Griffin Interactive

Doctor who is back

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:28:32 +0000

Doctor who ventures back to our screens this weekend in the latest 4th season, check out the video below.

Vista you start me up!

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:32:32 +0000

So some of us have moved to Windows Vista, a few teething problems but are please with some usability improvements. For instance the most obvious to note is that you no longer have to start in order to 'shut down'. As a user of Windows XP you had to select the 'Start' button to shut down the machine, which always seemed a bit of a misnomer to me. However Vista improves on this by only showing the icon button. Windows XP - Start it up then Shut it down
Windows Vista - Shut down Although I still found myself hunting the 'shut down' option and inadvertently selecting the globally recognised symbol for stand-by.

Managing multiple onLoad events with Prototype

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 13:11:58 +0000

This is an update to a previous article written way back in 2003 "Managing multiple onLoad events in JavaScript".

The article describes how to create an array of onload (window.onload) events in order to queue each event and enable the browser to perform onload sequentially. However this can all be forgotten in preference to the Prototype Javascript Framework and the useful Event Observe method.

Use Event.observe instead of using or DOM Level-0 event property window.onload = myFunction;

Alien Attack

Mon, 28 May 2007 20:43:16 +0000

Whilst looking through some dated archives I found some old animations, before condemning them to the waste bin I decided to upload a few to youtube for future reference. ISS-7 Alien Attack was a university animation project (1998), and created using 3D Studio Max.

Introducing the Slider control

Thu, 17 May 2007 20:01:14 +0000

The slider as a control interface can be found on a number of appliances within the home. Maybe more so within older analogue interfaces such as a television volume control or Hi-fi graphic equaliser. All in all the sliders prime use is to control a range, where the position of the slider defines the control. In this article we look at common uses of the 'Slider' within the home, the computer interface, web and Mobile UI.

Google's User Experience for Mobile Applications

Sun, 06 May 2007 14:06:37 +0000

Google have unveiled their Mobile User Experience Strategy for the delivery of Mobile Applications. To read more on the overall strategy check out the article "Google’s Mobile User Experience Strategy" over at Information Week.

Google state that the application design can be segmented into 6 layers:

Understanding users, anywhere, anytime
Fits in your pocket
More personal than the PC
Consistency across modes
Localization is intensified
Integrated devices, modes, products

BBC Explain Web Accessibility

Fri, 04 May 2007 23:20:55 +0000

When a national TV network air a story on Web Accessibility you know, finally knowledge is spreading and soon enough people will take notice. Explaining Accessibility to clients back in 2003 was difficult, So it is great to see topics such as Web Accessibility covered on the BBC's technology programme. Okay, some of the facts are a little scew; CSS has actually been around way before stated (Try looking at Effective Use of Style Sheets, dated 1997).

Mobile Web Guidelines

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 22:21:58 +0000

With input from big players such as Google, Microsoft, Nokia, AOL, AT&T, Ericsson, GoDaddy, and Vodafone the W3C have defined a set of basic guidelines for developing mobile Web content. Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0, consists of instructions on how to avoid technical issues when viewing web content from mobile devices. The guidelines also focus on how to prevent known problems such as pop-up windows, horizontal page scrolling and more. It is seen that these guides will aid content authors, web developers and web designers when planing to create websites that will also be available via mobile devices. There is also a Wiki dedicated to the Mobile Web Best Practices, enabling people to actively respond and add valuable input. Mobile Web Best Practices Wiki

XMLHttpRequest Object methods

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:14:03 +0000

Description of the Methods and Properties used to make up the XMLHttpRequest Object
Method/Property	Description
abort()	Stops the current request.
getAllResponseHeaders()	Returns the response headers as a string.
getResponseHeader("headerLabel")	Returns a single response header as a string.
open("method", "URL"[, asyncFlag[, "userName"[, "password"]]])	Initializes the request parameters.
send(content)	Performs the HTTP request.
setRequestHeader("label", "value")	Sets a label/value pair to the request header.
onreadystatechange	Used to set the callback function that handles request state changes.
readyState	Returns the status of the request:
	0 = uninitialised
	1 = loading
	2 = loaded
	3 = interactive
	4 = complete
responseText	Returns the server response as a string.
responseXML	Returns the server response as an XML document.
Status	Returns the status code of the request.
statusText	Returns the status message of the request.

IE AlphaImageLoader filter and browser memory usage

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 23:06:21 +0000

The AlphaImageLoader filter does allow basic rendering of alpha transparent PNGs within the IE web browser, however heavy usage does come with a price in memory usage.

If your webpage does use images with transparency, then the performance difference will depend on how many of those images are present, what size they are, and how they are drawn". (Quoted from the IEBlog).

Take a look at challenger.se the site uses a number of Alpha transparent images, including the ability for the users to drag images around the page.

The author of the site has noticed a few issues when supported Internet Explorer.

I have noticed that IE doesn't free up the memory usage of a filter allocates, even though the element/object its attached to is "deleted"/removed dynamically. This should be taken care of. Otherwise, single-page-navigation-pages allocates very much memory fast.

A change of css-properties will cause IE to re-download any background-images it has attached to the element, event though the background property isn't affected. The "event" bubbles to parent elements as well, which causes additional download. I think this has to be fixed soon, obtain a high priority. (Quote from the Swedish author).

Zends PHP Web application framework

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 23:09:20 +0000

Zend have announced that they are working (with some industry players) in developing a standard PHP application framework. Hopefully this will cement PHP use as a serious development language, I believe more often than not developers are put off by poor development practices when using PHP. With PHP 5.0 and a Standard development framework (backed by industry players) then it is sure to add more clout to a already very popular programming language. And yes I say programming language NOT scripting language. If Microsoft own .Net and SUN own Java then I wonder who will step in and fund the majority towards a credible PHP development framework? Project participants currently include: IBM, Oracle, MySQL and Intel.

JCB Song

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 10:08:44 +0000

jcssong.co.uk, created by monkeehub.com is a pure masterpiece and it is made even better if you are a fan of Transformers, and the A-Team. Check out the JCB Song music video too.

Google Blog Search

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 14:33:47 +0000

With the ever increasing popularity of Blog sites Google have decided to create a customised search site dedicated to Blogs. Called Google Blog Search. I guess Blogs have infiltrated the Google search index on mass, and with many refers between blogs it means that most blog sites are top of the search pile. Maybe this the the sole reason to split them up into their own separate search site??? What I would really like to know is, how do Google define a blog site. When is a blog not a blog?

IE and CSS :focus

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 23:45:58 +0000

CSS gives us (the web designer) the ability to add a pseudo class called :hover and :focus, however Internet Explorer does not support such functionality, and therefore you cannot tell if an anchor tag is legitamately chosen. relativelyabsolute.com shows us how we can get around this, using a .htc file (cssfocusandhover.htc) we can add the functionality to our web site. It is not ideal and if you have a large stylesheet it wont work at all. So what does it do? the .htc file reads all your external stylesheets and replaces any instance of :focus / :hover with a JavaScript alternative. Don't take my word for it, give it ago, and try to extend the functionality too.