Gabe Harris

Photoshop Tip: Move Layers Up and Down

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Really quick, I just discovered this, quite by accident: ctrl+[ moves the active layer down one step in the layers palette and ctrl+] moves it up one step.

• categorized: design, photoshop
• no comments »

CSS Float Issue

Monday, April 27th, 2009

I didn’t think this up myself, but I just learned it, and it seems terrifically useful. I run into this problem regularly: I have a containing element (div usually) with a few floating elements inside of it. I like to use this technique when splitting an element in half – a left half and a right half. I’ll float the left half to the left, give it a width that’s a little less than half of the outer container, float the right half to the right with the same width.

“Great,” I think to myself. Let’s ctrl+s then refresh the browser to check this pig out. Then there’s the problem… Keep reading…

• tagged: css, float, layout
• categorized: css, development
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Pardon the absence

Sunday, April 26th, 2009

My wife had a baby! Keep reading…

• tagged: daughter, family, fatherhood, kids
• categorized: personal
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BlogDesk “Hello world”

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

I’ve been uninspired by the traditional blog interface, and I have been meaning to check out a desktop blogging unit. Today, by forces in the universe, Tweetdeck passed me a good link. Based on the advice of a tweep, I downloaded and installed BlogDesk. So far, it’s been straightforward and easy to use.

Keep reading…

• categorized: site
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CSS Organization

Monday, April 6th, 2009

There comes a time, unfortunately, when the web site is built. It has been completed and the client/manager/boss has signed off on it. This feels like the end of a long arduous journey that has lead through the depths of your soul as a developer. It’s done. Completed. Finished. Right? Not so fast! The journey is not nearly complete, it is so very, very, VERY far from over. Now comes the maintenance, upkeep, management of the site. How can we make this part of the life cycle less painful? Proper prior preparation prevents poor performance.

One area that can cause plenty of angst is the site’s style sheet(s). Riddled throughout the site’s code are all these tags for class=”" and id=”". What can we do to make these more manageable? How do I find what I’m looking for once I open that .css file, scroll to the bottom and learn that it is 400+ lines of code? This article addresses some ideas for organizing CSS files.

Keep reading…

• tagged: clean, coding, maintenance, organization
• categorized: css, development
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Quick jQuery Lesson – Events

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Just learned a quick lesson about jQuery events (think .focus, .blur, etc.) while talking through an issue with a new twitter friend. In order to make an event work it has to be inside your $(function(){}); (also known as $(document).ready(function() {}); also known as “once the DOM is ready”). So if you’re pulling your hair out because an event isn’t firing, make sure you’ve got it in the right place. Keep reading…

• tagged: jQuery
• categorized: development, javascript
• no comments »