Ten days ago, A List Apart posted an article titled Switchy McLayout: An Adaptive Layout Technique. In this article, they explained how to use JavaScript to change stylesheets on the fly depending on the size of the browser window. Their code was quite compact at only 1KB, but it required the user to define everything in the JavaScript code. I thought I could do better and considered this to be a prime subject for a JQuery plugin. So off I went a-codin’ and came up with JSwitchy. Now the JavaScript is very generic and the size definitions take place within the HTML code itself (in a manner that could easily be defined once in a site’s template).

For more information, check out JSwitchy.

Hey all,

Ok, I’m a bit late on the holidays part. Still, I hope everyone had a happy holiday season and here’s hoping that everyone has a wonderful 2007!

We were waiting to announce this news, but I just can’t wait anymore:

Yes, we’re expecting Number 2!

For now, we’ve dubbed this one “Little Cashew.” Everyone uses “peanut” so we wanted to be a little different. Noah added “little” since it will be his little brother or sister. Due date is early May.

Here are the first photos of Little Cashew:

Unfortunately, Little Cashew wouldn’t stay still for a better photo. Maybe next time.

Beth’s doing as well as can be expected as she fights exhaustion, nausea, and heartburn, and sleeplessness.

Recently, I’ve been doing more and more development with JQuery. For those who haven’t heard of it, JQuery is a JavaScript library that makes some previously time consuming and difficult tasks very easy. The way that it is built, you can even develop plugins to extend JQuery’s functionality. And that’s just what I did:

JHeartbeat will allow a web page to periodically poll a server. This polling can be used to keep the user’s session alive or to download updated information.

JTicker will turn an RSS feed into a scrolling news ticker.

Try them out and let me know what you think.

I’ve upgraded Slightly Thickerbox to use JQuery 1.0.1 and the updated version of Interface Elements for JQuery.

I’ve just posted a new version of Slightly Thickerbox. This version fixes the issue that the last release had with IE and the Interface Elements for JQuery. It also will hide any visible select boxes on the page when a Slightly Thickerbox window is opened. This works around a long standing bug in IE that places select boxes above all page elements. (It’s a “feature” that has caused many a web master to rip hair from their heads.)

Right now, there are two outstanding bugs that I know of:

1. Java Applets still appear in front of Slightly Thickerbox items.
2. Sound from movies still plays in background when Previous/Next/Close links are clicked.

If anyone knows of a way to fix these issues, I’d love to hear them. (Though I have an idea on #1. #2 looks to be more complicated.)

As always, you can get Slightly Thickerbox by going to http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/SlightlyThickerBox/

It’s my birthday today, but the present is for you. I’ve upgraded Slightly Thickerbox to version 1.5.

You can now add movies (MPEG or AVI) to a Slightly Thickerbox group. You can also group AJAX pages together. This could be used as a quick and easy way to put together an online presentation.

I’ve also done a lot of backend code restructuring, but that won’t concern most of you. If you were calling the TB_Show function directly, you’ll need to change your reference to TB_ShowObj and pass it a reference to the object you want to display. For example:

TB_ShowObj(document.getElementByID(”FirstElement”))

Finally, I’ve added support for the Interface Elements for JQuery. This is a JQuery plugin that, among other things, adds some more advanced animation capabilities. If you include the Interface Elements scripts (included with the download, see below for the code), then Slightly Thickerbox will use the advanced animation capabilities automatically. Otherwise, Slightly Thickerbox will use the built-in animation capabilities that JQuery possesses.

As always, you can get the latest version of Slightly Thickerbox by going to http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/SlightlyThickerBox/.

EDIT: I just uncovered a bug with Slightly Thickerbox and IE when using the Interface Elements. For now, just disable the Interface elements (comment out or delete the references). I’ll post a fix when I figure out what is going wrong. (FireFox seems to be unaffected by the bug.)

On Friday, July 21st, I went to the Bronx Zoo with my parents, wife, and son. On the way over, we drove through pouring rain, thunder, lightening, and wind. There were plenty of times when I thought that we were crazy for continuing on. My son was so looking forward to seeing the animals, though, so I drove on in the slim hopes of the bad weather passing when we got to the zoo. And wouldn’t you know it? As we entered the Bronx, the rain lightened. The thunder and lightening faded away. And the winds died down. Sure the clouds were still there and it was very humid, but the weather was now passable for a zoo visit. The ground wasn’t even as wet as I thought they might be.

So we entered the zoo and went through the exhibits. The Butterfly House was fun, especially for me since I’ve wanted to take some butterfly shots for awhile. The little guys are quick though and usually flit away before the camera is focused on them. In the Butterfly House, though, the butterflies are used to people gawking at them. So they didn’t mind me getting up close to take their photos. Two even took a break from flying on me! It’s hard to take a closeup shot of a butterfly on your upper arm, though.

