Browser.php is a script used to detect browser versions. Recently, I was working on a project that required the same functionality from JavaScript. Thus, I ported the code over from PHP to JavaScript and give it freely for you to use and enjoy.
The original site for Browser.php can be found here.
You can download Browser.1.0.js here (25k).
You can download Browser.1.0.min.js here (16k).
In this day and age you don’t have to go far to find a framework that claims to be the BEST and MOST SUPPORTED mobile framework EVER!!! Three years ago, there were only a handful. IUI was there, JQTouch was there, and Sencha Touch was early on the scene. In the last year, there has been dozens of new frameworks on the scene. So, with all those frameworks, how in the world can you choose which one is right for you?
I’m not going to go into depth on every framework that is out there. A simple Google search for “mobile web frameworks” will put lists and lists of frameworks in front of your face, but that still doesn’t get you any closer to deciding which one is right for you.
I’ve used many of the frameworks, and I know the pros and cons of them. I’ve used them on client projects and on personal projects. I’ve used them with heavily customized styles, and I’ve used them with lightly customized styles. I’ve used them on iPhones, Androids, iPads, and Blackberry devices. When I talk about mobile frameworks, I know what I’m talking about. Let’s take a look at some of the most important criteria you should have when choosing a framework.
This is perhaps the most important aspect of any framework. Some frameworks only provide API documentation (like Sencha Touch and JQuery Mobile), which is good if you want complete documentation, but it lacks in telling you how it all fits together. Other frameworks like Wink don’t mind telling you how it all fits together, but you don’t get full documentation if you really want to manipulate the application.
The other aspect of support is how quickly you can find answers to undocumented features. Typically you need to reach out to the community for answers. The more established a framework is (like Sencha Touch and JQTouch) the better and more responsive the community is.
The level of support will determine how quickly you learn to use the framework, and how quickly you can deal with obstacles that you come across. If you are going to create a heavily customized or richly featured application, then you want to find good support with a good community that can help you out when you get into a tough spot.
Win: JQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch
Fail: just about everyone else
This is where a lot of frameworks absolutely FAIL. Most frameworks force you (and you’re users) to conform to their designs, layouts, and animations. For some people, this is fine, but if you want to take Sencha Touch and put a high customized design on it, you’re going to run into performance nightmares when using it on anything but an iOS device or the newest Androids.
One good concept when it comes to building user interfaces is to not re-train a user how to use a well-known interface. For example, the typical interfaces on an iPhone are completely different than the typical interfaces on an Android. Why on Earth would you want force Android users to learn an iPhone interface? They chose an Android for a reason. Are you so arrogant that you alone can determine that an iPhone interface is superior to an Android interface?
In order to provide a highly customized interface, you’re going to want as much control over the looks and interactivity while retaining as much performance as you can. This is where smaller frameworks like XUI come in that merely provide a core set of tools and it’s up to you to make them look how you want.
Win: XUI
Fail: JQuery Mobile, JQTouch, Sencha Touch, many many others, so many others
Most frameworks show you demos of all their layouts, interfaces, and animations so you can test them out and see how wonderful they are. That’s only half the story though. What you’ll quickly find out is that when you start building your own application and customizing designs or animations, it’s quickly going to bog down. If you want to retain the original performance level, you’re going to have to stick with how they design things. The arrogance!
If you’re fine sticking with their designs, then that’s fine… nothing against that. That’s why I used JQuery Mobile on one of my projects because it was for iOS users only and I wanted something quick, simple, elegant, and not highly customized. It worked perfectly! However I’ve worked on projects that required a lot of styling and design and most frameworks performance quickly fell short especially on non-iOS devices.
Win: XUI
Fail: JQuery Mobile, JQTouch, Sencha Touch, too many to mention
The ideal framework will have an active development cycle. You don’t want to use a framework that was only created by one guy in order to fix a certain problem they had (ie. CiUI). Since technology is moving forward at such a fast pace, you want a framework that’s going to be around for at least a couple of years and that is going to be updated to move with technology.
Win: JQTouch (sorta), JQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch
Fail: CiUI, iUI, too manny to mention
We’ve looked at some of the major criteria to take into account when trying to decide which mobile framework you should use. You need to have a framework with good support, good performance, and that will be around for a while. The bit about custom design isn’t for every project. There are only a handful of frameworks that are viable candidates at the current time.
JQuery Mobile, JQTouch, Sencha Touch, iUI, and XUI are the few and the proid. If you stick to that short list, you should be able to find something that suits your needs.
It’s no secret that WordPress and Akismet are in cahoots. It’s one of the only plugins that comes pre-installed with WordPress and it’s shamelessly promoted. The real question though is “does it work”?
Literally, yes. It does work. As in, it’s not absolutely broken. I think what a lot of people are starting to see though is that it’s not working very well. It’s supposed to stop you from getting spam comments on your blog, and it used to do a pretty good job. As technology improves though, the spammers and hackers get smarter and smarter.
Some solutions are to put clunky captchas in place to try and weed out the automated bots from real humans, but you will quickly see that this method simply puts a barrier in front of people that will cause a huge decrease in comments. Not good.
I want to know a few things… How many of you are tired of Akisment and want an alternative solution? If there was an all-inclusive alternative, what kind of features would you want it to have? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.
I’ve been searching the last couple of days for some sort of solution to this problem. I’m using custom post types in WordPress and I want to be able to specify my static home page to be one of my custom post types. In the WordPress Reading options it only lets you specify ‘Pages’, not any of your custom post types.
I came across this discussion here, but it didn’t lead to any kind of a solution.
Another possible is here, but it wasn’t a good solution because you had to create an actual page, and then use a custom template. A little too messy for my taste.
I also found this which was the closest one yet. I found out, that manipulating those options does work, but not as intended. The home page was auto-redirecting to the permalink of my custom post type. So, in principle, when I went to my home page I was seeing my custom post type, but when looking at the address bar, it actually just redirects to the permalink. This wasn’t the solution I was looking for.
Then I decided that if you could specify the post ID somewhere (in my theme settings) of the page I wanted to be the home page, it would be as simple as modify the query for my main loop. I came up with the following code placed in my main index.php file for my theme before the loop starts, and it seems to work perfectly.
$postId = 12345; // substitute with the ID of the post you want to show
if ( is_home() && '' != $postId ) :
$post = get_post( $postId );
query_posts( array( 'post_type'=>$post->post_type, 'p'=>$postId ) );
endif;
This is a plugin for the PHP template engine Smarty. It’s a modifier plugin, so you can use it like this:
{$text|autolink}
The purpose of the plugin is to automatically detect URLs within a string and wrap them in HTML anchor (<a>) tags.
Features:
Let me know if you find it useful.
Download it here
Just place it in your Smarty plugin folder
I recently had to create a piece of PHP code that will take an entire directory on my hard drive, and make a .zip file out of it. I needed it to be recursive and I needed it to be simple. My code stemmed off the code I originally found here, but the problem was that it referenced another piece of code that must be required to use, and that code was held behind a registration page. So, I went ahead and created my own code that is self-sustaining and open source. You can check it out over at Google Code. I hope you enjoy it and let me know if you need any help with it.
I happen to be a user of both WPTouch (a plugin that makes my blog mobile friendly) and Webcomic (a plugin and theme that allows you to organize comic series). The problem lies in that webcomic uses a custom post type for displaying the images associated with each comic and WPTouch has no idea how to display a webcomic. Thus, when someone visits my site on a mobile device, they can see any text that I post for a webcomic, but they can’t see the image associated with my post. Today I resolved to fix that problem and I was successful. While it’s not the most elegant of solutions, it at least works for now and I hope it can help others.
This blog is a chronicle of my adventure with Adobe in trying to get support for Flash Builder 4. You see, I purchased the premium version of the product 5 days ago, and one of the key features for the premium version is a “profiler”. Now, I got the application installed fine, and everything works EXCEPT for the “profiler”, the one feature that I paid $700 for. What follows is how Adobe chooses to conduct support for a $700 product.
Continue reading
I ran into an interesting problem today with a wordpress theme that I developed for a client. I was using the same drop-down menu from the new TwentyTen theme, and everything was working fine… or so I thought. As it turns out, when viewing the theme in IE7, the drop-down menu was appearing behind other elements on the page.
It seems a lot of users lately have been asking questions about AJAX forms with JQTouch and wondering how they work. I have put together some video tutorials which walks you through creating a login form from scratch. The form submits via AJAX, validates the form variables, then uses a cookie based system to remember if you’ve logged in or not. Please leave me comments if you like what I’ve put together or if you have any questions or feedback.
You can download a copy of the code here
Part 1: Creating the home page
Part 2: Creating the form handler
Part 3: Creating the logoff handler and adding logic to the home page