Really Useful Tutorials You Should Have Read in June 2010

This update covers really useful tutorials, tips and techniques that you should have read in June 2010. Featured publications include: Justin Tadlock, Nettuts+, David Walsh Blog, Smashing Magazine, Tutorialzine, A List Apart, Perishable Press, Carsonified, Marcofolio, Nicolas Gallagher, Codrops, Onextrapixel, Digging into WordPress, Six Revisions, Line25, 1stWebDesigner, Alex Marandon, and Voosh Themes.

Featured authors include: Justin Tadlock, David Walsh, Martin Angelov, Nicolas Gallagher, Jeff Starr, Marco Kuiper, Faruk Ates, Chris Coyier, Chris Spooner, Richard Fink, Dan Wellman, Rafael Soto, Lorna Jane Mitchell, Divyang Patel, John Cox, Mary Lou, Irina Borozan, Jonathan Phillips, Paras Chopra, Alex Marandon, Darren, and Chris Creed.

• How to Build a Distance Finder with Google Maps API
  By Irina Borozan, June 29th, 2010
  Site: 1stwebdesigner
• Super Cool CSS Flip Effect with Webkit Animation
  By Chris Spooner, June 28th, 2010
  Site: Line25
• WordPress Shortcode for Includes
  By Chris Coyier, June 28th, 2010
  Site: Digging into WordPress
• Beautiful Photo Stack Gallery with jQuery and CSS3
  By Mary Lou, June 27th, 2010
  Site: Codrops
• The Ultimate Guide To A/B Testing
  By Paras Chopra, June 24th, 2010
  Site: Smashing Magazine
• Taking Advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 with Modernizr
  By Faruk Ateş, June 22nd, 2010
  Site: Perishable Press
• Unlimited Scroll Using the Twitter API
  By Marco Kuiper, June 22nd, 2010
  Site: Marcofolio
• How to Build a Web Widget (Using jQuery)
  By Alex Marandon, June 22nd, 2010
  Site: Alex Marandon
• An Introduction to Cookies
  By Tom Clement, June 21st, 2010
  Site: Nettuts+
• How to Micro-Optimize Your CSS
  By Jeff Starr, June 21st, 2010
  Site: Perishable Press
• Latest Post Blogroll Slider with jQuery and PHP
  By Mary Lou , June 17th, 2010
  Site: Codrops
• Apple-like Retina Effect With jQuery
  By Martin Angelov, June 16th, 2010
  Site: Tutorialzine
• HTML5 Microdata: Welcome to the Machine
  By John Cox, June 14th, 2010
  Site: Nettuts+
• Getting Started with Tumblr & Custom Theme Design
  By Chris Spooner, June 14th, 2010
  Site: Line25
• How to Create Your Own BuddyPress Theme
  By Darren, June 14th, 2010
  Site: 1stwebdesigner
• Multiple Backgrounds and Borders with CSS 2.1
  By Nicolas Gallagher, June 10th, 2010
  Site: Nicolas Gallagher
• How to Authenticate Users With Facebook Connect
  By Rafael Soto, June 10th, 2010
  Site: Nettuts+
• A Refresher on Custom Taxonomies
  By Justin Tadlock, June 10th, 2010
  Site: Justin Tadlock
• Making Your First Google Chrome Extension
  By Martin Angelov, June 9th, 2010
  Site: Tutorialzine
• MySQL Has Functions
  By Jonathan Phillips, June 8th, 2010
  Site: Onextrapixel
• Web Fonts at the Crossing
  By Richard Fink, June 8th, 2010
  Site: A List Apart
• Animated Wicked CSS3 3D Bar Chart
  By Marco Kuiper, June 7th, 2010
  Site: Marcofolio
• 9 Magic Methods for PHP
  By Lorna Jane Mitchell, June 7th, 2010
  Site: Carsonified
• Create a Professional Portfolio Using WordPress 3.0 Custom Post Types
  By Chris Creed, June 7th, 2010
  Site: Voosh Themes
• How to Create a Drop-down Nav Menu with HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery
  By Dan Wellman, June 7th, 2010
  Site: Nettuts+
• A Guide to Google Font API
  By Divyang Patel, June 1st, 2010
  Site: Six Revisions
• Goodbye, Headaches. Hello, Menus!
  By Justin Tadlock, June 1st, 2010
  Site: Justin Tadlock
• Using jQuery or MooTools For Drag, Drop, Sort, Save
  By David Walsh, June 1st, 2010
  Site: David Walsh Blog

So which tutorials you found most useful. Also fee

A jQuery-powered social dropdown menu

• Skip the code & show me the demo
• Download (.zip)

Features @ a glance

• Flexibility for you to add as many items as you wish (although how many social networks could you possibly be registered with? Wait...don't answer that).
• The menu remains locked to the top-right of your page as you vertically scroll, for added accessibility (although this feature it does not work in IE6).
• A dash of CSS3 dropshadow effect adds a little extra dimension to the display (not visible in IE).
• Amaze your dog, your cat or your neighbor's goldfish with yet another menu script you probably don't need.

