Archive 2016 (News & Updates)

Blog: Costly animation performance | 16th Dec 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; Converting costly CSS3 Animations in to performant alternatives that don't trigger layout and paint changes.

Story Time: 'A Mince Pie Too Many' | 5th Dec 16
A humorous Christmas themed story/ poem about Santa and the trouble he faces one Christmas Eve, having eaten too many mince pies (and other food).

Fast Edit 'new page' security fix | 28th Nov 16
A security fix has been added to Fast Edit v1 and Fast Edit BE to stop files from manual query strings being created by the WYSIWYG edit window.

JS tab support for Content Sliders | 11th Nov 16
Continuing the trend from last week's CSS-only updates, I've now made the JS versions of the slider keyboard tabable. See related section for more.

Tab support for Any Content Slider | 4th Nov 16
To help will accessibility, I've updated the CSS-only versions of the RWD Any Content Slider to give them keyboard tab support. JS updates coming soon.

Blog: matchMedia viewport change | 28th Oct 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; Using matchMedia (JS media queries) to detect changes in viewport width in order to update metatag content.

William Levick banner upgrades | 18th Oct 16
It's a pleasure when I get to work with professional photos, and I've had a fab time fiddling with some really nice ones for William Levick. Looking good!

Fast Edit is CMS Guide Editor's Pick | 10th Oct 16
I got a tweet to say that Fast Edit has been selected as one of the 6 Editor's Picks for the Lite category at CMS Guide. Thanks for the credit guys!

New academic year - busy, busy | 7th Oct 16
Local schools are keeping me super busy at the mo with new feature requests, performance mods, surveys, signage and the usual content updates. Phew!

Blog: Scheduled 'SiteShow' Slides | 30th Sep 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; Learn how to adapt the fullscreen 'SiteShow' scripts with PHP to schedule slides for specific times, days or dates.

Image Orientation Detection (JS) | 15th Sep 16
Detect whether images are landscape or portrait and apply a related CSS class with JS. Style portrait images one way, and landscape images another!

Scroll Progress Circle + % Counter | 2nd Sep 16
See how far you've scrolled down a web page, and how much there's left to go, with a progress circle and % counter. Includes colour gradient variation.

Blog: Android stock browser woes | 25th Aug 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; Overcoming the Android (≤4.4) stock browser quirks when dealing with slightly more complex CSS3 animations.

Scroll Progress Bar + % Counter | 19th Aug 16
See how far you've scrolled down with a progress bar and % counter. Useful on long articles to show visitors how far they've read, and how much is left.

Fast Edit v1 lastmod XML sitemap | 12th Aug 16
To better improve SEO, Fast Edit v1 now includes the <lastmod> tag inside its XML sitemap. The date takes the W3C Datetime (YYYY-MM-DD) format.

Blog: 'SiteShow' with Controls | 6th Aug 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; Fade-in a list of URLs as a fullscreen 'SiteShow'. Individual slide duration, admin menu and CSS3 animations.

Sweep-in News Scroller w/ Controls | 29th Jul 16
A news scroller where messages sweep in and out with a gentle fade. Very light-weight - plain JS previous, next, play/ pause controls and CSS3 animations.

Focus on Function blog launched | 15th Jul 16
Check out the new blog! I've migrated all of my previous guest posts into a dedicated Focus on Function self-hosted blog. Everything lives on home turf now!

Load random stuff on page refresh | 7th Jul 16
Randomly load any number of images from an HTML list. Load in other things too - try randomly loading ads, featured content, quotes, videos, whatever!

Blog: Img Src to Background-Image | 23rd Jun 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; Convert an img src attribute into a background-image with JS, so that 'background-size:cover;' can be applied.

Ashgate Croft website handoff | 15th Jun 16
Since the launch of the new site, I've been tying up loose ends; Working on content management training, backup schedules, stats setup, and final nips.

Ashgate Croft website launched | 6th Jun 16
As of 6pm today, Ashgate Croft Special School in Derbyshire have a shiny new website to flaunt to visitors; Responsive, lightweight and super zippy!

