web design

Ajaxian just featured a rad comment hack, originally posted by Dirk Ginader, for those times when you need to comment and uncomment a section of code a bunch. By adding or removing just one character you can comment/uncomment an entire block of code. This saves a bunch of time, and works great for just about any language that uses C style commenting.

Here's how to do it with (X)HTML:

<!--
<p>lorem ipsum dolor</p>
<!-->

just add a >, to uncomment the whole section.

<!-->
<p>lorem ipsum dolor</p>
<!-->

This seems to work in any browser, and validates as both HTML 4 and XHTML strict.

firefox for mac has something seriously funky going on with the scroll action on my blog. not sure what's causing it, but i'll look into it when i get a minute. until then, i guess you'll have to use the scroll buttons on the side.

sorry 'bout that :-S

adobe (macromedia) flash is a very powerful tool which is, unfortunately, mostly used for evil.

flash is really good at embedding media, creating charts and graphs, making slideshows and games and all manner of great content.

it's a really, really, really, bad tool for your logo or website navigation or anything else that would be better done with html/css/javascript.

if you use flash to make a splash page for your site or build an entire website out of it, you should be kicked.

check out flash sucks: it's an interesting read.

I implore you: use it right, and only when absolutely, positively, unquestionably and undeniably necessary.

as an added bonus mike (the guy i quoted above) points out an html one-liner that brings internet explorer 6 to it's knees...

Note: The philosophical musing in this blog post is hidden behind a couple of really nerdy anecdotes. Feel free to skip to the punchline.

A couple of years ago I started writing a CMS. I wasn't happy with any that I had found, and I was convinced that I could do a better job. the first iteration was light and fast, database driven, and extremely customizable. But it still required too much hand coding.

I learned a ton from that attempt, so I decided to give it another go. Version 2.0 would be modular and extensible. I decided to build a module for every feature I wanted but hadn't found in a CMS. I was well on my way to the CMS dreams are made of when my external hard drive bit the big one, leaving me with no backup. Then my laptop was stolen, and my CMS was gone forever. 2.0 never made it to a production server.