General Web Ramblings by Jack Franklin: Archive

This blog has MOVED

I’ve now moved from a Tumblr blog to my own hosted solution. Find me now at www.jackfranklin.co.uk/blog.

Mar 5th

The difference between ++i and i++

The difference between the two operators is a subtle but very important one. Hopefully this post clears it up. This is something which I used to struggle with when I got into programming. The different between i++ and ++i. I would always use the wrong one. It’s actually pretty simple, but for me it took a real life example to figure it out. So I’ve created one today in the hope at...

Feb 22nd

Watch

An introduction to a responsive CSS framework, cssgrids.net. Enjoy! PS - it’s worth maximising the video.

Dec 2nd

Advice Needed: The Next Step

If you follow me on Twitter you may well know most of this but if not then you wont. Essentially whilst at Uni I planned to do the odd client project when I felt like it, believing stupidly that I would be able to support myself on that and my loan and a small bit of support from my parents. Whilst I can just about, it does not leave me much free-will in terms of spending - and whilst I’m...

Nov 1st

Rejuvenating my RSS

I have a love hate relationship with RSS. With Twitter so popular these days, I tend to pick up all my news items from that. Anything I want to read right away I do. I’ll then either bookmark it to Delicious for reference later, or just close and that’s it. If I come across an article I want to read but for whatever reason can’t at that exact moment, I send it to Instapaper. Once...

Oct 5th

The Forrst API jQuery Wrapper →

I’ve been a member of Forrst for a long time now and this past week I’ve really got into it and found it really great. Yesterday founder @KyleBragger revealed the very early version of the Forrst API, which will grow over time into a fully fledged API (And I’m hoping someone can make an iPhone app from it!). So straight away I set off developing a jQuery wrapper for the API and...

Aug 26th

iPhone

It may not be an iPhone 4. It may well be 2nd hand and a couple of years old. But it’s my first iPhone. And I love it.

Jul 30th

Interviewed

I got published on other’s blogs the other day so I thought I’d post them here in case you missed them: Show me your Dock Series! Part 32 Grace was looking for some people to take part and I did! Gain an insight into my work flow with a detailed look at my dock. Thanks Grace! An Interview with Jack Franklin Dan Davies was looking for people to interview so I volunteered...

Jul 29th

Just Be Yourself

This was all inspired about 2-3 weeks ago when someone I follow on twitter posted something along the lines of “Wow…I’m now being followed by [famous_person_here]…must tweet good stuff” I’ve nothing against the person who said this (and if you know who you are, I haven’t stopped following you or anything) but it wound me up slightly. I’ve blogged...

Jul 22nd

The jQuery Flicker

So, I’ve been doing a lot of jQuery work recently and one thing that got me recently was random flickering. I would make an element fade in and out on hover, but when that element was faded in and I hovered over it, it would fade in and out really quickly. This had me baffled for a while. On a very basic level, the code looked something like this (link to JSBin) If you hover over the red...

Jul 19th

Goals for 2010: Mid Year Review

So I know it’s not anywhere near the end of this current year, in-fact we’re pretty much exactly half way through, but I kind of felt inspired this morning to write such a post. On my old blog I just found this post - titled “Goals for 2010”. As I’m at the mid point, I guess I should review them: Post at least once a week on this blog. Mega Fail Get my own design...

Jul 8th

Barcamp Blackpool 2 Review

So this weekend I travelled up to Blackpool to attend my 2nd Barcamp, Barcamp Blackpool and thought I owe it to the organisers to do a short review about the day (and the night!). Seeing as I’m starting a new job in Scotland with @richquick on Monday, we decided to meet up Thursday evening in Blackpool, take a day out doing the tourist stuff, then head to the pre-party on the Friday evening...

Jul 4th

Designing for the iPad - iPointless?

This post all stemmed from the monthly arrival of .Net magazine (aka Practical Web Design outside the UK) in which the key feature was “Designing for the iPad”. I initially tweeted: Latest issue of .Net just arrived. Main feature? Designing for the iPad. *sigh*. And then I tweeted this: Is designing for the iPad that important at this stage? I would have to say absolutely not....

Jun 17th

What's in my Bag?

A while ago The Web Squeeze’s magazine had a feature called “What’s in the Bag” where they asked web “celebrities”, or well known Web Designers & Developers, to tell the world everything that was in a bag - one they might typically take out to a meeting with friends, or to the local Coffee shop to do some work. Or perhaps, the bag that would grace them at a...

Jun 6th

Switching to Ubuntu

So a couple of days ago I decided to check out Ubuntu 10.04, the new release. I’d messed with Ubuntu 8.10 a while back, and had liked it but never really settled on it. Along with my companion in geekyness @SamBlease we both tried it. Sam downloaded the .iso, burned it and then we decided to give it ago. Me being the guy scared of partitions, I went for the Wubi installer - which installs...