I've tested it across browsers but, as mentioned, there are some positioning issues with IE6

jQuery Plugin

jQuery Plugin - imgBox

So, a couple of weeks ago I started working on challenging project - imgBox. imgBox is a jQuery plugin that implements a smooth zoom effect on images. Download it, try it, let me know what you think.

You can see the demo at this page, and you can download the complete source code with examples from here.

What’s So Great About this Plugin?

• Elegant looking, Mac-like effect
• Popup blockers are no problem. The content opens within the active browser window
• Multiple images can be opened at the same time
• Can be customized with settings and CSS
• It’s just 7KB (packed)
• All modern browsers supported, including IE6

jQuery Plugin - Feature List

I love the simplicity of using (and more important re-using) jQuery plugins. So I decided to release a plugin that came from my personal need - Feature List. This jQuery plugin enables simple and easy creation of an interactive "Featured Items" widget.

You can see the demo at this page, and you can download the complete source code with examples from here.

What’s So Great About this Plugin?

• Slick effect, no Flash needed
• It’s just 2K
• Reusable on multiple containers
• Cycles items via slideshow
• Can be styled with custom HTML/CSS

jQuery show/hide list information

Information

This version of show / hide information uses jQuery and an unordered list. The list items all have the same classname and can be used anywhere on your page. The first word in each list item has a classname that is the same as the id of the div to be shown or hidden. The div can contain any information and can be styled as you want.

Tested in IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera, Safari (PC) and Google Chrome.

Download

All the information you need for this demo is in the page source code. You will also need a copy of jQuery.

jQuery - show me some more

Information

Yet another 'show me some more / less' routine, but this time using jQuery to add a little animation and to simplify the script.

Just click the 'more ....' to expose the extra information and the '.... less' to close it.

The jQuery is just a couple of lines long and all that is needed is to enclose the hidden information in a div with a class="hidden", then immediately after this div have an element with a classname 'show'. This demo uses an empty element into which the jQuery routine adds 'more ....' and is changed to '.... less' when displaying the extra imformation. I have used jQuery to hide the extra information and to display the 'more / less' clickable areas so that if javascript is turned off then the full text will be shown without the 'more... / .... less' text.

Tested in IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera, Safari(PC) and Google Chrome.

Download

All the information you need for this can be found in the source code and you will also need a copy of jQuery.

jQuery - Getting the Day from a Date

Information

This is a jQuery/javascript routine which allows you to select the date and it will display the day of the week for this date.

The date picker routine will automatically alter the number of days depending on the month selected and the year. Leap years will automatically allow for February 29th.

If you select a date of the 31st for instance and then change the month to one with fewer days then the date will adjust to the last day of the new month.

You will need a copy of jQuery to be able to use this routine.

If you would like a copy of this demonstration then please email me and make a donation to support stunicholls.com.

Download

I am fascinated with how much you can do with so little using CSS3. Many user interface elements that require images in order to have appropriate visual appearance now can be styled only with CSS3. In order to prove that I assigned myself a task to create Windows 7 start menu only with CSS3 (and some icons).

Create Windows 7 start menu using CSS3 only

Simple AJAX Commenting System

This time, we are making a Simple AJAX Commenting System. It will feature a gravatar integration and demonstrate how to achieve effective communication between jQuery and PHP/MySQL with the help of JSON.

Simple AJAX Commenting System

Simple Website Layout Tutorial Using HTML 5 and CSS 3

As most of us know HTML 5 has created a big buzz on internet and is sure to give Adobe a hard time. Apple believes that HTML5 is what will define the web and would love to see more developers adopt it instead of Flash. Now that big video sites such as YouTube are testing support for HTML5 (Mashable).

HTML 5 is a breakthrough which will improve the sites from design view point, seo etc. It when combined with css3 can make amazing web sites. For this you should check out this collection of all HTML 4 & 5


Simple Website Layout Tutorial Using HTML 5 and CSS 3

5 Simple Basic Steps to Create Facebook Application

This article explains the basic steps needed to create Facebook Application. The steps and test application created in this example can be used as a template for your next more sophisticated applications. At the end of the article you will be presented with resources for the documentation, forum, blogs, and feeds to keep you up to date with the current Facebook platform status, since it is still evolving constantly.

5 Simple Basic Steps to Create Facebook Application

How to change upload file size on a Windows localhost

In a localhost Apache + PHP it is easy to change the uploaded file size to something larger than the default 16M.

An example below show you how to change the upload file size to say 50M.

* Locate the PHP.ini file, for example in c:/xampp/Apache/bin/php.ini and open it with any text editor like WordPad by right-clicking -> Open With -> then choose WordPad.


How to change upload file size on a Windows localhost

CodeIgniter Tutorial: [Creating Accounting Application] Part 5 The Mainpage

Ok, let’s start with the easiest one first. We will create a simple menu page that contains links to other modules on the system. We put it on the Mainpage controller class.

