Slender App
Slender is a fantastic app. It scans your Xcode project and prompts you with images that are no longer used in the project. It’s definitely worth the price tag. More info here.
Dev Notes #1 - Bookmarklet
I got tired of my colleague, *cough Buz, asking me for links and tools that I find and use while working, so I've decided to create posts where I list these things for future reference. Enough talk lets get to it.
Bookmarklet is a very important piece of my development. Lately, I've been using the following:
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ReCSS
Super B tool, used to reload your css without refreshing the whole page. It's very useful if you want to change a website in production that you can't run locally.
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Firebug Lite
If you develop websites in different browsers like I do (webkit nightly build), and can't live without Firebug; Firebug Lite is the way to go. It isn't as powerful as the Firebug add-on but it does a good job if you need to use the console or check for applied styles. Unfortunately, there is no way to change the css on the fly.
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Design
A very cool set of design tools. It includes grid, rule, unit and crosshair. A must have if you are designing in the browser.
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jQuerify
As expected, it includes jQuery to the page. Very useful if you want to use firebug's console and jQuery selectors.
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Favelet Suite
If you are a fan of the web developer toolbar add-on for Firefox, you will love this tool.
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xRay
It displays CSS information of a selected object.
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Microformats
Every time I markup a page, I try to use microformats as much as possible. This bookmarklet gives you a list of vCard on the page. Unfortunately, it doesn't display any other micro data.
If I missed any other bookmarklet, feel free to leave a comment with the link to it.
Adding hasJS Class When JavaScript Is Available
While at An Event Apart Boston, Jeremy Keith delivered the best lecture of the conference, about progressive enhancement. One slide caught my attention the most. It was about adding a class to the body if JavaScript was available. Here is his code example using jQuery:
Keith's Example using jQuery:
CSS
Why add a class if JavaScript is enabled?
Although the majority of desktop users have JavaScript enabled, mobile is one of the most used platforms to surf the web. Some mobile browsers don't support JavaScript. Keep in mind that search engines don't run JavaScript, so NEVER add important content using JavaScript.
Renaming and Extending Easy-Clearing, AKA Clearfix
When positioniseverything.net posted an article about clearfix technique, it didn't take much for web developers and designers to start adopting it. Lately, Dan Cederholm has been talking about renaming the class clearfix to group, which semantically speaking makes a lot more sense. So, let's go ahead and rename the class.
New Easy-Clearing
Using conditional comments, let's add the proper code to handle IE 6 and IE 7 (IE8 supports the :after pseudo-elements; no extra code is necessary).
The Right Way to Declare RGBa Colors
One of the best progressive enrichment that I use on my projects is to set colors as RGBa (red, green, blue, alpha) values. As I write this, RGBa is current supported in firefox 3.0.5+, Safari 2+, Chrome 1+, and Opera 10+.
The most efficient way that I found to declare RGBa values is to separate the flat colors into code block, and keeping RGBa with the other styles. Like in this example:
CSS
I always keep the flat colors separated because they can be easily removed when the other browsers start supporting RGBa. Why didn't I declare the HEX colors on the same line as the RGBa? Simple! IE doesn't support it; no color will be rendered at all. Note: Please be aware that the RGBa colors have to be the last ones declared.
