During my recent JavaScript capstone course at Westlake, I got an idea. We were doing an exercise on animation, using things like JavaScript’s setTimeout and adjusting the CSS clip property on a few divs. For some reason one of the blocks reminded me of the animation at the beginning of all Marvel movies, when it looks like someone is flipping rapidly through a bunch of comic pages. I envisioned being able to accomplish this animation using only JavaScript.

Here’s a sample of the original animation, from the Spider-Man intro. I also found a few samples of other obviously homemade versions of the Marvel intro, like this After Effects version.

The below is built using JavaScript only, and relies heavily on jQuery’s animation effects. There’s even a cool soundtrack for those with newer browsers (its embedded using HTML 5’s audio element). The font isn’t exactly the same, and the music is courtesy of Dredg (everyone go out and pick up “The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion” right now), but I think its as close as you can get with JS to the original. Click the play button to check it out.

If you’d like to see a tutorial for how this was accomplished, leave a comment. If I get enough requests, I’ll put together a how-to.

Play

Are you the type of web surfer who has tons of tabs open all the time? Do you get frustrated when one web page causes all your other tabs to crash, or even just slows your productivity when you install a plugin and have to restart your browser?

How many of the tabs that you typically keep open all day are web apps? How many of them do you frequently revisit or refresh, constantly checking their status?

If you can identify with any of the questions above (and you have a Mac), get ready to experience a revolution. Fluid.app allows you to insert any web app URL, give it a title and icon, and voila, you’ve got an application (or SSB: Site Specific Browser) running like an application in OS X.

You can dock all your new web apps (I’ve got Yahoo Mail, Finance, Basecamp, Facebook and Google Reader setup here):

You can also convert your SSB into a MenuExtra SSB, which exists only as an icon in your OS X Status Bar:

Fluid.app is based on Safari’s Webkit rendering engine, and all the SSB’s you create are true Cocoa OS X applications.

Once the coolness factor wears off, you may start to realize what this all means.  People have been talking for years about how once web apps get to the point where they’re as robust as desktop apps, we’d see a major paradigm shift in the way people use computers.  With this single application, you are now able to convert any web app you use into a desktop app.

While web apps still have a ways to go before they truly offer the same functionality as desktop apps, this is the first major move in that direction.

Grab Fluid.app today.  Its changed the way I use my Mac in less than 24 hours since I got it.

I was in New York on June 13 with NESN, visiting the Blogs With Balls conference, which is a conference for people involved in both blogging and sports.  The conference is still in its infancy, with an attendance of around 250, and it was held in the basement of Stout, which wasn’t all bad, since the Guinness 250 lunch started around 11:30. Rockin’ good times.

The conference was an eclectic mix ranging from CEO’s of blog networks like YardBarker and SBNation to individual bloggers who have taken the leap from corporate life to the risky world of independent blogging.  Conference topics ranged from leveraging social media and working with content networks, to getting down to business with making money with your blog.  I especially enjoyed Kathleen Hessert’s discussion about how Sports Media Challenge proposed Twitter to Shaq, and not only did he embrace the technology, but his Tweets now have a circulation larger than the daily circulation of the New York Times.  Simply astounding.

Three Things You Need to Know

My largest takeaways from the conference:

• Become a portal.  If your site can be the start of a discussion, you can increase users and traffic exponentially.
• Join a blog network.  If you haven’t considered it, joining a blog network can be a tremendous benefit to your traffic.  I’m going to get into more detail on this in a future post (I’m reading “ProBlogger” right now…)
• Integrate related industry content gracefully.

Become a Content Ninja

I’d like to get into a bit more detail on that last one.  It seems to me that there are a lot of large blog sites out there that do one of the two following items, and do them well, and lead their category or niche because of it:

1. Offer original content.
2. Offer aggregate content.

It also seems that the tendency of companies that already do one is to stick with that one, and not designate much focus to the other.  What I heard resoundingly at this conference is that if you can master both, and do it with a little flair, you can likely top your niche or category.  The trick is finding enough original content to come up with, and being tech-savvy enough to incorporate the aggregate content.  Of course, there are new web services like Yahoo! Pipes that are making this easier to accomplish practically daily.

Definitely Check it Out

Overall, this was an extremely beneficial experience, and I would recommend it to anyone in the New York area who has an interest in sports on the web.  Definitely check it out next time around.  They’re supposedly going to post video from the show on the BWB site, so keep an eye on it over the coming weeks.

I’ve been working with WordPress for years now, and I thought it might be a good time to start sharing my knowledge of WordPress best practices.  One item that I think a lot of people just getting started using WordPress might find handy is how to build a navigation that is driven by pages.  Having a navigation driven by pages has numerous benefits, including having the nav written out as an XHTML compliant unordered list, being able to include or exclude any pages you’d like, being able to sort the list items to your preference, and being able to style the current page’s nav button differently.

