http://www.chickenbeak.com Design tutorials for the greater good. Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:04:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Generally speaking, the key to using JavaScript in a website is to do so in a way that keeps it unobtrusive. Not only should the page work at a basic level (if at all possible) without JavaScript, but your code should not conflict with another developers code if dropped into ... http://www.chickenbeak.com/uncategorized/code-your-javascript-to-play-nice-with-others/2009/04/ I’ve read articles applauding the pixel preview functionality of AI, especially when it comes to designing icons. While it does a good job for higher resolutions, I wouldn't use it for 32x32 and below. Compare these two icons: Both are 16x16 pixel circles drawn with vectors, and snapped to a 1x1 ... http://www.chickenbeak.com/photoshop/anti-aliasing-in-illustrator-vs-photoshop/2009/01/ A few notes on getting Symfony 1.2 to run on a Dreamhost server. Dreamhost is perfectly capable of running Symfony, but you need to make sure of a few things. You need PHP 5 to run Symfony. It is currently installed by default, but it's only the default for the ... http://www.chickenbeak.com/php/symfony-on-dreamhost/2008/12/ Similar to jQuery, MooTools and other Javascript libraries, Yahoo!'s YUI DOM utility offers upgraded element searches. finding an element by class name is nice, but what if you want to find an element by tag name? YUI does not have a function named getElementsByTagName, but the getElementsBy will do just ... http://www.chickenbeak.com/javascript/yui-getelementsby-tagname/2008/06/ This is just a link to a great little list of cheat sheets that will probably come in handy. It has a hand full of sheets for Design (CSS / HTML), Programming (PHP, ASP, ROR, JavaScript...), Database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server...), and others (Vi, htaccess, Regular Expressions). If you've ever found ... http://www.chickenbeak.com/xhtml/developer-cheat-sheets/2008/06/ These tips will work for most SQL based server, including but not limited to PostgreSQL and MySQL. 1. Don't use the DELETE statement Instead, use an UPDATE statement to mark a row to be deleted at a later time. Build your database so that the tables have a 'deleted' column. Then, run ... http://www.chickenbeak.com/php/tips-to-optimize-your-sql-and-php/2008/01/ I've been using PHP for a while now, but I've never dug too deep into it's programming strengths. I've recently been thrown into using abstract classes in PHP. This article is just a first impression of what they are, and how I see them being useful in a project. First, what ... http://www.chickenbeak.com/php/php-abstract-class-my-first-impressions/2008/01/ PHP and ASP are both very powerful server side scripting languages (SSL) that can add a lot of versatility and functionality to a website. You don't have to understand much programming, however, to make use of one of their most handy components, include statements. Which language you use depends on ... http://www.chickenbeak.com/php/php-and-asp-includes/2006/11/ Most people generally agree that websites should be made usable to the widest audience possible. Web designers are constantly trying to accommodate users with various browsers, but we must also consider a host of other possibilities. It is likely an impossible task to make a decent website that is usable by ... http://www.chickenbeak.com/xhtml/accessibility-basics/2006/10/ Using a cookie with JavaScript is easy. With the cookie, you can save small bits of information that will allow you to create a customized experience for the user. Remember though, you should never save personal information in a cookie, like a social security number, a password, or a credit ... http://www.chickenbeak.com/javascript/javascript-cookies/2006/09/