Dec 16th 2008Essential Web Development Firefox Extentions
Web development without Firefox plugins is like building a fire with a flint when there’s a perfectly good military-grade flamethrower lying right beside you. These are the little guys that make my job and life that much easier.
Web Developer Toolbar
This plugin is the one I hands-down use the most. The ability to isolate an HTML element and see what CSS is controlling it is invaluable, especially when working with complex CMS systems or frameworks. Quickly disabling CSS is a great way to quickly see how any site is structured. Edit CSS has been a fantastic recently discovered feature, and has saved me tons of time. Before this I would have to work in my editor, save, possibly upload, then refresh the page to see my changes. With Web Developer Toolbar, I can see the changes made immediately on the fly. Amazing.
View image information to quickly retrieve essential image properties of both CSS background images and image tags. Display Ruler is an often used feature to help take care of some of the guesswork of how wide an element is. Resize is another quickie to make sure your design can properly be displayed in lower resolutions (yes there are still people rocking 800×600 resolutions, bless their hearts).
There are tons more features that the Web Developer Toolbar offers, but I find myself coming back to the features mentioned above time and time again. Learn the keyboard shortcuts and you’ll be rollin’ like Fred Durst and Rick Astley in a Pillsbury factory.
IE Tab
This little goblin saves me from opening up IE seperately. Simply click the button, and the page renders as Internet Explorer right from within Firefox. Very seldom do I have to brush the cobwebs off that big ole’ blue lowercase ‘e’ buried somewhere in my quicklaunch menu.
HTML Validator
Another quick little lifesaver. One day, me and my programmer buddy Mike decided that we were only going to write in XHTML strict (at the time we were coding in transitional, simply because that’s what things were defaulted to). Well, the HTML validator extension was perfect for that transition to step up to the big leagues. In your status bar, it gives you a huge red ‘X’ or a big green check’ depending on how your code checks out. When you click the icon, it gives you the page source with all the errors listed in order and how you can remedy them. This has saved me on thousands of occasions. Note: Make sure if you’re writing XHTML you use the SGML Parser in the options.
ColorZilla
This is a tool I feel I don’t utilize to its maximum potential. It’s great nonetheless. I mostly use it when I find myself going “What’s that background color again?” or “What color font is that?” It beats going through your CSS for those oh-so-cryptic hex values. I say I don’t use its full feature sets because apparently you can create palettes, save favorites and so on, but mostly I just use it to copy hex values into my CSS or Photoshop files.
Honorable Mention: Firebug
A lot of people (and when I say a lot of people, I mean most web developers I read about) use this tool as their meat and potatoes for web development. This is only an honorable mention for me simply because I only recently started using it heavily. I really like it so far, and a lot of the features overlap with the Web Developer Toolbar (which is why I still don’t use it as my primary tool). The coolest thing about it I’ve found is the way you can hover over your code, and it will visually show you what block you are hovering over right in the browser. Its similar to Web Developer Toolbar’s “ViewStyle Information” except it does it without a click. Also, you can edit HTML and CSS right from within Firebug, however, I haven’t done it so much because I prefer the plain text editor style of Web Developer’s Edit CSS tool. I’ll play with it more and see if my mind changes. Overall though, it seems like its packing a lot of heat and I’m excited to get my hands dirty with it. Let me know if you have any cool Firebug tips that help you out.
Alright, that about covers it. No, this isn’t a crazy “Wow I’ve never heard of any of these!” Firefox plugin list. These things are popular for a reason: they work. They are going to help me perform everyday tasks more efficiently and that’s what keeps tons of people using them. Let me know if you have any tips or other extentions that you can’t develop without.
Also, keep a heads-up because I’ll be writing a post on my favorite non-developer plugins.
filed under:web
Nov 10th 2008New York City Grunge
Here are a few gritty and grungy photos I took of the gorgeous New York City subway system. I love the subway system in all honesty, but I’m sure everyone can agree its not the cleanest place in the world. Especially after my lovely experience at 8:30AM where a crazy guy shit his pants three feet away from me, then continued screaming.
♫ The best part of waking up, is crazy guy shitting his pants on the subway™.
filed under:photography
Nov 5th 2008My President.
God bless America.
filed under:misc
Oct 31st 2008Andrew Sloan’s Video for Starfucker’s “Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second”
One of my good friends Andrew Sloan has produced an animated video for Portland, Oregon-based indie rock band Starfucker. The video was created in 3D modelling program Maya. It is absolutely beautiful and captivating. It fits the song’s vibe so well. Here is the video:
The video is currently featured on Pitchfork TV. I’m very happy for Andrew’s success and hope’s he keeps producing awesome shit for me to enjoy. Check out his website for Monstrous Media.
I have worked with Andrew on a previous animated short film called The Odd Ballroom. Keep it up!
filed under:Friends
Oct 23rd 2008Gaffe
I heard the word “gaffe” at most one other time before this election.
This is true statement. I can’t escape this word, no matter where I go to receive my news. People say it in casual conversation. Its amazing what power the media has to subliminally and NOT so subliminally introduce new words, phrases, ideas and ideals into our minds.
Think about it, how often did we toss this word around before this election season?
God bless America and Pump Demi Bold.
Oct 23rd 2008Hey! I Can See My House From Here!
As I’ve previously displayed before (here and here), I’ve got a pretty good view of the Empire State Building from right outside my apartment. Well my buddy Matt came up last weekend for his first dose of New York City and so we hit all the hot spots. That’s right, we went straight to the top of the Empire State Building.
And wouldn’t you know it? I can see my place from there! It didn’t really occur to me that because I have a direct line of sight of the building from the ground that I would also have a straight shot of my place from the top of the Empire State Building. So here’s my place:
Mine’s that gray building to the right of the two connected red brick buildings. I know its not much, but it excited me!
filed under:photography
Oct 21st 2008New Painting - Circles Are Coming
I’ve started a new painting. I’ve been reading Kandinsky: Complete Writings On Art which chronicles the work of my favorite painter of all time, Wassily Kandinsky.
Kandinsky practically invented non-objective art (art free from any real world representation). At first look, his work seems pretty arbitrary, but the more and more I study and read, the more calculated the spatial and chromatic relationships become. And its WELL documented. He was an extremely articulate artist and writer and documented his fascinating theories in immense detail.
Now I know what you’re thinking, this looks like a Pollack painting. Well, I’m not done yet dammit. This is merely the backdrop for a geometric design that to be honest is the most calculated I’ve ever been as a painter. My usual approach to art is to get out a canvas and paint and see what comes out. I’m actually THINKING before painting this one. Weird.
filed under:art
Oct 19th 2008Empire State Building Full Moon
A full moon appears by the Empire State Building.
filed under:photography
Oct 14th 2008Lightbulb Painting
Several months ago, I started a painting based on a doodle I created during a meeting. I have finally completed it, and is currently hanging on the wall of our apartment. The dimensions are 36″x48″ and was created by nailing together four smaller canvases. I really enjoyed working on a piece this big and look forward to creating another painting on a similar or larger scale soon.
filed under:art
Oct 10th 2008Slivery Poetry
Sliver Poetry is a collection of free verse poetry written by poet Seth Pesek. Seth needed a simple website where he could easily add sample poems from his book and update purchasing and contact information with ease.
Wordpress was the right tool for the job and all I needed to do was create a quick skin and manipulate the default template. This site is the definition bare bones. Simplicity was the key and because of that I got a couple CSS headaches along the way.
I’m currently working on a few personal sites right now that I will post updates on when they get to the proper stage in development.
filed under:web
