Sam3k

Browse All Internet Explorer Versions at Once

sam3k — Thu, 28 May 2009 02:16:53 +0000

For the last coupe of months I’ve been using a program called IETester, which sole purpose is to allow you to preview/browse on all versions of Internet Explorer. For all these years working in front-end development, the single biggest frustration has been Internet Explorer and to add even more, it was not possible to have more than one version of Internet Explorer in the same operating system. So this has meant that:

a) you own or check multiple computers and preview on all, and go back and forward

b) you find out about a bug through user feedback and go back and forward

c) you have multiple OS on your machine and go back and forth.

Most likely it’s d) all of the above. You can imagine. Now we have this program that saves web developers a lot of time in this lengthy process; and best of all, It’s FREE!

One of the key features that stands out is the tabbing interface, which allows you to have any version of IE on any combination you may need. The latest version added a even better interface with easily accessible buttons to open a new tab for the version you want.

The program is a little bit buggy but for the all the goodness and joy it provides, it is certainly tolerable. The biggest bug is that it freezes when you go back and forward with other programs. The exact problem seems to be when you minimize it and then try to maximize it by clicking in the taskbar. Eventually, it freezes. Not so bad! simply force close the program and restart if it freezes or avoid minimizing it and always minimize the other programs to get to it.

IETester is still in beta but it’s already a very powerful tool to have as a web developer. I strongly recommend it to everyone. It is in fact even more pleasant to browse on it than any version of IE from 5.5 to 7. =P

Visit My-Debuggar.com to get the free download!

css, javascript, PHP, web development

Hover Accordion Menu

sam3k — Mon, 18 May 2009 01:11:46 +0000

I decided to do an early release of this hover accordion menu plugin I've built for one of my upcoming projects. It collapses and retracts on mouse over and mouse out instead of the typical mouse click.

View Demo

This jQuery plugin makes use of another plugin by Brian called Hover Intent which tries to determine what the user's intentions are when they are rolling over/out of the menu too fast. It is a very helpful plugin for mouse hover behaviors.

How to use:

The menu is a simple html list.

PLAIN TEXT

HTML:

class="menu">

href="http://www.sam3k.com/blog/#">Link 1

href="http://www.sam3k.com/blog/#">SubLink 1

href="http://www.sam3k.com/blog/#">SubLink 2

href="http://www.sam3k.com/blog/#">SubLink 3

href="http://www.sam3k.com/blog/#">Link 2

href="http://www.sam3k.com/blog/#">SubLink 1

href="http://www.sam3k.com/blog/#">SubLink 2

Call the jquery function like this:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVASCRIPT:

$(document).ready(function(){

$(this).hoverAccordionMenu();

});

Feel free to download and use on personal and commercial projects.

View Demo

Download

javascript

The New Beer Garden is Amazing!

sam3k — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:57:36 +0000

So a much needed second beer garden opened up this weekend in Astoria. It's called Studio Square. This place is beautiful!!! It's incredibly well designed and at the center of the Kaufman Astoria Studios. Not only is aesthetically beautiful but it makes good use of its surroundings. Like the fences on the main floor also serving as a place to hang out and it provides plenty of stools for people to sit there in case the main tables are full.

The old beer garden Bohemian Hall is great and I have great times there but recently it has become so popular that you can't even find where to sit anymore. Last few times there with friends, we found ourselves sitting in that little stage they have. It's so popular! that it even made it to Grand Theft Auto IV.

So how do they compare? well, in my opinion, Bohemian Hall is just about the stripped down experience of European beer gardens while Studio Square garden adds to it a bit of class and elegance. Beer is cheaper at Bohemian Hall; like $14 in average while the new one is $18.

It will be interesting to see how the new beer garden evolves but by the look of the gatherings this weekend it will be a huge hit. And the best thing about the new beer garden? it's right by my house. =] The hood just keeps getting better and better. Oh, this is going to be a great summer.

life

A Better Music Site!

sam3k — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:23:08 +0000

As promised, here is the music site my brother and I have been working for a while. Introducing PARCE MUSIK, a site dedicated to music news, music videos, interviews and more!

Users can submit content such as story links, embedded video and personal blogs and vote on the stories they deem worthy or appearing on the frontpage. To help with keeping content relative for the user we have a filter system which allows for users to select the music genres they like. Once they choose their favorite genres, the content throughout the site filters out the unwanted content, effectively keeping content relevant and for longer periods of time, which mean less chances users will miss what matters to them.

This site was created and maintain by my brother and me in our spare time and we will introduce some great features real soon, such as custom artist profile pages and custom fan profile pages. In the mean time, we welcome everyone to check it out at www.parcemusik.com and sign up and submit content. It is extremely easy to post content! If you hear about a music story elsewhere, simply go to Submit > Submit Link. Enter a catchy title, give us a short description so we know what is it about, enter the link and hit submit. That's it. Now other users have the opportunity to check out the story in the Blog Stream and vote on it. Once the story reaches a certain amount of votes, it will be promoted to the frontpage.

There are a lot of great features we are currently working on which help artists and be enjoyable for everyone. We have a long road ahead of us, and we work on the site on our spare time but it's a lot of fun. We have an advertisement system in place so we can sell ads in the future and hopefully cover hosting and other expenses that are currently coming out of our pockets. =P

Ok, that's all for now. Check out the site www.parcemusik.com try it out and spread the word.

music

What I’ve been up to you ask?

sam3k — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:06:46 +0000

For the past year I have secluded to myself on most of my spare time to work on a project that wanted to do for years. Most of you know how much I love music; it's a passion and obsession that doesn't seem to fade away. About a year ago the idea of making a better metal news site started to swirl in my head and told the idea to my brother; another metal head and programmer. He liked the ideas, and had some great ideas of his own, and we began to work on making it happen.

