My name is Joshua Jenkins and this is debris; a collection of tiny snapshots into my life. I make websites in Portland. I like bicycles, coffee, cities, running, beer, and letters. I like other stuff too.

If you're feeling sassy you can ask me a question.

 

  1. Google has just released Google Chrome Frame, a plugin that tells Internet Explorer to render the page with WebKit instead of ShitFactory or whatever Microsoft uses internally. That means predictable layout quirks, some HTML5 support, and less alcohol while coding.

    Now to figure out how to get apathetic users to install the plugin.

    LINKGoogle Chrome Frame →


  2. I’ve been reading up a bit about HTML 5 lately and I am going to start outlining some things I find to be generally neato. The first is native support for “placeholder text” in form inputs.

    Placeholder text is pretty much everywhere anymore, the common example is search boxes that have, generally, lower-contrast text already in the search box that says something to the effect of “search [service]” in lieu of using a form label or some bastard table based form and terrible markup. Focusing on the element clears out the text and what you type in replaces it.

    It’s a useful, and pretty much standard, UI experience at this point, but it requires Javascript to get it done today. It’s not a lot of markup, especially with mature Javascript libraries like jQuery, but it’s a small hassle every time you want to do it.

    HTML5 proposes adding a new attribute to input elements called placeholder which takes care of this for you without any additional markup. In the future we’ll be able to to do something like <input type=”text” placeholder=”Search Entries”> and move on with our lives.

    Currently support looks like it’s still a ways off for most browsers, unfortunately. You can read more about placeholder in the current HTML5 draft.