CSS

March 8, 2010 | Filed Under a Web Developer's Diary, techy | Leave a Comment 

I didn’t learn CSS in school but it’s one of my favorite tasks to work with. A lot of my co-workers don’t like working with the UI so I normally get that very exciting task . (It can get frustrating at times [read: IE7] but still.. )

Anyhoo.. today, I am working on a new project that I’m really excited about. There’s this template system that really frustrated me almost 3 years ago. And today, we’re using it again. Yip yip.. I am actually excited to re-learn those stuff..

So, here’s a rundown of the stuff I learned for our “Web Developer’s Diary” series:
1. Be excited about learning new stuff. Let’s face it.. we went into a career that is going to change and update itself every single second. And that isn’t a bad thing. If you’re a web developer.. expect to learn new stuff along the way. If you’re a recent graduate.. please know that not everything you’ve learned in school will make it to your “day to day work” lives..

and

2. “Minimum is the new Max”. haha! I just came up with that line. What I’m trying to say is.. if you’ll be working on the UI.. do not clutter your html page with lots and lots and lots elements when you can achieve the same effect with few elements. Remember that template system I was talking about? Its’ css file is as big as 94,000 .. I removed unnecessary stuff and shrinked it to 80,000 .. not much right? hehe.. but if I get a $ for each byte I saved I can so buy that car I’ve been wanting.. hahaha! The point is ladies and gentlemen.. “keep it short”. There’s a handful of articles talking about shorthand css.. and believe it or not.. those are really, really useful!

I’ll go ahead and give you few examples:
1. 0px can also be just 0
2. #FFFFFF can also be just #FFF
3. spaces between the : and { can also be removed

hehe.. those are the only stuff I can think of at the moment.. but it saved me 14,000 bytes.. it might save you a lot too..

’til our next chika!

fb:multi-friend-selector and fb:comments bug

March 4, 2010 | Filed Under a Web Developer's Diary, techy | Leave a Comment 

If you have fb:comments and fb:multi-friend-selector both on one page.. you’ll notice that  the fb:multi-friend-selector doesn’t work right. You’ll see the this.form is null error from firebug. No one ever gets selected even when they look like they’re selected.

To make this work.. add the fb:multi-friend-selector to a fb:js-string variable. Next, on your javascript.. add that variable to your multi-friend-selector’s container.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you add fb:multi-friend-selector using js.. Pretty easy right?

Note: Today is 04 March 2010. Since facebook changes a lot.. this might not be true in the future. But I wrote this for those who are scratching their heads trying to figure out why “this.form is null”.. hehehe! I feel you.

Web Dev’s Diary #1

January 29, 2010 | Filed Under a Web Developer's Diary, techy | Leave a Comment 

Dear Diary,

Today, I encountered this thing that my co-worker named as “WSD (or White Screen of Death)”. I normally get it because I’m on a strict environment. The very first time I got it, I was really, really, really REALLY scared. I thought I broke something. I know I did break something. It turned out, there was just an error that needs fixing that’s why it’s giving me a whole screen of pure white-ness :p. I know I sound like errors don’t scare me that much anymore. Well, time (and days filled with WSD) has taught me something.

Don’t panic. Panicking really won’t help. Believe me. Next, search for the small things you might have missed. 95% of my WSD encounters were caused by {[(;)]} –characters I learned to love and hate. If not, there’s always google.

-vaL