Not an everyday task...

Over the years I have acquired a heaping pile of black and white eps files. I love them... they are simple little pieces of art and easy to repurpose for all kinds of designs. However finding a file that would fit a design was never so easy. Each file was stored away into multiple subfolders having a numeric naming convention which repeated by folder. There were close to 500 or so folders with about 12-50 files per folder. Since all file names were numeric the only one way to find what you were looking for was browsing with adobe bridge. Clicking inside and outsider folder just became a pain.

Save the News! Save the News!

I agree with Murdoch here, news outlets need to survive and to do so it means selling the news. Now I rarely read NY Times, Washington Post etc… But I read them every so often when linked from alternative news sources. For online news, I’d be willing to part with $5 dollars a month. Each time I read an article divvy a quarter to the news source from my news quarter jar. Good reporters are commissioned and news outlets could make a decent profit if they grab a million or so hits.

Ruby on Rails Complex Forms Demo App

This is news to me… and right in time. Jeff Dean posted a sample app on git hub which explores various examples of complex html forms that involve multiple models with complex associations. Espically helpful if your hoping to work with checkboxes or radio buttons.

http://github.com/zilkey/complex_forms_demo_app/tree/master

IE7 Option Tag width

Ever notice in ie7 the option tag width will not match the size of the select element? There really is no good way around this other than fooling the element to spread eagle and back. The script below will do all that for you… Unobtrusively condensed in a singleton pattern.

Ruby on Rails Ajax free of Helpers

My experience with rails has been new and delightful, save working with the front end. Rails comes packed with helper methods some that write quick and cool Ajax methods. They follow rails conventions and do not require a strong grasp of JavaScript to get in motion.

However, if you are a stickler for standards and have a passion for valid clean markup… these helpers can leave a bit to be desired. I have been in the habit of binding js events directly to elements over the element itself. It pleases me to see markup free of inline styling, event handlers and inline js scripts. The simpler and more descriptive the markup the better.