Exposed To Want » Tools

More Random Things…

cliff538 — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:44:32 +0000

HTML 5 Demos and Examples great place to play with new features from HTML5 put together by Remy Sharp. Well worth spending some time playing with the new features and planning how to implement into your projects.

When Can I Use compatibility tables for features in HTML5, CSS3, SVG and other upcoming web technologies. Another great spot to see when new features are implemented.

Have you ever needed to show somebody 800 miles away how to do something on their computer? Screen sharing is a great way to do that. I have been using the screen sharing feature in Skype but I have found the new darling in the screen sharing world… hands down the best way (for free). Much better speed and resolution than Skype. Check it out here at Adobe Acrobat.

I’ve been using WordPress with the Thesis Theme for a few months now and to do advanced custom stuff it really helps to have a foundation in PHP, I have found a great course over at lynda.com that really goes over PHP well and then jumps into MySQL so you can make a full featured web application. I think it’s worth signing up for if you want to learn PHP/MySQL from a good instructor. The course if called PHP with MySQL Essential Training by Kevin Skoglund.

After you spend some time coding you’ll start to acquire pieces or chunks of code that you frequently use or want to save for later. I have been using Snipplr and it seems to fit well. You can save and organize all your code snippets. Well worth the look if you don’t have a system yet for saving your snippets. If you have found something better or really like what your using, let me know what it is

Thats it for now, Never Stop Learning!

Just Some Random Things

cliff538 — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:21:56 +0000

For a very good video on using firebug to extract information from your css watch kristarella explain it here.

Another great web site for videos on science, math, and computer science is Peteris Krumin’s “Free Science and Video Lectures Online!”

I have found new FTP software that I am just crazy about! Hands down my new favorite, tons of options and a very clean easy to use layout, and I swear it’s faster. Transmit 3 by Panic.

I have never used a dedicated RSS reader before and to be honest I have been missing out. It’s kind of like twitter in a way, you get this great stream of customized information that you can digest/move through very quickly. After a small learning curve I have moved all of my feeds to NetNewsWire and it absolutely rocks! Everything is now organized and keeps in sync with Google Reader. You can very quickly move down your feeds scanning/pausing for the ones you want to read and just by-passing the rest with just using your space-bar. When all of my feeds were in Safari I had to click on each individual one, wait for the page to load and then scroll through. With NNW all your feeds are in one list, broken down into folders if you want, and this allows you to scan down and read everything very quickly, pausing on the stuff you want to read word for word. There are tons of options for sorting, viewing, filing, and syncing. It even has it’s own built in browser that will open up in a new tab for when you want to have a look at the web site without leaving NNW. If you have never used a RSS reader before take the time to check this one out, it’s free and it will change the way you look at feeds.

The new and improved “Exposed To Want” blog is still powered by WordPress but I am now using the Thesis theme. I will write up a blog post later after I have had time to play with it more, but for now Chris Pearson has really hit on something. It is a very well done and easy to use theme up to a point. Advanced stuff is a different story and you have to really dive into the forums and search the web for people who have written tutorials on how to do things that you think should be easy. I have played with 20+ themes and thesis is the best so far. With that said, I’m still very frustrated with WordPress as a whole due to my lack of PHP skills and not having a really good solid understanding of how WordPress is all hooked together. It takes hours of study to figure out how to do basic things that I could do on a “normal” web site in 10 minutes. Don’t take that as a slam or complaint because it’s not! WordPress is an incredible and powerful backend to your blog or web site and that power brings with it complexity… you just have to take the time to learn some PHP, and how WP is structured. You can do an awful lot by just cutting and pasting other peoples code into your site, the whole WP and Thesis community is great, I have found nothing but great people who usually are more than willing to help out and share what they have learned. I can also say nothing but great things about Thesis support, there forums are teeming with help!
Alright enough said about that for now, look forward to a full write up about Thesis.

If your using WordPress and you want to know more about it, I highly recommend the new book “Digging Into WordPress” by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr. You can buy a .pdf version that will be updated or get a very nicely bound spiral lay flat hardcover. I bought both because I want these really smart guys to keep imparting there wisdom and knowledge on us!

Wrapping this thing up. The (I think) very cool header above spelling out ExposedToWant.com in pictures of letters from flickr is a fine project from Erik F. Kastner called Spell with Flickr. You can refresh this page and get different pictures. It’s very cool, go check it out. Yes, I’ll say it yet again: Never Stop Learning!

MAMP on Vimeo

cliff538 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:51:36 +0000

If you have started messing around with MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP)(It’s a Web-Server right on your computer) or WAMP (Windows) You’ll want to know about the new Video channel over at Vimeo. Watching the videos to learn more is on my short list.

MAMP on Vimeo.