Group items tagged

Cody Lindley is a front-end/JavaScript developer and recovering Flash developer. He has an extensive background working professionally (20+ years) with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and client-side performance techniques as it pertains to web development. If he is not wielding client-side code he is likely toying with interface/interaction design or front-end application architecture. When not sitting in front of a computer, it's a sure bet he is hanging out with his wife & three boys in Meridian, Idaho. In his spare time Cody is working towards being a 'One Dollar Apologist' and enjoys defending ...

The LESS Ruby gem compiles LESS code to CSS.  LESS is an extension of CSS. You can write LESS code just like you would write CSS, except you need to compile it to CSS. That's what the gem is for. If you are on Mac OS X, you can install the gem by typing the following command in the terminal:

LESS extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, mixins, operations and functions. LESS runs on both the server-side (with Node.js and Rhino) or client-side (modern browsers only).

My friend/ex-coworker Sam the Wonder Boy used to send me late night AIM messages comprised of only three letters, "M.F.R." This would then send chills up my spine, and I'd curl up on the floor in fetal position and weep nonstop. OK, I'm exaggerating a quite bit, and Sam doesn't do that anymore. "M.F.R." stands for "Monthly Forecast Report." It was one of the many modules of a huge intranet web application we worked on years ago. As the name implies, it was a report. Before arriving to the actual report screen, the user could select some criteria such as date range, products, etc. Depending on the selection, the report can have up to sixty columns and thousands of rows. It was quite a challenge both on the backend and frontend. I initially created it using server side Excel API and dumped it to the frontend as an excel sheet. In version 2 I made it as an HTML table with the Excel export option. In version 3 I ditched HTML and went for Crystal Report, in version 3.5 it became Active Report. In version 4 we rewrote the whole application as a .NET client app, with the report section being Excel again. In version 5, well there wasn't a version 5. The whole project got outsourced to India and the team was disbanded. But that's a blog for another day.

IxEdit itself is made with JavaScript, and it is an entirely new type of design tool which is to be embedded in the HTML you are editing. Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or IE becomes your interaction development environment. The interactions you create will be applied on-the-fly to the web page, so you can edit them while checking how they behave in real time.