May 8th

Mar 17th

Disillusioned with Twitter

I’m going to start off with saying that I‘m probably being an arrogant jerk who expects too much. Yet I’m beginning to feel that being on Twitter is not worth the time I spend on it. I’ve been experimenting recently, sending messages with a question in to various people. And whilst I didn’t sit down and analyse the figures, I reckon at least 90% of those tweets get...

Mar 10th

Why I love being a Mac User

Inspired by Chris Bowler’s similar post, here are some of my favourite Mac apps - the ones that I feel I would miss far too much to ever consider buying a Windows machine again. TaskPaper Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch! Tweetie Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch! Quicksilver Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch! Ecoute Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch! Forklift ...

Mar 2nd

On the Road to Sheffield

If you’ve been following me on Twitter you will know that I’ve been very excited about what has, until now, only a potential move. But today I got an email with confirmation of the train tickets being booked, so there is no going back! On April 3rd, I will travel up to Sheffield to begin 2 weeks of work at web development company ocProducts. If all goes well, and we don’t hate each other, I’ll...

Feb 25th

Watch

A quick review of Mac only note-taking app Shovebox, which I absolutely adore.

Feb 23rd

My Workspace & Me

I am a firm believer that workspaces make a huge difference to your work ethic and how productive you are (or not). In this post I’ll outline my workspace, why I love it, what I would change if I could, and loads more. < I am lucky enough to have a pretty big desk (used to be our kitchen table!) and I absolutely love having a desk this size. Whilst it is true that often I don’t...

Feb 20th

You know when you've been Tan..no wait...Googled

Besides the rather pointless (which here means ‘incredibly hilarious’) title I wanted to blog today about Google and their monopoly of applications. Is this really good for the web? Have Google got too big for their boots? The verb Google (as in ‘to google) actually was added to the Oxford dictionary in 2006: intr. To use the Google search engine to find information on the...

Feb 18th

Why I would Never go back to Windows

The Mac vs PC argument can go on forever and ever. So this is my take on it - or rather - my reasoning for never wanting to buy another PC again. My next computer will be a Macbook Pro, and I cannot see myself going back to using Windows on a daily basis. And you know why? It’s not because of the OS, or how nice it looks, but the apps. Specifically, here are a list of apps that I use every...

Feb 15th

Twitter Interaction

Earlier on I tweeted: It gets me down when you ask someone ‘big’ on Twitter a question, but they don’t respond because you are not also ‘big’. I feel I should justify this because I don’t think it got taken as I wanted it to be taken. Firstly, by ‘big’ I did not mean world famous celebs touting millions of followers. There is no way in hell they...

Feb 13th

Women in the Industry - Boagworld 200

Disclaimer: I am no means an expert in our industry or very prominent. I understand that much more well known & experienced people will blog on this subject but I wanted to get my points across. During the Boagworld Live 200th show, people in the chatroom made some very unsavoury comments towards some of the guests - particularly towards the women guests - Relly Annett-Baker, Sarah Parmenter...

Feb 13th

Watch

In this short tutorial we create an accordion with jQuery. In upcoming weeks, we’ll be adding lots of new functionality to this and packaging it up as a plugin.

Feb 12th

A New Look, A New Domain and A New Start

You will notice if you read this that I’m coming to you from a new domain. This tumblr blog was set up ages ago but now I’ve managed to get it running on my own domain, I’ve got a feeling I’m going to blog at least 3 times a week - not often the longest of posts, but I’m going to try and regularly update for a sustained period…something which has been tricky for...

Feb 10th

Make Windows look like Mac OS X in One Step

Step 1: Buy a Mac.

Jul 27th

Double Screenage

I just ordered a Mini VGA=>VGA adapter so I can hook my iMac up to my old 19inch flatscreen monitor. Need to use a program called Screen Spanning Doctor to enable it, as it’s not available by default, but the computer is more than capable of doing it. Apparently it’s so they can differentiate between lower and higher end products. On the webpage of this “hack” it says it...

Jul 27th

Bored Now

18GB of stuff from iTunes has been copying for 3 hours…and apparently has 4 hours to go! I’m having to play music from iPod but that is going to die anytime soon…so I need it to hurry up! I would pay £100 for an app that zipped your entire iTunes up, copied it to your new computer, and unzipped it all. Developers, get going. And no one better tell me that such an app exists, or I...

Jul 24th

Jul 23rd

Definitive Guide to IE6 →

Must read for Web Designers - how to target IE6 using Conditional Comments, CSS Tricks + Hacks, PNG Fix, Box Model and more.

Jul 23rd

I got a Mac

So if you follow me on twitter like you should, you might have seen me get rather excited when I was told that my offer on the Mac had been accepted. I picked it up yesterday, and what better way to kick start this blog then with it. It’s a G5 iMac from late 2005 with 150GB Hard Drive, 2GB Ram and a 17inch screen. It’s by no means recent, but it’s still a very usable machine. I...

Jul 23rd