We also saw the gorillas. I think this might have been Noah’s favorite part. He loves gorillas and kept pointing them out to us and running over to see another one. This one gorilla approached the glass dividing the gorilla habitat from the human section. She laid down and rested a foot and arm on the glass. One of the other zoo visitors touched the glass and the gorilla moved her hand over to cover the woman’s hand. The woman tapped the glass and the gorilla tapped back. It was quite interesting. (I joked that the gorilla must be thinking “Boy, what a great human exhibit we have here.”)

We also went on the Wild Asian Safari monorail, walked through the bears exhibit, saw the giraffes (my son’s second favorite, I think), and even walked through the Children’s Zoo. As we were nearing the end of the Children’s Zoo, my father got a call from a coworker in Manhattan. He reported that Manhattan was pitch black out and thundering like crazy. As if on cue, we heard thunder in the background. We hurried out of the Children’s Zoo and left the Bronx Zoo. (We were almost done with the Children’s Zoo and that was going to be our last stop anyway, so it’s not like we cut our trip that short.) As we got out of the parking lot, rain drops started falling on the car’s windshield. Then the driving rain, thunder, lightening, and winds returned.

Still it stayed nice long enough for us to have a very nice visit. I’d recommend visiting the Bronx Zoo to anyone, but especially if you have little kids. It’s one thing to see all of the animals. It’s quite another to have a toddler next to you in sheer awe over the fact that a gorilla is right in front of him.

As for photos, I was able to take quite a few photos. Most of my Asian Safari photos didn’t turn out well, but that’s mainly because the monorail didn’t really stop moving long enough for my camera to take decent photographs. Still, I’ve opened a new gallery for the Bronx Zoo photos. Just click here to view them.

More and more I’m not sure that a government Network Neutrality bill is a good solution. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a strong proponent of Network Neutrality and completely agree that the telecos are looking to erect toll booths along their networks to pad their bottom line. However, government regulations almost never are perfect. This is especially true when dealing with technological issues.

ISPs should be allowed to manage the traffic on their network so long as that management doesn’t give preferential treatment to their own traffic or someone else’s traffic based on payments. For example, if they are shaping their network to speed up their VoIP solution, they had better also speed up the VoIP solutions of their competitors. The telecos are in the unique position of being pipe provider and content/service provider. They shouldn’t be allowed to use one as unfair competition in the other market. As a second example, telecos shouldn’t speed up or slow down Google based on whether Google has paid them this month. Unless, of course, Google uses them as their direct upstream provider.

However, federal legislation would likely be poorly worded. At one extreme, it could be the CAN-SPAM of Network Neutrality. All talk and no action. (They might bust some small ISP as “proof” that it’s working, but mostly they would allow the telecos trample all over Network Neutrality.) At the other extreme, it might be so restrictive that an ISP implementing a spam filter would run afoul of the law.

So we’re left with two possibly bad scenarios. Let the telecos free reign and wind up with content providers who need to pay each individual teleco along the way lest their traffic be shunted to the slow lane. (This would make running a website prohibatively expensive and would wind up shutting down many small sites.) Or let government reign in the ISP but run the risk of them not pulling back just the right amount. Which is the lesser of the two evils?

This is a combination post. In some ways, it will be the first of many freeware reviews. In other ways, it will be a tutorial on how to create images like this:

Bet you didn’t know that I had triplets, did you? Well, I don’t. (And given how much of a handful one Noah is, thank goodness!) So how come there are three distinct Noah’s in that photo? Microsoft Group Shot is why.

Microsoft Group Shot is a freeware application that Microsoft has released that enables you to take multiple photos and combine elements of them to make one overall composite photo. The most common use for this would be group photos (hence the “Group Shot” name). Whenever you do this, someone invariably blinks or looks away just as the camera takes the shot. With Group Shot, you would take a series of photos of the group and select which faces you wanted to use in the composite photo. Nothing that can’t be done with a copy of Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, mind you, but it is much simpler (and cheaper) with Group Shot. In fact, my only gripe with Group Shot is that you can’t resize the window.

To make a composite photo, you obviously need to start with the source photos. For this, I would recommend getting a good tripod so the overall scene doesn’t change from photo to photo. Once you are set up, take your photos as you normally would. After uploading your photos to your computer, load up Group Shot. Drag the series of photos into Group Shot and it will load them up, one photo per tab. Now, for each photo, you simply drag a rectangle around the area that you want to use in the composite photo and click “Add to Composite.” Group Shot will display an in-progress composite image for you. When you are finished, simply export the final image. Viola! No more blinked eyes!

Now onto Part II. Creating triplets where only one kid really exists. Start off with your tripod/camera setup. Place your subject in the first position and take the photo. Now change positions and take another photo. Repeat this as many times as necessary.

Now load up Group Shot and drag the images onto it. Carefully select the subject in each photo and click the add to composite button. Export the final result and you have a quick and easy photo with multiples of the same person or object.