The main concepts of the site revolved around fixing a major problem on music sites in general and adding a very important factor of today's web experience.

The problem? all music sites are flooded with content that for the most part, at any particular point, the user considers garbage. Why? because there are hundreds of genres and most likely a user only really cares about a handful. This is particularly true in metal music. There are dozens and dozens of genres but users only like a few and furthermore, they cannot tolerate some of the other bands. So our approach is to allow users to choose the genres they like and filter out the rest; increasing the chances the user will get more relevant content.

The second concept is that of allowing users to contribute content that they deem relevant by submitting link to news stories, blogs and embedded videos. This content can then be voted it on by other users and after certain amount of votes it can reach the frontpage where other popular stories reside. Voting system was made popular by sites like Digg.com and soon after by Reddit and allow for a deeper level of interactivity from the user. In the case of music, it goes hand in hand with the devotion music fans often show for their favorite artists by talking about them, spreading the buzz.

Ok, enough for now. more info coming real soon.

music

Fix Links’ Target with this Tiny jQuery Plugin

sam3k — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:06:40 +0000

View Demo

Recently, I came across an little issue while developing one of my Drupal sites and that is: there really isn't a nice way to tell Drupal when a dynamic link should open in the same window if it is internal or a new window otherwise.

In our own posts we can do this manually, but there are many ways Drupal generates links which to correct would mean modifying the core system.

That's a big NO-NO! We do not touch the core system under any circumstances as this creates a lot of headaches in future updates. Almost to the same degree can be said about the free modules we are using which generate links. It just becomes hard to keep track of all these custom changes.

So to solve this problem, I wrote a little plugin that determines on its own if the link is internal or external and modifies accordingly so we don't have to worry.Using the script is as easy as loading the plugin and adding the following lines to your html page:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVASCRIPT:

$(document).ready(function() {
$.fn.fixLinkTargets();
});

That's all! I will add even more functionality in the future but for now it definitely helps a good deal.

Feel free to use in personal and commercial projects!

View Demo

Download

Download, javascript, jQuery, random

A Simple Way to Write an XML File

sam3k — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:39:05 +0000

The following sample, shows how to create a very simple XML file using the DOMDocument Class.

I haven't found a decent solution yet that can do both, nested elements, and element attributes. Ideally, it would be great it we can construct the XML data directly from the array and skip the gatherXMLdata() method altogether.

The file should be saved in the server as "test.xml"

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

class ScenesXMLbuilder {

private $xmlAsString;
private $dom;
private $scenes;
private $test;
private $filename;

public function __construct($_arr, $_filename) {
$this->scenes = $_arr;
$this->dom = new DOMDocument;
$this->filename = $_filename;

//functions
$this->gatherXMLdata();
}
private function gatherXMLdata() {
$this->xmlAsString = '';
$this->xmlAsString .= '';

for ($row = 0; $row ($this->scenes); $row++) {
$this->xmlAsString .= '';
$this->xmlAsString .=     ''.$this->scenes[$row]['name'].'';
$this->xmlAsString .=     ''.$this->scenes[$row]['age'].'';
$this->xmlAsString .=     ''.$this->scenes[$row]['salary'].'';
$this->xmlAsString .= '';
}

$this->xmlAsString .= '';

$this->convertToXML();
}

private function convertToXML() {
$this->dom->formatOutput = true;
$this->dom->loadXML($this->xmlAsString);
if (!$this->dom) {
echo 'Error while parsing the document';
exit;
}

$this->writeXMLfile($this->dom);
}

private function writeXMLfile($_dom) {
$_dom->save($this->filename);
}
}

//how to use:
$scenes = array(
array (
'name' => 'Sam',
'profession' => 'developer',
'age' => '27',
'salary' => '$60.000'
),
array (
'name' => 'Andres',
'profession' => 'designer',
'age' => '18',
'salary' => '$52.000'
)
);
$createXMLscenes = new ScenesXMLbuilder($scenes, 'test.xml');

PHP

Retrieving Flashvars in a Class

sam3k — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:19:18 +0000

The way Flashvars are passed to Flash has changed in AS3 and now makes use of the LoaderInfo Class. In AS2, it was pretty straight forward; the parameters were available by default at _level0. Here is how to load in AS3:

PLAIN TEXT

Actionscript:

package {

import flash.display.LoaderInfo;

public class LoadFlashVars {

private var myFlashVars:LoaderInfo(root.loaderInfo).parameters;

private var myParameter1 = myFlashVars.parameter1;
}
}

If you pass a parameter called parameter1, you can use "myParameter1" property above to store its value;

ActionScript 3 [AS3]

Adding Properties to a Sprite

sam3k — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:52:43 +0000

Sprites, unlike MovieClips, can't have custom properties do to being a sealed class. To get around this we can create a subclass that extends the Sprite class and have properties defined as public.

Here is a simple example: create a new class that extends the Sprite and create all the custom properties needed.

PLAIN TEXT

Actionscript:

package {

import flash.display.Sprite;

public class SpriteExtender extends Sprite {

public var someProperty:String;

}

Use the new class, as a replacement for the Sprite class, which inherits all the Sprite functionality plus the custom properties. Here is how to use:

PLAIN TEXT

Actionscript:

var mySprite:SpriteExtender = new SpriteExtender();

mySprite.someProperty = "Hello World";

ActionScript 3 [AS3], random

Free Concrete Textures

sam3k — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:37:28 +0000

View/Download

These are some textures I photographed and/or photoshoped for one of my video games. They are not super great but for 3D gaming it worked great! Try it out!

Free for personal and commercial use!

random