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The Joomla Project announces the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.10 [Wohmamni]. This is a security release and users are strongly encouraged to upgrade immediately.
This release contains 66 bug fixes, one low-level security fix, and one moderate-level security fix. It has been 11 weeks since Joomla 1.5.9 was released on January 10, 2009. The Development Working [...]

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Joomlashack is on the Grid! What is the grid? Well it is a system to help speed up development time by creating a specific way to align your site to give it that consistent feel. This system provides commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels to align your columns and rows.
Inspirion is [...]

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“Go inside a Honda’s car navigation system and see the results of GPS traffic.”

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Internavi Realization

“The new agency website for Cliff Freeman and Partners is an open-source chat platform. The more you search, the more content we create.”

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Cliff Freeman

“A 360 degree immersive experience that gives users total control of a three-dimensional reality, filmed with very special cameras.”

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Armani Jeans

Recently I have been working on a social networking site that was experiencing downtime due to the amount of stress its users were putting on the server. I spent a good amount of time looking for ways to improve the speed of the site, and one of this was through CSS optimization.

Structure your CSS and HTML elegantly
“CSS” Stands for Cascading Style Sheets. Notice the first word, “Cascading”? The power of this language is readily available, and it is up to you, the designer, to maximize its use. It is an interesting concept that is not too difficult to grasp. Try to find instances wherein this can be applied.

For example, the code below:

<p class="someClass">First</p>
<p class="someClass">Second</p>
<p class="someClass">Third</p>
<p class="someClass">Forth</p>
<p class="someClass">Fifth</p>


Can be rewritten this way:

<div class="someClass">
<p>First</p>
<p>Second</p>
<p>Third</p>
<p>Forth</p>
<p>Fifth</p>
</div>


But what if our code looks like this:

<p class="firstClass">First</p>
<p class="someClass">Second</p>
<p class="someClass">Third</p>
<p class="someClass">Forth</p>
<p class="someClass">Fifth</p>


We can take advantage of CSS by rewriting HTML this way:

<div class="someClass">
<p class="firstClass">First</p>
<p>Second</p>
<p>Third</p>
<p>Forth</p>
<p>Fifth</p>
</div>


Then, cascade rules defined in “firstClass” to overwrite styling principles in “someClass”.

This is just one simple example, and I hope you understand what I’m trying to get at. Just keep in mind the concept of cascading rules and it won’t be long before things like this become second nature and automatic.

Re-structure your CSS
I am a huge fan of single line CSS style. Not only does it save up space, it is also more readable. The readability bit is debatable, though. Simply put, I find it easier to locate relevant tags if the tag names are all on the same left-hand side and I do not have to scroll so much to find what I need to change. After all, designers are only concerned with CSS selectors, not the rules that are applied to it.

Optimize Your CSS
Some time ago, I wrote an article about improving website performance using CSS optimizers. I still use CSS Optimiser up to this day. For very large CSS files it is a quick and easy way to rewrite things that may otherwise prove too time-consuming to optimize manuallyt.

Use CSS Shorthand Rules
When I was still learning CSS, I found shorthand rules to be quite daunting and confusing at times. But I strived to learn the shorthand syntax for every rule simply because I am lazy and do not want to bother typing the same thing over and over not to mention having to memorize all the rule names.

Compare the example longhand its equivalent shorthand below.

Original longhand:

#someid {
background-attachment: fixed;
background-color: #000000;
background-image: url(images/image.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: left bottom;
}


Shorthand version:

#someid { background: #000 url(images/image.png) no-repeat fixed left bottom; }


The folks over at SitePoint has a good introduction to the art of CSS Shorthand that I can recommend to anyone who’s willing to learn.

Server-side Compression
Server-side compression techniques have long been put to use by large scale applications for two main reasons. First, bandwidth is precious and expensive. Second, it does not require having to modify code for it to work. What it does require, however, is supported server software (or hardware). Hence the term “server-side”.

One such solution can easily be deployed on Apache servers. Once again SitePoint has written an introduction to server-side compression using Apache and mod_gzip.

The drawback to this is increased CPU load. Indeed, server-side compression is a double-edged sword, but usually the pros far outweigh the cons.

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5 Ways To Optimize Your CSS

So there I was skimming through my usual list of websites on another boring day when this headline caught my eye:

Best CSS zen garden file ever?

My head spun furiously. Could it be possible? You be the judge! Let me warn you though, that a sense of humor is required to appreciate the screenshot below.

Hungry for more? View the site in its full, animated glory!

Of course, there had to be an explanation for this madness, right? Apparently the design, entitled “Geocities 1996″, is by Bruce Lawson. He did it back in 2004 out of nostalgia. He writes:

The CSS Zen Garden has been highly useful to me in demonstrating the value of standards when attempting to convince my reluctant colleagues to abandon tables. Thanks Mr. Shea!

However, it’s also been a major pain in the arse, as Nongyaw, friends and family now expect every site I make for them to look as good as the zen garden submissions. As a design-challenged individual, I’ve found myself almost nostalgic for the multi-coloured, multi-typefaced gif-ridden designs I used to see in 1996 when I moved to Thailand and first used the web, back in the days when Netscape 3.0 was the coolest browser out.

View the full article.

I hope that made your day. It surely did for me!

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Best CSS Zen Garden Theme Ever

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My Snow Buddy

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Graphic Bio

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Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee