. It is used as a phone, MP3 player, chat device, location detecter, GPS, etc... the idea would be to build websites on mobile phones that incorporate these features.

So... using a 'graceful degredation' model... a website strategy starts with mobile first, but includes an enhanced mobile perspective. Then the feature set degrades (responds) based on the device.

So, it's not just about designing/building websites that view properly on mobile devices, that's a good first step - it's about enhancing that experience. It's also not about building downloadable apps that are specific to devices, but real standard driven 'web sites' that are agnostic to any mobile device.

Why I Switched to Posterous

So why is a Drupal front-end developer/themer web designer opensource guy switching his blog over to Posterous?

Because It's about using the right tool for the job. Using a powerful CMS for a micro-blog is overkill, and although I'm a web designer, it's refreshing to use someone else's design for a change. There are a lot of great resources out there, and one of the keys to good development is finding and implementing the right solutions for your objectives.

Posterous recently jumped from a micro blog to a social space with some new added features.

  • I like that you can publish blogs (with images) directly from an email client - this isn't new but really useful.
  • I like that there are newly improved themes as opposed to the prior boring posterous base theme
  • You can create spaces for private/public groups
  • It has commenting built in (ahem... unlike tumblr)
  • The import blog feature? haven't tried that yet but if it works that would be sweet
  • The UI is very intuitive
  • Mobile app access to your spaces
  • Using a custom domain seems easy enough

The only downside to using these services like Posterous & Tumblr is that the content isn't stored in your own DB like a wordpress install. But it works for the specific content I am writing here, since it is information that will eventually be obsolete anyway.

Honestly, I like where Posterous is headed, and this makes for a perfect notepad in the cloud.

And so it begins...

Internet-of-things

This is an exciting time for the web.

It is moving from personal computers to multi-devices;
from information to applications;
from social media to social services

Interfacing with the web will become ubiquitous. For better or worse, It will become a fabric of our living environment. As a CMS strategist; web designer; and front-end developer, working (in) the web will evolve to be entirely different. In fact, those titles I just mentioned will eventually disappear (anybody remember the webmaster?)

The following are my notes... capturing this evolving process as I observe it.