"Ability is nothing without opportunity." – Napoleon Bonaparte
Aether theme
by George Paterson.
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Being a new father i haven’t had much time to write articles and have spent most of my effort working within repositories on Github.
One thing i’ve been meaning to do with this site for some time now is change it to a responsive design. This is what i’m doing with the Aether theme and i’ve updated this site with the first incarnation of that theme.
jQuery HTML5 video background 1.3
by George Paterson.
Release 1.3 is now available on GitHub. This release includes a number of improvements to the code including requests from ursbraem, Colin-Insivia and papandreou.
Issue #12 resolved, requires videoSource to use a multi dimension array.
Data attributes and jQuery .data supported.
jQuery 1.7 support, event handlers bound with .on.
Public method and callback unit tests using QUnit.
resizeTo option to control document or window height resizing.
Pull request #16 by Andreas Lind Petersen allowing string or array video source.
Tesco Direct launch
by George Paterson.
This week marks the release of the new Tesco Direct UI. It’s been almost a year since work on the UI was completed by the team at LBi London with support from Spindrift in content management and Infosys providing system integration.
The team i was fortunate enough to lead included permanent members Ray Brooks, Lee Ryan, Aaron Faber with Sam Clohesy leading project management. The project wouldn’t have started without Will Howat’s development review which should a number of issues that LBi London were asked to resolve.
jQuery UI custom select widget
by George Paterson.
This is the first build of the jQuery UI custom select widget available on GitHub. There is a demo page and wiki page available outlining how the widget works. It is hoped that the widget will simplify custom select development.
The jQuery UI custom select widget is designed as a method for applying a custom design to a native HTML select element. Currently the only applicable method for doing this to replace the select element entirely, duplicate it’s functionality in a new element and replicate any changes to the new element back to the select element.
Fatherhood
by George Paterson.
It’s been a bit quiet around here recently but there’s a very good reason for that.
On Sunday 30th October 2011 at 07:34 am i became the father to a baby boy. His name is Thomas Paterson and both mother and baby are doing great, although sleep patterns currently follow an ambiguous schedule only Thomas seems to be aware of.
It is only after my paternity leave that i find time to write this but now that life resumes it’s gentle ebb and flow i too return to development.
JavaScript Performance: jQuery.each and .each versus alternatives
by George Paterson.
Iterating across an array is a significant feature of JavaScript development. There are multiple methods available to achieve this, the native for and while loops and if you are using the jQuery JavaScript library there is jQuery.each and .each.
jQuery.each is designed to iterate over arrays and array like objects. .each is designed to iterate over jQuery objects and execute a function for each.
jQuery HTML5 video background 1.1.1
by George Paterson.
Release 1.1.1 is now available on GitHub. This release includes a number of performance enhancements and fixes but retains the existing settings from the first release. Additionally i’ve created a number of public methods for the plugin, this will allow access to some of the internal features of the plugin.
Object Oriented JavaScript: Modular development
by George Paterson.
In my previous article i talked about the fundamental concepts of object oriented programming, abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism. These concepts are a part of developing object oriented code and if structured appropriately can be used to create highly modular reusable code.
Developing reusable code is a necessity of software development, it allows for a more efficient development cycle and continuous improvement of an existing development.
The alternative to code reuse is code salvage. Code salvage is an inefficient method of stripping the code down for it’s useful parts and discarding the rest. In creating modular code we hope to support code reuse by making all of the code module useful.
America’s Cup site released
by George Paterson.
This week we at LBi London released the first phase of the new America’s Cup website. I had the opportunity to work with the hosts of the oldest active trophy in international sport as lead interface developer, with a team including Francesca Mancuso, Aaron Faber, Jamie Collins and Pia Gamon.
The site itself was built on EpiServer; which means .Net development and some of .Net’s more interesting aspects (web forms etc). What we produced is a HTML5 based site that is progressively enhanced using CSS and JavaScript. We couldn’t use all the elements HTML5 supports because we couldn’t be reliant on JavaScript for presentation in IE7 and 8. JavaScript development utilised jQuery and jQuery UI libraries.
This is only the first phase of ongoing development, with performance improvements including minification and new features for the site but an important first step in supporting one of the great yachting competitions.
jQuery HTML5 video background 1.0.0
by George Paterson.
I’ve recently been working on a jQuery plugin that uses a HTML5 video as the background for a page. An idea that perhaps owes far too much of it’s inception to splash pages, it was worth investigating; as a test for HTML5 video player development and because of it’s interesting use of the video element.