Look at the Mainpage.php controller file. There is a function on it named exactly the same with the filename: Mainpage(). This should be exactly the same including the case. This is the constructor or initialization function of the class. Each time the class is called or instantiate, this function is called automatically. We put some initialization lines inside it:

CodeIgniter Tutorial: [Creating Accounting Application] Part 5 The Mainpage

CodeIgniter Tutorial: [Creating Accounting Application] Part 4 Preparing to Code

After installing StarUML PHP 5 Code Generator Template , StarUML will have a capability to generate PHP template code based on the models we have defined before. But there’s a little hack to be done so that the naming of the file generated complies with CodeIgniter.

CodeIgniter Tutorial: [Creating Accounting Application] Part 5 The Mainpage

CodeIgniter Tutorial: [Creating Accounting Application] Part 3 ER Diagram and Creating Database

In the previous parts of this tutorial series we have discussed how to setup the application environment using XAMPP and CodeIgniter, and the application specification. We have done the analysis and design using UML use case and class diagram with free UML diagram tool StarUML.

In this part, we will discuss the database design for our application. This database is needed to hold the data for our application.

We are going to draw the entity relationship diagram (ERD) using a free tool called MySQL workbench, formerly fabForce ERD tools for MySQL. Before continuing, please download the program here and install it to your computer.

At the end of the designing process, we will create our database structure directly to a MySQL server that can be used by our application.

CodeIgniter Tutorial: [Creating Accounting Application] Part 3 ER Diagram and Creating Database

CodeIgniter Tutorial: [Creating Accounting Application] Part 2 The Application Specification and UML Diagrams

In this part of the tutorial series we will discuss about the application specification. After defining the user requirements we will do the analysis and designing the using UML use cases and class diagram. We are going to use a free UML diagramming tool called StarUML. You can download the program here if you have not installed it in your computer.

CodeIgniter Tutorial: [Creating Accounting Application] Part 2 The Application Specification and UML Diagrams

CodeIgniter Tutorial: [Creating Accounting Application] Part 1 Setting Up the Environment

This tutorial series explain how to develop a web based application using CodeIgniter, the PHP application framework. As you might already know, CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications.

In this tutorial, we took the case of developing a basic web based accounting application that can input cash book and bank book data transaction and journal entry.

The tutorial series will cover:

* Part 1 Setting Up the Environment: XAMPP (apache, mysql, and PHP) and CodeIgniter
* Part 2 The application specification, analysis and design using UML use case and class diagram using free UML diagram tool StarUML.. (download here if you have not install it in your computer) . We also need to install StarUML PHP 5 Code Generator Template to automatically generate the class files from class diagram created
* Part 3 ER Diagram and Creating Database using MySQL workbench, formerly fabForce ERD tools for MySQL
* Part 4, preparing to code in CodeIgniter, exporting class diagram to PHP scripts
* Part 5 Coding, the Mainpage
* Part 6 Coding, the and COA Module explain the application coding using CodeIgniter
* Part 8 Coding, the Cashbook Module explain the application coding using CodeIgniter
* Part 7 Coding, the Bankbook Module explain the application coding using CodeIgniter
* Part 8 Coding, the Journal Module explain the application coding using CodeIgniter
* Part 9 Coding, the Reporting Module explain the application coding using CodeIgniter
* Part 10 Conslusion and Further Development: AJAX, Facebook Application


CodeIgniter Tutorial: [Creating Accounting Application] Part 1 Setting Up the Environment

40+ CodeIgniter Framework Tutorials for Kick-Ass PHP Application

Here is the list of 40+ Excellent And Useful CodeIgniter Application Development Framework Tutorials & Resources that includes some useful tutorials and few great resources that has been developed for programer and designers. We are hoping that you will learn further on CodeIgniter Application Development Framework after reading out this post.




40+ CodeIgniter Framework Tutorials for Kick-Ass PHP Application

Youtube like Rating with Jquery and Ajax

Are you looking for Google style CAPTCHA (Human verification code) script for PHP projects, Please take a look at this post.
I want to explain how to implement cool-php-captcha script for forms. Use it and add security to your web projects.


Youtube like Rating with Jquery and Ajax

Making a Slick MobileApp Website with jQuery & CSS

As a web developer, you have to bring creativity and attention to detail to your work. It is often the little things that leave a lasting impression to a visitor. Be it a lovable character illustration, or unique slideshow, it is usually not the information you present that is memorable, but the way you present it.

Today we are making a complete jQuery & CSS website for a fictional mobile application. It is going to feature semantic markup and a progressively enhanced slideshow effect. It will allow the user to see four of the most popular smartphones running the mobile app.

Making a Slick MobileApp Website with jQuery & CSS

10 examples of futuristic CSS3 techniques

CSS3 has not been here for a long time, but talented designers have already found a lot of great ways to use it to create beautiful and efficient techniques. In this article, I'll show you the top 10 examples of what you can do using the power of CSS3.

10 examples of futuristic CSS3 techniques