Category Archives: Coding

Getting XML data into Symfony, automatically.

Posted on November 3, 2009 by Dan

The problem We have a complex XML file with many different node types, etc. supplied by a third party via a URL reference. There’s an initial dump, and then an incremental update every couple of weeks, with additions, deletions and … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Tools | 4 Comments

Goodbye .clearfix, old friend.

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Dan

You all know the old ‘floated elements inside a container cause the container to collapse’ problem? Well, up until recently, I’d always just called on an old friend, .clearfix, and he’d sorted it out for me. I met .clearfix three … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Link, Tools, Web Standards | 2 Comments

Does developing in .aspx produce bloated code?

Posted on July 4, 2008 by Dan

This started out as a comment in response to Robbie’s question on my previous post, but thought I’d turn it into another post: So is it that they are written in aspx which makes them bloated?. Well, I guess that’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Commentary, Design, Tools | 2 Comments

Web site performance

Posted on July 3, 2008 by Dan

Last week I read Steve Souders’ High Performance Web Sites. While I already have a fairly good understanding of site performance, having completed a fairly extensive performance analysis of tvnz.co.nz a few years ago and being familiar with Yahoo!’s YSlow … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Commentary, Design, Tools, Web Standards | 5 Comments

Extensible CSS

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Dan

Cameron Moll has published Part 1 of his new series The Highly Extensible CSS Interface. He looks at meaningful, lightweight markup, resetting CSS, and resolution dependence.

Posted in Coding, Commentary, Web Standards | Leave a comment

Jeff Croft goes brown

Posted on February 16, 2008 by Dan

Jeff Croft has redesigned – and it’s brown, yo. I must say, it’ll take a bit of getting used to.

Posted in Coding, Commentary, Design | Leave a comment

Charts and graphs and stuff

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Dan

It’s funny how things come in droves. A good friend of mine has, over the years, written a few applications that require graphing. He has written them as VB applications and when I’ve suggested he make them as web-apps, one … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Commentary, JavaScript | 1 Comment

How to hack mintshot; the problems continue.

Posted on December 5, 2007 by Dan

Here’s another post about mintshot hacks. I’m not sure what happened to the page I linked to the other day; it seems to be down. [Edit: Here's the google cache of that page.] There are a few good lessons that … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Commentary, Design | 4 Comments

Win millions of Mintshot dollars!!

Posted on December 2, 2007 by Dan

Mintshot is a mess! Cheating, hacks, security flaws… Wow! I must say, I wasn’t overly impressed with Mintshot’s shoddy layouts and presentation, but I never thought it would be so crappy underneath!!

Posted in Coding, Commentary, Design | 1 Comment

Frameworks. CSS and otherwise.

Posted on November 19, 2007 by Dan

Jeff Croft hosts a hornets’ nest of a debate over the use (or not) of frameworks in web development. It may pay to first read his previous post on this topic. And probably Jeff’s article on frameworks that he wrote … Continue reading →

Posted in Coding, Link, Tools | Leave a comment