http://jonraasch.com/blog Web development and design blog from Portland based developer Jon Raasch Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:27:53 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 http://jonraasch.com/blog/css-data-uris-in-all-browsers http://jonraasch.com/blog/css-data-uris-in-all-browsers#comments Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:30:23 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=1233 Data URIs are one of the best techniques in CSS, allowing developers to avoid referencing external images and instead embed them directly into a stylesheet. The main advantage of this approach is to save HTTP requests. HTTP requests are a huge performance bottleneck, and the reason techniques such as CSS image sprites have been popular for some time. Basically, if you can avoid requesting an extra file, not only does it save your server the work of looking up the file, but it also saves your user the download time. In fact, HTTP request management is so important, that it is the top issue in the Yahoo Performance Rules. Data URIs are an excellent way to reduce HTTP requests and speed up your pages, so let's walk through how to use them in all major browsers.]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/css-data-uris-in-all-browsers/feed 14 http://jonraasch.com/blog/graceful-degradation-with-css3 http://jonraasch.com/blog/graceful-degradation-with-css3#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:57:51 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=1192 cross-browser development means making websites that look exactly the same in all browsers. But if developers continue to cater websites to inadequate browsers such as IE6, then they're just holding back modern browsers from performing to their potential. Graceful degradation is not about allowing websites to look bad in older browsers, but about making them look great in modern ones. It means taking advantage of CSS3's useful features to progressively enhance web pages for the vast majority of users.]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/graceful-degradation-with-css3/feed 10 http://jonraasch.com/blog/css-summit http://jonraasch.com/blog/css-summit#comments Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:33:06 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=1124 CSS Summit featured some the best CSS minds presenting on cutting edge CSS issues. There was a ton of great information presented across the 8 sessions, but here's a wrap up of the single best piece of information from each presenter:

Denise Jacobs – Advanced CSS Troubleshooting

The highlight of Denise's talk was some specific coding tips about clearing floated content. She started with the standard overflow: hidden method, which falls short with support for borders & margins and also doesn't allow scrollbars if they're needed. Denise suggested instead using overflow: auto; width: 100%; which avoids these issues. You don't have to use the exact values above, you just have to set some type of overflow and width / height value. Denise went on to discuss a .clearfix:after method, see the gist. Denise likes this clearing method since it doesn't include any extra, non-semantic markup (as opposed to <br class="clearfix" />). However the fact that the :after selector doesn't work in IE6/7 makes this method unusable in my opinion. Ultimately I'm going to stick to the overflow: auto; method described above.]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/css-summit/feed 0 http://jonraasch.com/blog/5-asset-management-tricks-for-faster-websites http://jonraasch.com/blog/5-asset-management-tricks-for-faster-websites#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 17:04:53 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=1027 user bandwidth is increasing, the filesize of assets has been growing in turn. These factors, combined with the rise of the mobile web, have made bandwidth the primary bottleneck in website performance. Here are 5 simple steps to reduce download times with better asset management on your sites. Read more...]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/5-asset-management-tricks-for-faster-websites/feed 6 http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-javascript-performance-boosting-tips-from-nicholas-zakas http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-javascript-performance-boosting-tips-from-nicholas-zakas#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:55:06 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=709

Nicholas Zakas is a Javascript guru and principle front-end engineer for the Yahoo! homepage. Zakas just announced his new book High Performance JavaScript, which you should order today. Zakas is pretty much the man when it comes to Javascript performance, and in June he gave a Google Tech Talk entitled Speed Up Your Javascript. While [...]]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-javascript-performance-boosting-tips-from-nicholas-zakas/feed 17 http://jonraasch.com/blog/javascript-style-node http://jonraasch.com/blog/javascript-style-node#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:00:47 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=456

In Javascript it often makes sense to attach a stylesheet rather than style a bunch of individual attributes. Appending a stylesheet to the DOM has a number of advantages: Stylesheets can be easier to work with than Javascript—it’s just more natural to use CSS syntax for styling. It’s nice to avoid the cross-browser headaches associated [...]]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/javascript-style-node/feed 7 http://jonraasch.com/blog/javascript-translation-widget http://jonraasch.com/blog/javascript-translation-widget#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:16:38 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=411 TranslateThis is a new Javascript widget that provides 52 languages of translation by leveraging the Google Language API. Installing TranslateThis couldn't be easier—simply copy and paste the widget code anywhere on your website, you don't have to upload any files or change any settings. Besides being easy to use, TranslateThis also provides many attractive features for developers. First off, requests to the Language API run in Javascript, so the translation is pretty fast. Additionally, the script is lightweight, weighing in at just over 11kb with another 7kb of imagery. And since it doesn't depend on any Javascript library, TranslateThis can be implemented on any website without additional overhead. Finally, TranslateThis has been tested in all modern browsers and its user interface is designed to be straightforward and seamless. Get your own TranslateThis Widget Read the TranslateThis Documentation

What can you customize in TranslateThis?

]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/javascript-translation-widget/feed 2 http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-advanced-jquery-performance-tuning-tips-from-paul-irish http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-advanced-jquery-performance-tuning-tips-from-paul-irish#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:55:12 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=382

There were a lot of good speakers at today’s jQuery Summit, but Paul Irish‘s talk on jQuery Anti-Patterns for Performance & Compression was my stand-out favorite. Covering a number of advanced jQuery performance optimization techniques, this speech put my knowledge of jQuery optimization to shame. Before Paul’s talk my understanding of jQuery performance tuning was [...]]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-advanced-jquery-performance-tuning-tips-from-paul-irish/feed 17 http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-things-every-web-developer-should-know-2 http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-things-every-web-developer-should-know-2#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:40:54 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=299 (more…)]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-things-every-web-developer-should-know-2/feed 14 http://jonraasch.com/blog/quickflip-2-jquery-plugin http://jonraasch.com/blog/quickflip-2-jquery-plugin#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:15:45 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=114 Download QuickFlip 2 for jQuery Read the QuickFlip documentation QuickFlip works by using an animation shortcut that is barely noticeable when flipped quickly (hence the name). This shortcut improves performance while allowing the flip effect to work smoothly with any piece of markup regardless of images, backgrounds or CSS. It provides an attractive alternative to other slower and more resource heavy Flash and jQuery flip animations. However if you want a smoother option with a depth effect try jQuery Flip!, although this only works with background colors (not images) and hides the panel content before flipping.]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/quickflip-2-jquery-plugin/feed 112