Jon M. Zuck » Javascript

Row-based designs

Jon — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:26:14 +0000

I wrote an article for the new online Web design magazine, 13things, entitled “Horizontal Flow: The Magic of Row-Based Design.” In it, I examine what the effect of column-based design has been, advantages of using rows to recapture the organizational effects of the grid that were largely lost when we abandoned table-based layouts, and some novel ways of ordering content into rows. Hope you enjoy it.

Minefield Set to Explode Chrome

Jon — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:35:48 +0000

Ok, I’ve got to admit that Chrome has lost a bit of its luster as far as I’m concerned. For instance, for one of my projects, I need to use Central Desktop, an excellent project management site. Unfortunately, it’s one of several sites that Chrome can’t handle. Not that Safari or even Opera can either. I’m revising my earlier assessment of Chrome. I now regard it as a souped-up version of WebKit, that still has most of the flaws that Safari does. That’s not to say it’s a bad browser by any means… it’s superb. But for my browsing as well as my Web development, I’m relying on Firefox again.

However, Chrome offers a lot of promise. According to marketshare.hitslink.com, Chrome seized 0.78% of the worldwide browser share in less than a month on the scene, a phenomenal achievement. If the Google staff commits to really developing it, with full plug-in capability, solidness in handling intensive Flash-based Web apps. and fixing the long-standing problems with WebKit (such as the alternate stylesheet issue), Chrome will undoubtedly go far. (Unfortunately, it will also probably go far if they do nothing and leave it at version 0.2 for three years. They’re Google, after all.) I really do want to see the Web improve and browsers improve, and Chrome can offer a lot.

However, this morning I test-drove “Minefield,” the development codename for Firefox 3.1, and I’m amazed. In my not-so-humble opinion as a Firefox fan, Firefox’s sole problem has been its speed. Minefield fixes that with blazingly fast page downloads and a new Javascript rendering engine which “may be the fastest on the planet.” Kudos to the Mozilla team!

Regex help

Jon — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:25:24 +0000

An excellent tool for regex testing is Regex Coach by Edi Weitz in Germany. It’s makes one of the most painful coding tasks a lot less odios, thanks to real-time color-coded highlighting of matches, and a simple, intuitive interface. It’s only limitations that I’ve discovered are in character support; strangely, considering its European origins, it doesn’t support the Euro symbol “€”. That’s not likely to be a major flaw for anyone checking the regex syntax, however, and regex is an indispensible aid for that.