Forms with WuFoo
I've been listening to Technikwürze Podcast, Episode 104 (a german podcast about design and webstandards) and they've been talking about WuFoo, an online service to create HTML forms. You can create forms using drag and drop on their site. If you want their server side validation, their statistics and their database power, you can purchase a paid subscription plan, but what I want to point out today is their XHTML/CSS export feature.
When you create a form, click the code-button and choose “XHTML/CSS code only” on the right they'll serve you the correct XHTML and CSS code for the form you designed ready somewhat ready to include it into your web site. I moved all their CSS rules into some kind of “namespace” so they wouldn't interfere with my site's CSS rules (particularly my CSS files require the form to be in an element with class “wf” assigned to it and the IDs being used in the form are prefixed with “wf_”). I added some jQuery JavaScript for the cool eye candy-effects and that's it. Now I can easily insert WuFoo-generated forms in my site (and oh boy, I will).
Note that you will have to take care of form validation yourself - you're not using the WuFoo guys' servers and I didn't include client-side validation in my JavaScript.
If you'd like to use my modified CSS file and my jQuery JavaScript code scroll down for a highlighted version or get it here: CSS and jQuery JavaScript. The CSS and XHTML code has been released under a CreativeCommons Attribution 2.5 license and I'm hereby releasing the jQuery code under the same license.
HtmlEntities Adobe AIR widget
Do you know the HTML Entity Character Lookup at Left Logic (leftlogic.com)? It comes in pretty handy, when you need special characters and their HTML entites, and it’s much faster than scanning through hundreds of rows of characters. I made an Adobe AIR Flash version.
The HTML Entity Character Lookup was originally developed by Remy Sharp as a HTML + JavaScript (i.e. web app) as well as an OS X dashboard widget. The only possibility for windows users to use that app offline was the HTML Entity Character Lookup Firefox plugin made by Yining. I wanted something different, so here it is: The first release of my Adobe AIR HtmlEntity widget. Now updated for AIR 1.0! In order to run this, you’ll need to install the Adobe AIR runtime available at http://adobe.com/go/getair. Once you got the runtime, you can install HtmlEntities by clicking the button below.
The application is licensed under a Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0 License. As far as I know the CreativeCommons licenses are not compatible with (or at least not recommended for) software, but since Remy Sharp licensed his app under this ShareAlike license I have to use the same license.
Cool gadgets on my desktop
I often use my computer in the late evening and even when I turn my screen brightness down my eyes hurt after some hours. However, I don’t like to keep the whole room lighted, so I got myself some gadgets: Magic Eggs, a ripoff of the well-known Oggz. Magic Eggs are 9,5cm tall eggs glowing in slowly changing colors. Using LED technology and an integrated rechargeable battery they provide up to 8 hours of colored light. I’m just charging them first time, so I can’t test whether their batteries really last eight hours, but I will test this…
Update: The eggs last even longer than eight hours - I had them running throughout the evening and the night for a couple of times now and they were still not empty more than 10h later when I woke up. Awsome!
Because they are battery-powered, they are portable - I love positioning them across my desk.
I ordered my Eggs from leds.de and it took them quite a while to ship them - seems they ran out of stock.
Oh, and here’s what you’re all waiting for: Images. More to come soon.
Oggz by amitp, released under cc-by-nc.
Update: More images in the full view of this post.