New jQuery Version Released Version 1.3

jQuery, in my opinion the best Javascript framework for web development, has a new version, 1.3, with some changes that could affect the way you use jQuery.

First things first, you should read the release notes at the jQuery site: http://docs.jquery.com/Release:jQuery_1.3 to familiarize yourself with the changes.

A couple of the more important changes that I will need to make in my own code:

• The ready() method no longer waits for the css to load. The script should be placed after css files.
• Toggle() now accepts a boolean value.

Also, according to the NetTuts article, the jQuery development team has put some serious effort in optimizing a couple of features that I use in almost every project with jQuery.
The Hide/Show feature of jQuery and DOM Manipulation and HTML Insertion were the focus of these optimization tasks, and I promise you, if you use jQuery, you will use these functions.
For example, in a recent project I did, LesleyBarrPhotography.com, I used an image replacement technique which is very simple and easy to maintain:

$(document).ready(function() {
$("#showcustom img").hover(
function()
{
this.src = this.src.replace("_off","_on");
},
);


The idea here is to have 2 images, 1 named custom_off.png, and 1 named custom_on.png. On mouseover, jQuery will just replace one image with the other, as specified in the this.src = this.src.replace(”_on”,”_off”); code, via manipulating the DOM. I will test this under jQuery 1.3, as I have noticed that in FireFox version 3.x, the DOM Manipulation under jQuery 1.2.6 can be a little flickery. Hopefully the new version will have smoothed that out, as it is one of my favorite jQuery functions.

Technorati Tags: jQuery, jQuery, Ajax, jQuery 1.3, jQuery Tutorial

How To Build For The Web As Quickly As Possible

I build a lot of websites. I have ideas for a lot more websites/services/applications. The question is, do I have time to build out all my website ideas? The answer: yes! I’m going to provide 2 examples of websites I’ve built where the total time from idea to implementation was less than a week. Next week I will do another site of mine, CleanCrews.com. The main focus of this artice will be explaining how I, as a mediocre PHP programmer and mediocre web designer/developer, can build websites quickly and easily, using freely available resources off the web.

Antivertise.com – this was a site I built last year based on an idea I had for a Facebook application. I actually did create a Facebook application, but while I was doing so, the Facebook API went through some major changes, and I was not able to make the FB app like I had originally intended. I still do want to finish the FB app – but in the meantime, I created Antivertise as the frontend. I integrated Twitter into Antivertise - users can post their own bad experiences with products and let the rest of the world see and comment on those experiences. Not exactly a groundbreaking idea, but something I thought could be useful, with enough interaction with the social web. As you can see, its still a work in progress – I am actively developing a more social aspect to the site that will leverage social applications like Facebook, OpenSocial, Twitter and FriendFeed.
I decided on making Antivertise a blog – my intention was to allow Facebook users to post bad product experiences in the facebook app, pass those posts through a review process, and then post the results to the blog and to Twitter. I haven’t to date finished the review process code, as I became sidetracked with other projects, but I still think its a pretty cool idea, and I look forward to making Antivertise into more of a Service than a site. I want to make it interactive, allow OpenSocial and Facebook users to login through Antivertise, and show advertising based on the poor product reviews posted.
The upshot is that the Theme is modified from a free theme I downloaded, refreshed a bit, and using a Twitter PHP library from the web
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