Adnan Rashid

Web Technologist…

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I came across an interesting article at CSSKarma about form designing. The author explains that form labels need not always be outside the input controls. Using jQuery and pinch of CSS, the article focuses on a creative implementation of designing forms, while retaining the intended User Experience. Check out the article…

January 14 marks the birth of jQuery. To celebrate the release of jQuery 1.4 (also on January 14), the jQuery team is bringing fourteen consecutive days of new releases. Each day, they will publish videos, tutorials, code releases and other fun stuff. They have already announced the re-design of the jQuery API site. For more information, about how the new site will help developers embrace one of the most popular Javascript frameworks, click here.

The event also focuses on sharing videos and tutorials detailing the awesome features of jQuery 1.4. To ensure you dont miss out on any of the goodies, subscribe to the email/rss feed or visit the site.

I have been using jQuery in most of my projects and am quite excited about the new release. Aren’t you?

The PocketMod is a small book with guides on each page. These guides or templates, combined with a unique folding style, enable a normal piece of paper to become the ultimate note card. The application provides templates in various categories like Writing Guides, Calendars, Games, etc. Some of these templates provide options for customization. It’s innovative compact size and cost-effective nature makes this free service stand out.

Check it out!

Courtesy of Microsoft Press, SkyDrive is hosting a complimentary eBook titled First Look Microsoft Office 2010 by Katherine Murray. Office 2010 provides a plethora of new features like video editing, saving documents to the cloud directly, photo effects, etc. The Microsoft Office website has a video series showcasing the new features in Office 2010. You can check it out here.

The book contains the following chapters :

• Chapter 1: Welcome to Office 2010
• Chapter 2: Express Yourself Effectively and Efficiently
• Chapter 3: Collaborate in the Office and Around the World
• Chapter 4: Create and Share Compelling Documents with Word 2010
• Chapter 5: Create Smart Data Insights with Excel 2010
• Chapter 6: Manage Rich Communications with Outlook 2010
• Chapter 7: Produce Dynamic Presentations with PowerPoint 2010
• Chapter 8: Organize, Store, and Share Ideas with OneNote 2010
• Chapter 9: Collaborate Effectively with SharePoint Workspace 2010
• Chapter 10: Create Effective Marketing Materials with Publisher 2010
• Chapter 11: Make Sense of Your Data with Access 2010
• Chapter 12: Putting It All Together
• Chapter 13: Security in Office 2010
• Chapter 14: Training Made Easy

Download the eBook at http://cid-d7229b252a0ad6f2.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/First%20Look%20Microsoft%20Office%202010/693876ebook.pdf

This post explains self-executing functions and its benefits. So lets started by breaking down a normal function and converting it into one …

var myVar = "This is a normal function...";
function ShowAlert(textToAlert)
{
	alert(textToAlert);
}

ShowAlert(myVar);

We all know that functions are also objects in JavaScript. Thus they can be evaluated using the eval() function and also in the case of setInterval() function you can pass the name of the function as an object. Thus like other objects, we can also use grouping operators like ( and ).

var myVar = "This is still a normal function...";

function ShowAlert(textToAlert)
{
	alert(textToAlert);
}

(ShowAlert)(myVar);

We are halfway there. Lets replace the name of the function with the function definition and make it a single statement.

var myVar = "This is a self-executing function...";

(function ShowAlert(textToAlert)
{
	alert(textToAlert);
})(myVar);

Ok. So far so good. Since we are going to run this function as soon as we create it, it doesn’t need a name. Next step is to make this function an anonymous function.

var myVar = "This is an anonymous self-executing function...";

(function (textToAlert)
{
	alert(textToAlert);
})(myVar);

And voila… We have created a self-executing anonymous function.

Although in this example, the advantage might not be obvious, but in real-world, this technique is quite helpful as it encapsulates the functionality and also prevents the cluttering of the global namespace. If you take a peek at the jQuery source code, you will notice that the whole library is wrapped in a single, self-executing function that is assigned to the jQuery global object. It’s precisely the reason that jQuery doesn’t pollute the global namespace nearly as much as other libraries.

Google Chrome has many great features including an Incognito mode. You can open an incognito window by pressing ctrl+shift+N in your normal browser. You can see the Spy guy on the top left corner.

You can also open the Incognito mode directly, by modifying the Target property. Right click on the Chrome executable/Shortcut and append -incognito with space after the double quotes.

“C:\Documents and Settings\Adnan\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” -incognito

Woork author Antonia Lupetti has recently released a visual cheat sheet for jQuery 1.3. The cheat sheet having six pages is a helpful reference containing the complete API reference with descriptions and sample code.

What  I like most about this cheat sheet, is it’s simple and elegant design. Kudos to Antonia!

October 2 marks the 140^th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Considered as the father of the Indian Nation, he will always be remembered for his great simplicity. Google is celebrating this event with a new doodle on their homepage.

As a developer, I often design the user interfaces for my applications. These are small scale projects and often have limited team members. During this design process, I always feel the need for good graphic resources. I have been using the FamFamFam Silk Icons for a couple of projects and tremendously appreciate it. The icon set is freely available with nearly 700 png icons in the CC3 license and can be downloaded at http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/

Recently I came across another Icon library called Fugue. The library has more than 2000+ png icons and is also available in the CC3 license. What i love about this library is that there is an icon for any requirement you might come your conventional project. You can download it at http://www.pinvoke.com/

Try them out…

I recently came across a very nice jQuery control library called jQuery Tools. The library features the following JavaScript tools :

1. Tabs
2. Tooltips
3. Expose
4. Overlay
5. Scrollable
6. FlashEmbed

So now you are thinking “Whats so great about this? We already have tons of jQuery plugins for this…”. I thought so too.

The striking advantage of this library is that these tools can be combined, extended and styled, giving you potentially unlimited options for creating customized widgets for your web pages. The website also features great and detailed examples to help you get started, and features some of the best practices recommended by Yahoo engineers. [ref : Best Practices for speeding up your website]