jScrollPane - cross browser styleable scrollbars with jQuery and CSS How to Display Wordpress Sidebar on Other (Non WP) Sites While working on my latest project, DevGrow Discussions, I came across the need to embed my entire WordPress sidebar on a non-WordPress site – specifically a bbPress forum. Since I make use of various widgets to display popular posts and other dynamic content, simply copying and pasting the HTML would not suffice. In the end, there are really only two ways of going about this: Include your wp-load.php file in your application and in effect load the entirety of WordPress to get access to the plugin functionsUse simple caching to store the sidebar in HTML format and include it in any other application, then rebuild it as necessary when new content is published If it’s not obvious enough, the first option is very costly in terms of database queries and can significantly slow your site down. Caching Your WordPress Sidebar Before we can write our function, we need to understand exactly what we’re trying to do. Creating the Functions Configuring Your Sidebar Using Your Cache Conclusion
Adobe Flash Tutorials – Best of - Smashing Magazine Although usability evangelists often consider Flash to be a usability nightmare, used properly, Flash can provide users with a rich and interactive interface which would be impossible otherwise. Today Flash is the de-facto standard for interactive elements on the Web as most users install Flash plug-in by default. And in fact, there are many paths creative designers can take to create a more interactive and user-friendly interface. Searching for ‘flash tutorials’ via Google & Co. won’t provide you with the results you expect. Not that you won’t find any relevant results, on the contrary — you will be directed to a large number of Flash repositories which offer everything: sometimes useful, but mostly not. This article provides hand-picked professional Flash tutorials which can enrich your design skills and improve the quality of your works. Animation and Effects Link Misty River10Read this tutorial and see how to create misty river animation. Images and Videos Link Basic elements Link
Making a Custom YouTube Video Player With YouTube’s APIs Martin Angelov Video presentations are a great addition to any product page. With a presentation you can showcase your product’s features without making the visitor read through long paragraphs of text. But apart from producing the video, you still need to manually convert it and find (or code) some sort of flash player that will display it on your site. The other possible path is that you upload it to a video sharing site such as youtube, but you are going to have a rough time trying to incorporate the player into your design. Luckily for us, YouTube does provide a solution to this problem – their chromeless player (a stripped down version of the regular embeddable player), which allow you to build and style your own custom controls. The Idea Today we are going to make a jQuery plugin which uses YouTube’s chromeless player, and creates our own set of minimalistic controls, which allows for perfect integration with your designs. Using the plugin to embed videos is extremely easy: script.js
20+ New Apps and Websites for Designers Sep. 2010 New apps and websites seem to appear on an almost-daily basis. Trying to find the best ones each week or month can be tough, especially considering how many come out that aren’t that great. In this post we’ve compiled some of the best apps and websites that have come out recently. Some are apps closely tied to a web designer’s daily work, while others aren’t likely to be used as often, but are still useful. As always, if we’ve missed something, please let us know in the comments. And if you know of an app you’d like included in the next roundup, please tweet it to @cameron_chapman. Muro DeviantART has long been an excellent place for artists and designers to showcase their work. Google Font Preview If you use Google’s Font API, it can be helpful to try out fonts before embedding them in your website. Periodic Table of the Elements This chart, created by Josh Duck, showcases the 104 elements currently in the HTML5 working draft and two proposed elements (marked with an asterisk). Invoice Bubble
XML Sitemap Generator, Editor + Keyword Analyzer - XML Sitemaps Online Introduces SML™ (Social Markup Language) Menu Oracle Social Spotlight Subscribe to email updates Social Cloud In the Mix: Social Chatter for Live Events If you frequent business events, you've probably noticed an increase of digitally displayed social media chatter. Read more Share Oracle Social Life Oracle Social Cloud Gives Thanks Thanksgiving is a day for family, football and food comas. Read more Best Practices 3 Must-Haves for a Successful Digital Transformation Last week, I flew to Chicago for CMS Wire's DX Summit, but my digital experience immersion training began before the event even kicked off. Read more Collaboration: An 'Outside' Job From guest author and Product Strategy Manager Sandy Yu: developing a rapport across virtual teams requires thinking outside the cube. Read more Product News It's Time to Connect Meaningfully with Your Social Audience We are thrilled to announce that as of November 9th, every Oracle Social Cloud customer with access to Engage will be able to leverage a brand new engagement... Read more Read more Contact
PHP Advent 2010 / Everyone Loves PHP A year ago today, I started at Facebook. I’ve been using PHP for the last twelve years, and before I got there, I thought I had seen most PHP-related problems. I had deployed software on all manners of systems, but since I’ve worked at Facebook, my appreciation for how important PHP is has changed. Earlier this year, another implementation of the PHP runtime emerged. This is nothing really new, as over the last few years, there had been several others — Quercus, Project Zero, Roadsend, and phc, to name a few. The main difference between them and HipHop for PHP is in the numbers. One of the reasons for writing HipHop was to improve performance. This isn’t an article about HipHop and how awesome it is, though. One of the main reasons I think PHP has become so popular is the critical mass that it acquired while it was growing up, but what was the original cause of that? Another reason PHP has become so popular is the documentation, which is second to none. Contribute! A final thought