Create those Pages

The first thing you need to do to setup a nav driven by pages is create the pages themselves.  The title you give the page will be the text that appears in the nav.  Also note that by default the nav items will be sorted alphabetically, but you can prioritize them setting the “Order” field from within each individual page.

The Magic of Template Tags

After you’ve created all the pages you’d like to include in the navigation, all that’s left to do is add the template tag to your template (usually in header.php).  The template tag that lists pages in WordPress is, you guessed it, wp_list_pages. Here’s a sample template tag included in my header.php file that passes a few parameters to the function:

<?php wp_list_pages('include=2,7,9,11&title_li='); ?>

The above block of code includes an opening php statement <?php, the function call wp_list_pages('');, and the arguments to be passed to the function include=2,7,9,11 and title_li=.

Let’s take a look at the two arguments I passed to the wp_list_pages function, starting with include=2,7,9,11.

This tells the function I’d like to include only pages with the id’s of 2, 7, 9 and 11. To find the page id’s that match your specific pages, go to your pages>edit screen and hover over the link for the title of the page, and (if you’re using Firefox) look at the bottom of your browser. At the end of the link you’ll see something like post=7. The number here is your page id. Plug in the page id’s for any pages you’d like to include, and you’re good to go!

The other argument I pass to the wp_list_pages function is to remove the title that would appear by default. By passing title_li= you’re essentially saying “set the title to blank”, and the function does not return a title list item. Generally you won’t want the title, which is up one level in the document tree, to appear if you’re making a navigation that you’ll end up floating to the left with CSS.

The ampersand between the two arguments just allows you to string together multiple arguments. You can string together as many as you’d like to further develop your own custom WordPress queries using any of the further options detailed on the WordPress.org wp_list_pages template tag page.

Check out the Coolness

The last, and probably most worthwhile thing about building your nav in WordPress using pages is that while navigating your site, the list will be auto-updated with a class that allows you to style the current page’s button to look different than the other nav buttons.  After you’ve got your nav set up and working, visit one of the pages and then view the page source.  You’ll see the class of current_page_item applied to the list item for the page you’re currently on, automatically generated by WordPress for each page.

Now just start styling your way to a dynamic WordPress page-driven navigation! If you need more info on the CSS required to float a list to the left that creates a horizontally oriented navigation out of an unordered list, check out this tutorial at 456 Berea St.

I hope this can help you to build your own navigation, and take it even further using the WordPress.org template tag page.

So right about now I’m wishing that if I could be anywhere, it would be at SXSW (South by Southwest).  For those of you who don’t know, its about the coolest festival on the planet.  And I don’t know from experience, just from colleagues and coworkers and podcasts and industry moguls giving me an earful.

In addition to being a hotspot for web design, SXSW boasts an impressive musical lineup each year, and this year I’ll be disappointed that I’ve missed The Everyday Visuals, Madi Diaz, and the undisputable heavyweight of soul, Miss Erykah Badu.

I’ve been hearing about it for weeks, from Paul Boag blabbering about it on his Boagworld podcast, to having to postpone projects with colleagues who are attending, to CSS guru Eric Meyer tweeting, “If you’re not going to SXSW, tweet like you’re there.  Nobody will know the difference.”  Yeah, that almost makes up for not being able to attend.

But alas, I am not one to linger, and the time spent here at home has given me the opportunity to start exploring jQuery, which was recommended to me by Alex King, famed author of the WordPress Popularity Contest plugin, and another item that Paul Boag has been going on endlessly about for months now.  I finally broke down and downloaded the library and started playing with it.

From my first impressions, Paul has reason to be going on endlessly.  It seems that the potential of what a web designer or developer can accomplish with the JavaScript library is in fact endless.  The first item that caught my eye was the fact that on the jQuery homepage they offer the expanded, developer version of the library, along with the compressed, production version.  I was immediately reminded of the hours I’ve spent testing the best method to minify, compress and serve my Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries.  jQuery does this for me?  Fantastic.

Second, I was really impressed with the quality and quantity of documentation.  Compared to Prototype, jQuery blows it out of the water in terms of a working online manual.  I think I’ve officially moved the “Prototype and script.aculo.us” book to the back of my “must read” list.  I’ve actually read the first half of it already, but it was cryptic and would have required re-reading on my part to fully absorb the material.  jQuery is the complete opposite.  There are video tutorials explaning the beginner steps.  Video tutorials.

The last thing about jQuery that really hooked me was the ease with which a web designer can pick up the library.  A lot of the arguments you pass to the library are the same as in CSS.  So if you’re looking for a div with the id of conference, you pass (”#conference”) as the argument.

