Several websites rely on the ever-so-annoying popup window. As much as well all hate popup windows, some websites do benefit and justly require them. The problem is that some people have their popup blocker on but don’t know it — thus the new window doesn’t open. Of course the browser notifies the user but it isn’t always as obvious as it should be. Here’s a quick method for testing if your popup window is being blocked.
One of the reasons that I love Firefox and Webkit-based browsers (Chrome, Safari) is the ability to effortlessly create rounded-corner elements using pure CSS:
.round { -moz-border-radius:12px; -webkit-border-radius:12px; }
As you probably already know, IE doesn’t allow you to create rounded corners without using images or endless hacking. Enter the CurvyCorners javascript project. CurvyCorners allows you to quickly create rounded corners within Internet Explorer.
<!-- SIMPLY INCLUDE THE JS FILE! --> <script type="text/javascript" src="curvy.corners.trunk.js"></script>
CurvyCorners detects the usage of “-webkit-border-radius” and “moz-border-radius” on DOM elements and works its magic to duplicate the effect in IE using a series of small DIVs. There are no images involved. You may also identify specific elements to apply rounded corners to:
I’m just going to cut to the chase: Internet Explorer is rubbish. I don’t care what version you throw at me — 6, 7, 8…rubbish. Apparently Google agrees with me because they’ve released Google Chrome Frame, a browser plugin and META tag system that allows you to turn IE installs into a virtual “Chrome” install so that IE will support HTML5’s canvas tag and take advantage of javascript performance improvements featured in Google Chrome.
The user must first download the Chrome Frame plugin at the Google Chrome Frame page. The install works on XP and Vista operating systems, IE browser versions 6, 7, and 8.
If you follow me on Twitter or talk to me my IRC channel (#davidwalshblog on FreeNode), you know that I’ve been anticipating my birthday because BDay was iDay — iPhone day, that is. My birthday has come and gone and I now possess a slick iPhone 3Gs. I absolutely love it so far but just like my limited Mac knowledge, I don’t know which iPhone apps I need to get.
I was bright enough to grab these:
Yesterday I detailed the file/folder structure of a Firefox extension. Once you have your extension ready for testing, you need to package everything together into an XPI file. Luckily there’s a quick and easy way to do so.
content myExtension jar:chrome/myExtension.jar!/content/ overlay chrome://browser/content/browser.xul chrome://myExtension/content/myExtension.xul skin myExtension classic/1.0 jar:chrome/myExtension.jar!/skin/
Remember that the XPI build is based upon the chrome.manifest file.
cd myExtension/chrome zip -r myExtension.jar content/* skin/*
We enter the chrome directory and generate a myExtension.jar file which holds all of the extension assets.