Blog: iOS 'Sticky Hover' Fix (JS) | 30th May 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; One line of JS to "unhover" CSS drop menus by tapping in the outside area. No more obscured content!

Pop-up Image Viewer with Effects | 27th May 16
A responsive, pop-up image with on-demand image loading. A spinner shows while loading, then an image zooms, fades, sweeps or drops in to view.

Blog: Easy Way to Absolute Center | 27th May 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; A little-documented trick using position:absolute; and margin:auto; to easily center an element (IE8+).

Blog: Slide-Up/ Down no jQuery | 19th May 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; Replacing jQuery with Velocity for performant content toggle boxes with "Holy Grail" slide-up/ down animation.

Widget 'hide on load' option added | 13th May 16
I've updated both widget scripts to include an option to hide select widgets on initial page load; Just add a '.widget-hide-init' class to the markup.

Drag Widgets + Dock to Sidebar | 6th May 16
Show and hide widgets by docking them to a sidebar or drag them around to change position. Their display state and position is saved in local storage.

Dock Widgets to Sidebar + Save | 29th Apr 16
A small JavaScript demo where you can show and hide widgets by docking them to a sidebar. Their display state is saved with a cookie for 30 days. IE8+

Blog: Multi-Category Content Filter | 20th Apr 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; Filter content by class and refine results with multi-category selections. Choose to hide or show items too!

Fast Feed v1 page session save fix | 14th Apr 16
Just a small update to Fast Feed v1; Page sessions have been fixed so that they carry over on entry save in the admin panel. Only one file modified.

RWD Grid Images + Modal Pop-up | 7th Apr 16
For fun, I combined the RWD Grid Image demo with my simple Responsive Modal Overlay/ Pop-up Image Viewer script, further to a DD forum thread.

Blog: Setting up a Print Stylesheet | 31st Mar 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; How to set up print CSS so that your website looks as good in print as it does on screen (starter CSS included).

Fast Cal v1 'no events' mod + fixes | 23rd Mar 16
The monthly calendar mobile view now only lists events (no empty days), and a "No events" message has been added to months where there are no events.

Fast Cal v1 iCalendar (.ics) support | 14th Mar 16
Fast Cal now (re)generates an iCalendar (.ics) file every time you update your events, which can be imported into many supported iCalendar applications.

Fast Cal v1 available for download | 4th Mar 16
Manage your calendar events and display them in a monthly grid, or full year event list. Link to files or websites and show event details in a popup.

Fast Cal v1 calendar demo preview | 26th Feb 16
I'm working on an event management tool where events are created in the back-end and listed automatically in the front-end via a calendar grid or list view.

DHFS in top 100 non-select schools | 24th Feb 16
Great news! Dronfield Henry Fanshawe School is now in the top 100 non-selective state-funded schools in England! Proud to be part of the team :)

Fast Logs v1 session + name fix | 19th Feb 16
Page sessions have been fixed so that they carry over on entry save in the admin panel. And the "_entries" folder name has also been corrected.

Blog: Paginated Excerpts from RSS | 10th Feb 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; Extract excerpts of an RSS feed, with "read more" links, and output them as paginated results over many pages.

jQuery SlideUp/ SlideDown FAQs | 1st Feb 16
A jQuery Q&A/ FAQs script that reveals hidden answers in sliding panels. Open one, group, or all answers from the same page, or another page via a hash.

RWD Menu in Wordpress theme | 25th Jan 16
"Provolio" - A WordPress theme for creative minds, makes use of my Responsive CSS3 Multi-Level, Drop-Down Menu. Thanks for the credit guys!

Audio Player w/ Zip & Download | 19th Jan 16
Build a playlist from a folder of mp3s and play them in this responsive audio player. Visitors can download tracks with a convenient zip and download feature.

Blog: XML to HTML with SimpleXML | 13th Jan 16
Read my latest entry in the blog; How to extract and manipulate XML data into web pages with the help of PHP5's SimpleXML extension.

Fast Feed v1 functions clean-up | 6th Jan 16
Starting the spring cleaning a tad early this year; I've cleaned-up a few of the PHP functions and code to make future maintenance a bit easier.