MainelyDesign.com Blog

Best CSS Method for Using Image as Submit Button

Posted on 02/03/2010 at 12:17 pm | Viewed 3,185 times | 2 comments

I came across an interesting issue with web forms and CSS.  Surprisingly, the end result is much better than I expected.  I knew that using an image instead of a traditional form submit button (<input type="submit">; instead of <input type="image"> or <input type="button">) would be a little challenging.  I like a challenge, plus I wanted to use the submit button because it's the standard approach to forms and I remember reading somewhere that input's of type image or button do not submit when you press enter...a usability faux paus in my opionion.

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Auto Columns with Columnizer - My New Favorite Jquery Plugin

Posted on 09/30/2009 at 10:37 am | Viewed 4,666 times | 2 comments

I was about to start coding a CakePHP helper that would analyze a bulleted list and split it into columns.  Starting to think about how I would approach this problem, my head began to hurt.  Then I found an awesome jQuery plugin- columnizer.

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A Really Good Implementation of Captcha

Posted on 09/22/2009 at 02:45 pm | Viewed 1,358 times | 0 comments

Awesome Captcha Implementation

I just experienced a version of Captcha that I actually like.  Instead of having to type in jumbled letters and phrases or answering simple questions, Service2Client actually asks you to identify the color of the letter in a certain position.  Not only does it fool spambots (I would assume anyway) but it's pretty easy to understand.

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Adding Anchors to Your CakePHP Generated Urls (#link)

Posted on 07/02/2009 at 09:02 am | Viewed 9,950 times | 6 comments

This may seem simple and trivial, but it took me a little while to figure out.  If it saves someone a little trial-and-error then great (I know I won't forget how to do it).

I needed to create a redirect in CakePHP that redirected to an inline, on-page anchor- <a name="destination">Scroll to Here</a>.  Typing the link directly into the address bar of the browser, it would need to look like this: http://www.mainelydesign.com/blog/view/1219/#destination.  The #destination is what I needed to figure out how to append to the redirected url.  Turns out it was easy...

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Fixing the Default HP OfficeJet Scanner Settings (which suck)

Posted on 05/28/2009 at 11:11 pm | Viewed 1,643 times | 0 comments

The default settings for my OfficeJet L7500 All-In-One Scanner suck!  I thought the scanner was junk.  Every photo I scanned, espcially glossy finished photos, were coming out looking like they were from a 1960s era camera: over-exposed and super high contrast.  Not good!  I thought I had good Photoshop skills, but even they were no match for the over-exposed mess that HP was sending into Photoshop.

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Making Apache Parse .html files as .php Files

Posted on 05/13/2009 at 12:09 pm | Viewed 1,567 times | 0 comments

When re-designing a site, or somehow being locked into a given web site structure that uses .html (or .htm) file extensions, it's a good idea to keep the file names the same (especially if the site has been around a while and has good search engine visibility).  Think you can't use PHP on .html or .htm web pages?  Think again.  With apache it's as easy as modifying the .htaccess file.

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Getting Full Resolution Pictures out of MS Word (almost)

Posted on 04/29/2009 at 11:14 am | Viewed 2,635 times | 6 comments

People use what they know.  Most of the time I get photos embedded in an MS Word document for use on a web site.  My workaround to date has been to enlarge the picture (in Word) until it is as big as it gets (keeping quality) or the size I need.  I would then do a print screen and paste into Photoshop. 

I knew that there had to be a better way, but at least I was getting as much resolution as possible from the photo/picture.  Well I came across an interesting scenario today- I couldn't enlarge the photo.  I don't know if formatting was locked on it, but I didn't have time to fiddle with it.  Instead I searched for a way to export embedded photos at full resolution and found this thread.

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Best Tiny Font for Web Graphics

Posted on 04/28/2009 at 05:03 pm | Viewed 2,922 times | 0 comments

I finally found the perfect font for making really small, yet readable text in web graphics.  I've played around with plenty of fonts and usually arrive at a reasonable result.  In the past I would use Eurostyle with enough spacing to make it legible.  Now, I have a new go-to font for small typeface.  Introducing Silkscreen.

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Preformatted Text in TinyMCE <pre></pre>

Posted on 04/21/2009 at 10:26 am | Viewed 5,841 times | 1 comment

Now that I've got my blog up and running, I've been playing around with syntax highlighting of source code.  I really appreciate sites that serve up code samples in a nice format, so I've tried to comply with my own version of this best practice.

Getting Geshi working, for syntax highlighting was one battle (I'll try and post what I came up with later). My real trouble came with using <pre></pre> tags for my code samples within TinyMCE.  I absolutely love TinyMCE! I did a lot of research on the best JavaScript-based WYSIWYG editor oh about 5 years ago, and decided on TinyMCE and never looked back.  I use it in all of my applications that require formatted HTML input (especially Site Avenger).  Every now and then I will look at another editor (I know 5 years is ancient by web standards) but I've never found an editor I like more.  Each editor has its quirks and I think the quirks within TinyMCE are the most manageable (as I tell my clients- even MS Word has quirks, you're just used to them).

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