It seems like its going to be really easy to quickly get up to speed with the library, and that it has a lot of power in terms of what you can do with it.  If you’re interested, check out the jQuery site, the jQuery UI site, as well as some of the video tutorials. Really, really, really cool stuff.

I’ve run through this process a few times now, so I thought I’d document my steps for anyone who’s interested in setting up the multi-user version of WordPress on their local box for testing purposes.  The power of the multi-user version of WordPress is impressive, especially when combined with BBPress for forums, and the teetering-on-official-release BuddyPress for social aspects.  Ready to dig in?  Lets go.

The first thing you need to ensure prior to installing WordPress MU locally is that you have the underlying technologies installed.  WordPress and WordPress MU run on LAMP, or in this case MAMP.  There are all-in-one packages out there that install all three for you, and OS X does come with versions of Apache and PHP, but we want to learn how to get our hands dirty and be able to fix anything ourselves in times of crisis, right? So we need to make sure you’ve got Apache running, MySQL installed with a dedicated database setup, and PHP installed.

Turning on the Apache Web Server

First, we’ll tackle Apache.  This sentence will probably take longer to write than it will for you to turn on Apache on your Mac.  Go to System Preferences > Sharing > Web Sharing.  Checking of the “Web Sharing” checkbox here toggles the Apache server.  If you ever need to restart Apache, its as easy as coming in here, unchecking the “Web Sharing” checkbox, and checking it again.  Cake.

Installing MySQL

On to MySQL.  You’ll need to download the most recent version of MySQL, which can be found at the MySQL downloads page. Click “downloads” under the MySQL Community Server section.  Scroll down to the “Mac OS X (package format)” link and click.  Here is where you’ll have to ensure you download the proper package based on your Mac.  I chose the 10.5 (x86) since I’m running an Intel MacBook Pro, which ias the x86 processor. After you determine which package suits your Mac, click the “pick a mirror” link, and if you’ve never downloaded anything from the MySQL site before, you’ll have to register quickly.  Once you’ve registered and downloaded the dmg (named mysql-5.1.31-osx10.5-x86.dmg in my case), you’re ready to run the installer.

Once you’ve opened the dmg, you’ll see two .pkg files we’ll be interested in.  First, run the installer pkg file, which will walk you through a simple install.  After the initial install you’ll want to launch MySQLStartupItem.pkg, which will ensure that MySQL starts each time you restart your Mac. You’ve now got MySQL installed on your Mac!  Note the install location, as we’ll need that later on to create the database for WordPress MU.  Mine installed at /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql.

Another item worth mentioning is that working with MySQL, PHP and Apache requires you to have access to a lot of OS X’s hidden files.  I recommend a great OS X app called FileXaminer, which I read about in MacWorld a while back.  FileXaminer lets you browse all the hidden files in Finder, and chmod the permissions on files and folders directly from Finder, rather than the command line.  Definitely a great solution for 10 bucks.

Installing PHP

The final piece of our MAMP stack is PHP.  PHP installation is fairly straightforward, and the best package online is located at Entropy’s PHP download page. There’s a box on this page titled “PHP 5 on Mac OS X 10.4, PPC and Intel”, and you can select the “PHP 5.2.4 for Apache 2″ package.  Its definitely worth reading through this page first, but most users will have the default setup of Apache, and won’t need to make any changes prior to running the install.

After running the entropy installer, you can run a test to make sure everything went well.  Create a file titled test.php, and stick the following code in it: <?php phpinfo() ?>. Put test.php in your /Sites folder (/Users/yourusername/Sites), and then open up http://10.0.1.2/~yourusername/test.php.  The IP used in this example is found in System Preferences > Sharing > Web Sharing.

The phpinfo function is a great way to quickly check all the settings of your PHP install, so save this test file for reference in the future.

There’s one final tweak to PHP that’s really a best practice.  You’ll want to navigate to your php.ini file, and open it in your favorite text editor.  My php.ini is located at /private/etc/php.ini.  Make a duplicate of this file (sometimes the original will be called php.ini.default, so make a dup called php.ini).  Once you’ve opened the php.ini file, search for “register_globals = On”, and switch it to register_globals = Off”.  Also, search for “magic_quotes_gpc = Off” and switch it to “magic_quotes_gpc = On”.  In the php.ini file, all lines that start with a ; are commented out, so you’ll want to search for these two lines that are not commented out and then make the changes.

Save the changes in php.ini, then restart Apache in System Preferences.  Then open your test.php file again, and look for the changes to make sure they were made.

