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Web things I came across lately

October 23, 2011 by Nikos Anagnostou

I have been doing a lot of reading and searching about web development issues lately. Actually it’s a catch up exercise for things that I should have followed but missed.

So here is a list of a few projects that I was really pleased to discover.

  1. CSSLint For those that would like to have some advise and an overlooking tutor in their CSS projects, here is a service that does exactly this: analyzes css files and offers ‘advise’ about usual pitfalls and patterns to be avoided.  CSSLint is a project of  Nicholas C. Zakas and Nicole Sullivan.
  2. 960.gs As you can guess by the name, it’s a grid system for 12 or 16 column grids. I have never used a grid system before. I prefer to hack my way to the design from scratch. But the simplicity of the thing is tempting, at least for prototyping work. 906.gr is a project of  Nathan Smith.
  3. Handlebars Littering javascript with a lot of html is an anti-pattern. The solution? Use some sort of javascript templating mechanism such as Handlebars.  Simple and elegant. A brain child of Yehuda Katz.
  4. Backbone.js A javascript Model View Controller (MVC)  … backbone for web applications. Developed by the guys responsible for DocumentCloud.
Now they have to come together in a future project of mine :)

Posted in Technology | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Opacity in Internet Explorer

July 29, 2011 by Nikos Anagnostou

This is an ancient problem: older versions of IE do not support the opacity CSS property. Instead, IE8 uses -ms-filter and IE prior 8 uses filter. Also, in IE, one has to be cautious about the positioning of the element the opacity properties apply to: the element has to be positioned for the filter to work properly. Another trick is to use zoom. 
Let’s wrap this up in the css snippet below:

#page {
  opacity: 0.5;
}
/* IE7 and less */
#page {
  filter: alpha(opacity=50);
  position: relative;
  zoom: 1;
}
/* IE8 specific */
#page {
  -ms-filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=50);
  position: relative;
  zoom: 1;
}

It is a pain but it works.

But what I found is that if you try to set these properties dynamically, through jQuery for instance, they are less obedient.

For filter and -ms-filter to be set through jQuery, the element has to be positioned through css and NOT by jQuery.

So one would need something like this:

/* IE less than 9 */
#page {
  position: relative;
  zoom: 1;
}


if($.support.opacity){
  $('#page').css('opacity' , ".5")
}else {
  $('#page').css('filter' , 'alpha(opacity=50)');
  $('#page').css('-ms-filter' , 'progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=50)');
}

This is empirical knowledge though. I don’t know why is it like this.

Posted in Code, HowTo | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments »

The Nigerian scam goes to Korea

January 20, 2011 by Nikos Anagnostou

If you love spam ‘literature’ like I do, here is  the latest of the Nigerian sequel.

Your Active E-mail made you a Beneficiary

Dear Sir/Madam,

This is to notify you that you have been chosen By the seven-member committee to fulfill Chairman Chung Mong-koo’s promise to donate One trillion won (US$1.1 billion) to charity, contingent to a suspension early this month of his three-year prison sentence for embezzlement and breach of trust. The ruling meant that the 69-year-old chairman will not be thrown back into jail as long as he remains clean during the next five years. In suspending the prison sentence, the Seoul High Court ordered Chung to fulfill the pledge of donations. Chung, want this money used for the protection of the environment and to build art and cultural facilities.

As one of the final recipients of this Cash Grant/Donation for your own personal, education and business development. The Hyundai Company is the world’s largest shipbuilder and 6th largest automaker and owns Hyundai Group, the parent company for all Hyundai Motor. The company has decided to randomly select email addresses that would benefit from this donation. Based on the random selection exercise from internet service providers(ISP) and millions of Super market cash invoices worldwide, you were selected among the lucky recipients to receive the award sum of US$2,000,000.00 (Two Million United States Dollars) as charity donations/aid from Hyundai Group.

You are required to expeditiously Contact the head of committee (HOC) below for qualification documentation and processing of your claims, from Monday through Sunday. On contact with head of committee (HOC), You’ll be given your payment pin number which you will use in collecting the funds. Please endeavor to quote your pin number QN(HM-145-5611) in all discussions.
***********************************
Head of committee: Mr. Imran Khand
Email: xxxxxxxx
***********************************
On behalf of the seven-member committee kindly accept our warmest congratulations

 

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged |

A great filter at last: Facebook Pages Custom Sharing

January 3, 2011 by Nikos Anagnostou

It’s a little bit over two years since when I wrote about the desirability of a language filter for social media news ‘streams’. But while Facebook has given the world one, probably because I missed its initial introduction, I  made the connection only now : In Facebook Pages, one can select who will see a certain status update by selecting a country and a language.

Quite rightly, language is not enough on its own to make targeting work. Neither country. The combination can work wonders though.

Just think the various pages that brands open on a country basis. There is no need to anymore. With the country status targeting, one page can be used to serve all countries. In theory, at least. It will require lots of admins, true. But this is better than a lot of pages repeating similar things over and over.

Also, I can help segment messaging in countries with more than one languages, keeping follower annoyance at a minimum.

Great!

But why only Pages?

The same need exists (to a lesser extend) for Personal Profiles and Groups.

And why is it so difficult for other social platforms to come up with solutions like this?

Is anyone listening in Twitter?

Posted in Social media | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

Why do we retweet?

December 17, 2010 by Nikos Anagnostou

What are the primary motivations for retweeting? There are countless of quasi answers out there but very little substantial research. Unfortunately I do not bring you one.

I run a little experiment the other day. I said I was running a “Retweet” experiment and asked my followers to RT!

I was not sure what to expect, but it turned out that about 13 people did actually retweet within the first hour.

Now, two days later, the picture is like this:

New Retweets

Please Retweet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Retweets

Please RT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If there is an immediate conclusion to be drawn, is that far more people use the new RT method (the one provided by twitter).

As to why people RT, the answer remains open to speculation. It seems though that what Dan Zarrella has found/suggested (that ‘Please RT’ is a strong factor to get retweeted) is valid and valuable.

Posted in Social media | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

e-nnovation: My presentation on Social Shopping

November 19, 2010 by Nikos Anagnostou

It’s a little bit a thing of the past now, but since a blog is also a sort of a personal log, a diary, I want to have this recorded somewhere.

Posted in Events | Tagged , |

Hootsuite can post to a WordPress.com blog

October 29, 2010 by Nikos Anagnostou

Hootsuite can post to a WordPress.com blog.

I am really impressed by this feature. And the reason I am writing this post is to explore the capabilities.
Does the twitter character limit apply?
Can I upload pictures and videos?

Update 1: The character limit does not apply as you can testify from this post

Posted in Social media, Tech News | 3 Comments »

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