DaveJays Blog

Horizontally and Vertically Center and Resize an Image with jQuery

JUN 16th 2008 • 2 Comments

I recently had the opportunity to develop an image scaling technique that vertically and horizontally centers and scales an image depending on the browser window size. The result is an image that fills the whole of the page no matter what position or size the browser should happen to be in. Here is an example of the resizing result that we're shooting for.
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posted in: Design | Development |

How to Embed a Flash Video Player with Standards

MAY 15th 2008 • 0 Comments

Nobody would deny the fact that Flash has become the de facto standard for video on the web. However, I don't think there's ever been more confusion as to how to actually do that, as well as have a good set of video controls that actually work and maintain web standards in the process. This tutorial will outline the process that I've started using for serving video on the web with Flash.
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posted in: Development | Tutorials |

Putting Flash in its Place

MAY 8th 2008 • 1 Comments

One of the common questions that I receive from potential clients is whether or not I do Flash. The answer is always no. It's not because I hate Flash, but because I've never had or seen a use for it. So as a result, I never learned it. So I'd like to explain my philosophy when it comes to Flash on the web. I won't talk about horrible Flash practices such as animating every element on the page as it builds in and use that as an excuse to boycott the technology. Flash done well can be very useful.
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posted in: Design | Development | Internet |

A Great Alternative to CAPTCHAs

MAR 25th 2008 • 1 Comments

CAPTCHAs (which supposedly stands for Completely Automatic Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart - too many T's though) can be a royal pain to work with. the blind and visually impaired have a very hard time with them. I have good eyes and I have a hard time with them sometimes. Add to that, they're annoying. But honestly, they're overkill for a large majority of sites.

I was getting absolutely bombarded with spam comments until I put in an extremely simple check. I have the user type the letter H (any case) in a special field before submitting the comment, if they fail to do so, their comment is simply ignored. It works perfectly, and my spam count has dropped to zero.
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posted in: Development | Internet |