BarelyBlogging

Now with yummy cookies!

I added an example page showing how you can use the new onLoad and onClick function hooks in my JavaScript tabifier to make the tabs persistent (using browser cookies).

That is, if you leave the page and come back later, the tab you previously selected will still be selected.

The second episode of “You’re Killing Me Here!” (usability and design screencast series) discusses various uses of the page title (HTML TITLE element): in particular how you can use it to communicate with users of your web application.

View the Screencast (2.5 minutes)

Some of my co-workers got stuck using a poorly-designed web application that has huge drop-down select lists. Unfortunately the people who designed this web app didn’t forsee the need to actually present the list items in any particular order, so its nearly impossible to find anything.

I made the following bookmarklet to sort all the select lists on the page. It’s probably not much use to anyone else, but at least I got to learn how to make a bookmarklet. Unfortunately it has to work in IE, which has a strict limit on the size of bookmarklets, so I had to keep it very simple.

SortSelect bookmarklet

Bookmark this link then click it on a page that has one or more select elements. The select lists will be sorted alphabetically. Tested in Firefox and IE6.

Test:
z z y x A C b

I just released a new version of my JavaScript tab interface software.

New Features

• You can set a custom onLoad function to be called after the tab interface has finished initializing.
• You can set a custom onClick function to be called when the user clicks a tab. In addition to performing any other actions, this function can stop the tab from changing.

Here’s a new screencast:

Screencast: JavaScript Memory Leaks in the Windows IE Browser

This screencast by Patrick Fitzgerald of BarelyFitz Designs discusses how he diagnosed and fixed a memory leak in a JavaScript library. It’s a very simplified example, and the same techniques probably can’t be used for more complex web applications, but it might shed some light on how these memory leaks occur.

Here’s an interactive tutorial I’m working on:

Learn CSS Positioning in ten steps

I’m using it to give some CSS and HTML training today. It uses a customized version of my JavaScript tabs interface and triggers a styleswitcher each time you switch tabs, so you can see the CSS change right on the page.

It’s a work in progress, so let me know if you have any suggestions.

I just released a new version of my JavaScript tab interface software. It has some new features that make it crazy-easy to use, plus I eliminated a memory leak in the IE browser (damn you Microsoft!).

New Features

• You can set the tabberOptions global variable before you include tabber.js to change any of the tabber settings.
• You no longer have to specify a title for each tab - it automatically finds heading elements in the body of the tab. Of course you can still specify a title if you don’t have headings or to override the title of the tab. And if you don’t do either it automatically numbers the tabs. See also tabberOptions.titleElements and tabberOptions.titleElementsStripHTML.
• Removes the title attribute from the tab so it does not appear as a tooltip when you mouseover the body of the tab. See also tabberOptions.removeTitle.
• You can prevent tabber from running automatically in the onload event. See tabberOptions.manualStartup.
• Fixed a small memory leak that appeared in the IE web browser.

Introducing “You’re Killing Me Here!” a series of screencasts discussing web site and web application design, accessibility, and usability from the perspective of a power-user.

The first episode discusses “type ahead find” in the Firefox browser and the design implications that come along with it.

View the Screencast