by Alex Holt | May 10, 2013 | Projects |
Microdata is a proposed feature of HTML 5 that allows semantically relevant information to be embedded within the markup of a web page. This allows one to create a secondary structure and meaning for the content of a page. Why PHP Microdata? One of the most interesting features of the Microdata spec for me, is the idea of API access to data in a web page. Basically, using simple Microdata constructs, one can embed the structure required for API access to the data on the page. The library allows one to parse out the structured Microdata from a page and return it as XML or JSON, essentially meaning that if one builds a site using microdata, one can instantly produce an API that gives people access to the data in that site, without maintaining a separate code base for th e API. At present PHP-Microdata is in its infancy, it’s really the result of an night of coding to experiment, so feel free to take a working copy and modify it. Links: Git Hub Zip...
by Alex Holt | May 10, 2013 | Projects |
A simple node.js proxy server Basic Node.js proxy server that will pass all HTTP traffic through. In the overrides/ directory you can place simple files that you want to override, the proxy will then return these to the browser without requesting from the server. Allowing you to inject different content into your browser locally. This has all manner of interesting applications, but i’ll leave it to you to work out what you could use...
by Alex Holt | May 10, 2013 | Projects |
Monitter.com is a twitter monitor, it lets you “monitter” twitter for a set of keywords in real-time, filtered by location. The original monitter website has changed and iterated a little in the past 3 years. It’s a little more advanced than it was to begin with. The monitter widget, offered for free is currently in use on over 1500 websites around the world and has been used for wall displays at numerous tech conferences over the years. Site Statistics: Live Since: August 2008 Daily Unique Visits: >2200 Mentions / Month: >750 Twitter Followers: >5000 Monitter in the Media: BBC Mashable CNET...
by Alex Holt | May 10, 2013 | Mobile, UI/UX |
Things I absolutely adore about the Sparrow interface: Facebook integration and gravatar make email more beautiful. I like pretty interfaces, they make me happy. Attachment interface is genius. What would make me super happy would be some way to attach files out of Dropbox or Crashplan (or even iCloud, i guess) – that would mean I could more or less operate completely on my phone. The recent recipients feature in composing mails is pure genius. The double stacked hidden sidebar is impressive, they’ve stacked a lot of info into a small space. Ditto the Inbox-Unread-Starred-Priority switching interface. The “more actions” bar at the bottom of the message screen is great. I like how it draws from the path fan, but makes it more direct, closer to my thumbs and cleaner. Not everything is peachy though, despite being the best iOS mail experience I’ve had to date (I’ve tried Mail, Gmail.app, Gmail web, Sent) Sparrow still has room to improve – and I’m not just talking about push notifications (Read about why it’s not their fault here: http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/push.php) Things I’d like to see Rich text support in signatures Despite Apple’s Mail.app (and other mobile Mail clients) opting to default your signature to a message telling people that you’re on your phone.. I very much prefer to NOT tell people. I want all my mail to look like it came from one device (let’s call it device agnostic mailing). Thus, I would like to be able to either a) copy my rich text signature or b) sync my signatures from Sparrow for Mac to my phone. Custom Signatures for aliases This could be me but I host mail for about 8 domains off my...
by Alex Holt | Mar 17, 2013 | Dev, Web |
There is a definite lack in technology preventing responsive design from being the amazing revolution that it should be. The big issue is that as yet, there isn’t a good way to tap into the wider context of a use case – we just get to look at screen size.. The premise here is, if you’re viewing a site on your mobile phone, the use context is completely different to if you are viewing it from google, thus the content that you need front and centre may very well be different also. Imagine a fictional design studio – you’re heading to a meeting with the creative director and you’re running late. You realise that you’ve left the studio’s address on your desk at the office, you know which metro station you’re heading to but you can’t for the life of you remember what street their office is on. SO: you fire up Safari on your iPhone (or whatever browser / smartphone you use – you have a smartphone, right?) and you google the company. Upon hitting their website (we’re going to assume it’s *not* an old school flash site that probably wont work at all – rather, we’re going to assume that since you’re going to meet these guys, they’re on top of their game; their website is standards compliant and uses recent technologies).. So: what you really need in this use case is, ideally: their address details and a link to a google map showing where their office is OR alternatively, a quick link so you can phone through and ask their receptionist for the address. A desktop user...