Installing WordPress MU

Finally, its time for the money melon.  Download the latest version of WordPress MU from the download page.  Unzip the package and stick it in your /Sites directory, and rename (I chose “wpmu”).  The first thing you’ll want to do before attempting to install WordPress MU is to open the README.txt file that is in the root directory of the unzipped WPMU package.  You’ll want to read this carefully and cater the specific files you your specific install case, but they basically touch upon the php.ini file that we’ve already edited, and the httpd.conf file, which is Apache’s root config file.  I found mine located at /private/etc/httpd.conf.  You can find a better understanding of the Apache httpd.conf file, the directives contained within, and an explanation of the .htaccess files you can use to override the httpd.conf file in your local sites at the Apache web site.  I found that after reading a few short pages here, that the Apache config file cascade is very similar to the cascade of CSS files and rules.  Cool stuff.

Creating a MySQL database

Once you’ve read through the README.txt and made appropriate changes to your php.ini and httpd.conf files (and taken decent notes, hopefully), you’re ready for the install.  Since you’ve already got the files unzipped in your /Sites directory, the next step of the install is creating the database. Open the Terminal application (Applications > Utilities > Terminal), and type the following command:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -u root -p

where the path matches the MySQL path I mentioned to remember earlier.  The -u root tells MySQL that you want to login as “username root”, and the -p tells MySQL to prompt you for a password. If you’ve never logged into MySQL in terminal before, the username for root will either be root or blank.  After you’ve successfully logged into MySQL, you’ll know as the command prompt will have changed to:

mysql>

To create a database, type the following command:

CREATE DATABASE wpmu;

where wpmu is the name of the database.  You can name the database whatever you’d like, but make sure to follow it with the semi-colon, and remember the name of your database.

While we’re in here, its probably a good idea to change your root username.  Type the following command:

UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD(”new password”) WHERE User=”root”;

Replace the new password with your desired password.  Once we’ve created the database, and updated the root MySQL user’s password (and noted both), we can exit MySQL by typing:

exit

Running the WPMU Installer

You can now open the index.php from your wpmu folder in your web browser.  It may tell you that you have to change the permissions on a few folders prior to running the install.  If this occurs, it is extremely easy to modify the permissions using FileXaminer.  The two folders you’ll have to mod are the root /wpmu folder and the /wp-content folder, changing the permissions on both from 755 to 777.  After you’ve made these changes, refresh the index.php file, and enter the proper information.

Since WPMU doesn’t allow you to install at “localhost”, and you have to use “localhost.localdomain”, I had to make a change in my hosts file as well.  The file is located in /private/etc/hosts, and I changed:

127.0.0.1 localhost

to

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain

and resaved the file.  Also note that I set the database location to “localhost.localdomain”.  The other information on the install screen should be pretty simple; the database name and password we just created in MySQL.  Once you’ve filled out the form, submit and you should be looking at a nice, fresh, local install of WPMU.

If you do get stuck, the WPMU Forums are a big help, as most likely users have run into your same problem. The steps above worked for me, but there may be variables with your certain configuration that you’ll need answered in the Forums.

Good luck, and happy WPMU’ing!

UPDATE 3/4/09: If you’d like to configure OS X Leopard to host multiple local Wordpress instances, follow this great tutorial at O’Reilly.  I’ve spent hours piecing together solutions from various articles, but this O’Reilly article sums it up great.  Basically, I’ve now got WPMU running locally at test.wpmu.local, and WordPress running locally at test.wp.local.  Apache’s Virtual Hosts are really powerful, and essential if you’re going to be working on multiple client websites that run on WordPress.

Sometimes it’s just as easy as getting out of your chair and hopping around like a weirdo.

How can we keep creativity around? Is it possible to call up at any point?

Between being a web designer at work and a musician at home. How do I balance the need to stay creative?

I believe that it is possible to be creative at any point in time, even when you feel all is lost and you cannot make one more brush stroke or hum one more tune. Here I’ll offer up a few tips on staying creative.

Score it

Add some music to change your mood. If you’re already listening to music, change the tune or listen to a different genre. One good way to go about changing your mood with music is listening to the ol’ iPod on shuffle.

Reset

The idea here is to get your mind off of whatever is distracting it. Lets get back to that quote about hopping around like a weirdo. My favorite way to get out of any negative feelings that are holding me back from my work is to get out of my chair and go for a lap around my building. I usually skip at some point on this walk. Yes, I may look like an idiot, but who really cares? It makes me laugh at myself uncontrollably. Laughing enough that by the time I get back to my desk, I’m ready to go with a clear head and clear mind.

Prime it

Figure out what gets your mind going creatively when you are at your peak and surround yourself with it. Is it a certain painting? A lucky penny? Calling a good friend for a laugh? Whatever it is, keep it around when you are working.

Don’t forget about this great article over at A List Apart titled “Staying Motivated“, which I have pinned to the wall right next to my desk at work.

Good luck!