Ripple Emulator for PhoneGap

Jun 18, 2014

I was trying to track down an effective way to test PhoneGap for Windows devices when I came across the ripple emulator extension for Google Chrome.

Sadly this doesn’t help my issue with windows :/ And it is a few versions behind for PhoneGap, but I was happy to see some errors showing up in my browser that had only shown up on an actual device before.

Specifically I have noticed the back button styling for one of my apps was misaligned, it looked fine in the browser, but was broken on actual devices. As well as some error dialogs that would just error out in a normal browser because they were dependant on PhoneGap actually work in ripple 🙂

It doesn’t eliminate the need for device testing, but being able to fix a few more issues before having to compile the app is definitely a time saver.

Mobile Icons

Jun 17, 2014

Matching mobile icons for all your app advertising needs 😀 Click for the full versions.

Fake HDR with Photoshop

Jun 11, 2014

I was working with a nice piece of stock today, nothing horrible, but the lighting was a bit plain, and I was using it for the hero image on the page and wanted something a bit more visually interesting.

I came across this really great tutorial on faking HDR in photoshop, it’s 8 steps, took minutes, and the result is lovely :3

It’s 8 Easy Steps to Fake an HDR Look in Photoshop by rod rodriguez.

I’m so happy with results I wanted to keep a copy of it here for the next time I want to jazz something up with a little fake HDR 🙂

Character-Code.com

May 28, 2014

A way to add on some nice icons to a page without images is to use ascii characters. These characters are essentially the same as text, so their size can be changed as much as you like without increasing the weight of the page or get degraded. If you’re anything like me, you’re very familiar with the double charat “»”, but there are so many more arrows and useful shapes you can use. Finding a full list of all the ascii codes available can be a little tricky, so I was very happy to come across character-code.com

This site has tons of great symbols you can take and use on your website without the muss and fuss of opening your graphics editing program 🙂

Why No Padlock?

Apr 3, 2014

Anyone whose dealt with secure pages before has undoubtedly run into the issue of having insecure items on the page that compromise the security. I have this issue pretty much every time I write a new secure page ._.

The only way to solve it is to track down all the little insecure elements and change them to a relative link. Sometime it can be really frustrating hounding through the code in search of the only little JPG that doesn’t want to play ball. That’s why I was really happy to come upon the “Why no Padlock” service today 🙂 It’s pretty simple, al you have to do is put in the URL of your secure-to-be page and it will list out all of the insecure items for you! It’s like magic 😀 Or, not so much…but it’s definitely wort a bookmark 🙂

http://www.whynopadlock.com/