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(PHP) Creating an RSS Feed From Your Site - COBOLdinosaur

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 01:37:42 UTC

If you syndicate your content with an RSS feed it can help to drive additional traffic to the content pages.

(PHP) Formatted Text Output using str_pad() - COBOLdinosaur

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 01:42:09 UTC

This is a simple PHP class that can be used to produce nicely formatted reports from unorganized data.

(PHP) Using Array_multisort to re-order data - COBOLdinosaur

Fri, 22 May 2015 02:52:37 UTC

This snippet allows an array or multiple arrays to be re-sorted using multiple key fields.

(JavaScript) Caoturing the Mouse Position - COBOLdinosaur

Wed, 20 May 2015 03:22:32 UTC

The key to making it work is the event listener that get added using the DOM method that binds it to the mousemove event and declares the event handler. Most event can be bound to a handler this way.

(CSS) Transition Effect for Gradients on Hover - COBOLdinosaur

Tue, 21 Apr 2015 04:31:57 UTC

A simple transition from a linear gradient to a radial gradient can be made very dramatic by including a color change transition. One of 10 effects presented.

(CSS) Rotating HTML Elements With CSS - COBOLdinosaur

Fri, 10 Apr 2015 04:57:18 UTC

The base rotation can be in three different planes; though as we will see later combinations can make it look like we rotate through many perceived planes. In the examples below instead of rotate we specify the plane by using rotateZ (The default we have been using), rotateX, and rotateY.

(CSS) Animated Tooltips With Very Little Coding - COBOLdinosaur

Thu, 06 Nov 2014 07:47:55 UTC

Using a sibling relationship in CSS allows all kinds of tooltips effects without scripting or a lot of coding. There are a bunch of different effects on the page and the possibilities are limited only by imagination.

(CSS) Corrugated Background using Gradient - COBOLdinosaur

Fri, 20 Jun 2014 04:14:50 UTC

A simple effect using simple CSS. This is part of a collection of gradient effects

(CSS) Select Using Styled Optgroup Tags - COBOLdinosaur

Thu, 14 Nov 2013 04:55:16 UTC

Having a handle for groups of options allows script driven dynamic effects to manage changes of presentation with in the select without having to refresh or use other inefficient methods of updating the display.

(PHP) HEREDOC to Simplify Code Generation - COBOLdinosaur

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 06:07:30 UTC

Doing the echo with multiple concatenated bits of strings was very error prone and I was always getting parsing errors. The toggle format where you flip PHP on and off throughout the HTML is less error prone but is a real pain in the ass if you have short tags disabled. Those methods are okay for short pieces of code, but any long page just can't be easily generated that way.

(CSS) Drop down menu with fade in no scripting - COBOLdinosaur

Fri, 12 Jul 2013 04:19:58 UTC

The first thing you might notice is that I am not using nested lists to layout the menu. That is an old XHTML layout technique. I am using the more semantically correct HTML5

(CSS) 6 even spaced elements across the page using calc() for sizing - COBOLdinosaur

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 05:59:11 UTC

The CSS calc() function can be used anywhere a length, frequency, angle, time, number, or integer is required. It can be used to apply values for width/height; font-size; margins; padding; borders; shadows; border radius; text-indent;top/right/bottom/left(for position); and any place that a number is required.

(CSS) Curtain Effect Using Multiple Background Images - COBOLdinosaur

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 05:05:00 UTC

Each image is positioned, dimensioned, and repeated according to the comma separated values in the other background properties. The images in the list are layered front to back in the same order they are listed in the rule declaration. If a background color is specified it will be the bottom layer.

(HTML) Alternating column colors in HTML tables - COBOLdinosaur

Sun, 26 May 2013 01:59:56 UTC

The colgroup and col structure is like a directive that specifies table formatting outside of the normal flow. Notice that the col tags do not get closed in HTML5, and the cascade is irregular. Normally the cascade applies to children, but the rows and cells in the table are not children or grandchildren of the col or colgroup. The relationship is more like stepchildren. Because of the irregular relationship, the CSS specificity appears to be quirky. Its not really, but it is not always as expected. To insure the the correct application of both the colgroup rules and the other rules being applied to the tr and td tags the colgroup rules should be applied in line, or be the final rule in the style entries.

(HTML) Captions For Lists and Images - COBOLdinosaur

Fri, 17 May 2013 03:58:58 UTC

One of the limits of using lists (ordered and unordered) is that they have no provision for a heading. You can do something like:

etc... but it is invalid because the list containers can only contain List Items. One way commonly used to put a heading on a list is to put a paragraph or div ahead of the list. It is messy and ugly, but it validates. The problem with that solution is that the elements are not bound to each other and therefore it can break unless you make it even uglier by putting a common wrapper around both elements, and then you have extra linefeeds to deal with.

(JavaScript) Animating Shapes - COBOLdinosaur

Wed, 15 May 2013 05:51:36 UTC

Changes shape back and forth from a round element to a square element.

(CSS) Traversing Tables with DOM Table Methods - COBOLdinosaur

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:52:04 UTC

A table is nothing but a set of blocks. A simple grid. There are a lot of web apps where the storage of data in a grid would make functions much easier to deal with using simple scripting. If only it was easy to target cells and traverse between them like a spreadsheet.

(CSS) Effective Use of the CSS3 box-shadow Property - COBOLdinosaur

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 05:52:24 UTC

I cannot imagine why developers spend all kinds of time trying to get some lame jquery menu working and don't have 15 minutes to spend enhancing the content with a few shadows instead of bloating the page with images that include a shadow.

(JavaScript) Dynamic Table Generator - COBOLdinosaur

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:15:15 UTC

The use of dynamic data acquisition on modern web sites and in a lot of intranet applications, sometimes means we have to build structures dynamically as data comes in from a feed or AJAX operations. The problem is not with the data, but rather that it is unstructured, or not appropriately tagged. The solution is to dynamically build the necessary structures to make the data presentable in a web page

(HTML) Captions for images - COBOLdinosaur

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 05:56:54 UTC

The nice part about it is that the caption is locked to the image. The figure can be positioned and styled and the caption can be rendered with any affect that can be applied to any other text element.

(JavaScript) Round Slide Show With an Iris - COBOLdinosaur

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:41:26 UTC

Simle markup, simple CSS combined with ver straight forward javascript to produce some really cool effects.

(CSS) Styling select options - COBOLdinosaur

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 07:58:57 UTC

In modern browsers select options can now be style using most css properties. Of course, IE is still behind but it does support some styling as well. There are a lot more options on the site.

(PHP) Custom Logging Site Events - COBOLdinosaur

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 07:45:21 UTC

To keep up on important incidents on your site without having to dig through server logs the alternative can be custom logs.

(CSS) Image Frame on Round Photo - COBOLdinosaur

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 05:27:04 UTC

Using an image background for a photo allows all kinds of framing possibilities

(CSS) Fixed Heading Scrollable Table Simulation - COBOLdinosaur

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 05:33:14 UTC

Uses the table display properties in div tags to merge the attributes of multiple tags.