Alan Hogan's website - Web development, Mac user tips, etc.
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Read 5 days ago and current, but nothing has been published for 21 months.
It began when my domain registrar contacted me. A domain I bought years ago and never really used, they informed me, was currently being used for phishing, which is against my registrar's terms of service. Hmm. I’m not a black hat, so what was going on? Logging in to my registrar (NameCheap) I was able to see that my domain's DNS was pointing at DreamHost, a shared web host I use for some…
Copy-paste this minimal, modern template to start a new HTML5 web page with automatic use of system fonts, preference-respecting color themes, and mobile-friendly responsive sizing. Alternatively, just use the CSS for a quick entry into a modern look with dark mode support. I recommend starting here when you are working on a proof of concept, spinning up a new website, or authoring a one-off web…
Now that we can rely on browsers to support CSS variables, we can define and use color themes by simply defining role-based color name variables. (For example, that is what powers this dark mode demo , although the naming scheme here isn't used.) My humble suggestion is to use the following conventions. They attempt to maximize terseness, consistency, and predictability. YMMV Abbreviation Meaning…
Bookmarklets , as I say on my main bookmarklet page, “are scripts that affect the current page you are viewing” and are saved in your browser as if they were bookmarks — although bookmarklets don’t take you to another page. I published my bookmarklets collection back in 2009, and have added and updated them over the years. Some are quite useful; some are rather niche. Regardless, the collection…
I just spent a little too long chasing down the answer to this question: When using an element’s JavaScript styles interface, the .style property , should vendor-prefixed property names start with a capital letter or not? E.g., is it button.style.webkitFilter or button.style.WebkitFilter ? The Short Answer Capitalize them. 1 However, if the prefix is Webkit , case does not matter. Case matters for…
Introduction Base Styles Modules Parts Variants Layout modules Content-oriented modules Don’t-Do’s Non-Styling Class Names Thanks License Introduction In this document I hope to define a CSS methodology using a small set of unambigous rules. This methodology has these aims: extreme maintainability high readability guided writability low barrier to adding collaborators broad compatibility with…
Many people, including programmers and project managers, use the word “deprecation” incorrectly. This can lead to confusion and even unexpected downtime, so let’s all try to use the same definition. What is deprecation? The stellar Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb “deprecate” this way: express disapproval of: what I deprecate is persistent indulgence. ( be deprecated ) (chiefly of a…
This website runs my own content management system. Previously I wrote about upgrading it from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7 . Now I have managed to upgrade it to PHP 8.1 as well. How? First, I upgraded my staging site to run PHP 8.1. It failed badly — but I checked the error logs. It became clear that language changes had resulted in code in some of the libraries I am using (open-source code) was no longer…
Here’s a useful Mac tip to insert the current date in your preferred format nearly anywhere. It does not require any third-party software that can potentially slow down your computer and cost money. I’ll show you how to add two specific date formats, as well as one for the current time, with this technique. You can use any, all, or a customization that suits your purposes. You can either download…
In a remarkable turn of events, and in the final days before the first Democratic primary election of the 2020 season, the results of a major presidential poll have been discarded and will not be released. Candidates and commentators were counting on the results of this poll for last-minute strategy and projection purposes. An inconsistency had been discovered after at least one poll respondent…
