Cross Browser Minimum Height (CSS)

A issue in my coding life is dealing with IE6 and making things work in it and Firefox (among other browsers). One thing I’ve learned to deal with successfully is putting minimum heights on DIVs. Some people may put a “spacer” image or DIV inside the parent DIV to stretch it out. The problem with that, is sometimes it can be buggy.

Here’s my solution:

#div_name {
    min-height:500px;
    height:auto !important;
    height:500px;
}

Firefox will go off of the min-height property, however, IE will ignore that and will render the element according to the height property.… read more

Quick way to plot keywords in a blurb.

I was updating the search feature to an online store that my company has built, which the whole purpose was to make it “more Google like in features”.

One of the features was plotting the keywords in the short description for that page. This makes the search results a little more relevant for people who are searching for a product or a page that’s housed on their store.

Example: So if someone searches for “John” and that keyword doesn’t appear until the end of the content, rather than just showing the blurb without the keyword highlighted, it should be in… read more

Easy way to debug Javascript in IE6

While at work today, I found myself chasing a Javascript bug in IE6. For any of you who have even attempted to do such a thing, you know this is no small task. IE6 has a habit of giving generic error messages on non-existing lines of code.

So I went on a search looking for some kind of alternative to this and buried deep within the caves of the internet I found a solution.

It’s called Web Development Helper and it integrates directly into Internet Explorer 6. This plug in has a DOM inspector that allows viewing of all… read more

Class.Forms an Easy Form Builder in PHP

Not too long ago I released an open source application called class.forms. This class made in PHP allowed you to easily create forms with server side and client side validation. Since this was release over 5,000 of you have downloaded this class.

However as time has gone on, people either can’t find it on the site or ask about it, so I decided to make a new blog entry about it.

Here are some of the features:

• Quickly add text, password, hidden, upload fields and more.
• Automatically handle the posting of form data to a database (insert or update)

… read more

First Impression with Google Chrome: Worth it to switch?

I’m an avid Firefox user, I love how I can extend the base features of FireFox at anytime with a number of plug-ins. Although went buzz made it around the office that Google had officially launched it’s web browser, I was ready to pass it off. That was, until, a co-worker showed me the break off tabs feature. Seeing that made me want to give this infant in the browser world a spin.

As of right now, I think the jury is out for it’s the final verdict on this web browser, but it does contain several key elements that… read more

So, what do you create websites in?

Something I get asked a lot is what I create websites in. Some people come to me for advice for which editor I think is the best or to boast about their personal favorites. Among the many editors I’ve heard mentioned have been Dreamweaver, Front Page / Expression Web, and Notepad.

See, I have a problem with each one of those choices. Well, actually I have a few problems with those options. First of all, if I’m on a guest computer and I notice something I need to change on one of my websites, I’m a 200-300mb trial away from… read more

Don’t reinvent the wheel.

I’m in a industry where I occasionally deal with a lot of people and a lot of businesses and I’ve noticed quite an interesting trend. Now, I’m sure I’m not the only one to have noticed this, but I’m probably one of the few to actually blog about it.

I have had many people request for me to create “the next MySpace”, in fact, a lot of people think they have some great idea that will make their site take off and become number one. Like such ground breaking ideas as “YouTube plus MySpace” or “Facebook plus CNN” (and yes,… read more

Video and Audio Content?

After I finally got the site up and running, I was trying to think of new ways to increase my content. So taking a page out of the Chris Pirillo and Leo Laport book, I’m considering doing a audio and video podcast.

The subject and the hosts would be yet to be determined, but I have a few people in my mind who are quite knowledgeable in their areas of expertese.

But besides that, I finally got the site back up and working after I inadvertently replaced some of the files on the server and didn’t  find out until after… read more

Filtering PHP Input

I wrote a blog for the company I work for not too long ago expressing the need and importance of filtering PHP input. It never really ceases to amaze me the amount of people who trust the raw user input from forms, which we all know can lead to some serious security gaps.

In response to the huge amount of people who don’t validate user input, I decided to write a class that would help people out who are in need of cleaning user input, but aren’t really sure how to approach it.

First we’ll start with a class, which… read more

class.forms v0.5 released!

If you were looking for a great PHP class that can handle any type of form you put in front of it, look no further.

Here are some of the features:

• Quickly add text, password, hidden, upload fields and more.
• Automatically handle the posting of form data to a database (insert or update)
• Resize uploaded images proportionally
• Easily repopulate fields with GET, POST, or SQL data
• Seamless client side and server side field validation on all inputs
• You can customize a object by inserting your own html
• Don’t have to memorize which order to pass variables to functions
• Rapidly

… read more