So true:

Today I'm releasing a new jQuery plugin that I've been working on for a few days. This one adds a new control to your toolbox: the SpinControl. The SpinControl is a textbox for numbers only with two buttons on the side that in- or decreases the number input. It's one that software can use for many years, but never made its way into the web. That's why I made this script with the same features and some extra ones.

Some of the features are:

• Leave already supported number inputs alone (unless you want to override).
• Options like Min & Max values are possible, even another Step is an option.
• Using the Tab key will give focus to the buttons.
• Other keys like Up & Down, mouse events like mousewheel and key down for a few seconds will also in- or decrease the value.
• Not input bounded, so they can be used everywhere.
• No style is added in the script itself, so all is fully changeable with CSS. There's a little bit of help given via classes.
• Cross browser. Tested working in all major browsers: Internet Explorer 6 - 8, Firefox 1 - 3.5, Opera 9 & 10, Chrome 1 - 3 and Safari 4. It should work with newer browsers and may work with older browsers, no promise until tested.

So today I added for every jQuery plugin I made a minified version of it.

I compressed them all with the famous /packer/ from Dean Edwards. For the compression I used no extra options like 'Base62 encode' and 'Shrink variables', because I wanted keep my origional code without the extra spaces and comments. Beside that I found out that it wasn't always profitable to have one of the extra options active.

The compression for my script had a range of 23% to 30% savings, which can lead up to a few kb's to save. That doesn't sound much, but if you've got, let's say, a milion visitors every month, then it saves up to a few Gigabytes on bandwidth a month.

Anways you can find the minified script here: StyleSheetSwitcher, InfoBar and LinkAlert.

gr J

Today I'm releasing a new jQuery plugin I've developed. It's called LinkAlert, which makes it easy to detect which type a link is.

I got the idea after installing the Link Alert add-on for Firefox a while back. After using it for some time I recreated the idea as an userscript for GreaseMonkey. The script was one of my first scripts, but it was fully equipped.
Then yesterday I was thinking I want this for my site too. So I recreated the script, but then with all the advantages of the jQuery library.

There are two situations available for showing what for link it is; inline (beside the link) or beside your mouse pointer when you hover over it. Offcourse you can choose also both options.

The rest of the information you can find here or you can check out the example page.

Have fun, gr J

I love the VS08 Javascript IntelliSense; it's fast, useful and informative in combination with VSDoc.
The only bug I stumble up every time I code, is the IntelliSense within a private closure. I'll give an example of what I mean:

(function($) {  // private closure;
	$(function() {
		// do stuff;
	});
})(jQuery);

The problem with above code is that the argument $ in the function isn't given the data from the variable jQuery. So the advantage of IntelliSense within the closure is totally lost.

But yesterday I come up with a solution for all server-side scriptwriters (in this case ASP.net) that works in 2 ways; usefulness and source.
The solution is useful in the way that it should add IntelliSense for the arguments with the least amount of code.
The other way is that it I don't want the solution to be seen in the page source. I like my source clean and informative.

So here's the solution:

(function($) {  // private closure;  <% /*debug*/ if (false) { %> 
	$ = jQuery;
	// <% } /*end debug*/ %>
	$(function() {
		// do stuff
	});
})(jQuery);

The part that adds the IntelliSense is the $ = jQuery;. But the important part is the if (false) {. This causes the code to work while developing, but not to print it on the source.

After fixing these problems another problem raises. You can't add server-side inside Javascript, causes an error, which then stops the IntelliSense again. The solution for this problem was to put the server-side code in a Javascript comment. That easy and the server-side code still executes.

I hope other find this useful too, gr J

As the title already says, Internet Explorer 6 loses popularity as a browser.

IE6 huge amount of usage isn't because it's a great browser, in contrary, it's the worst browser in the top 10. No the main reason why IE6 is still popular is because companies are to lazy to update their browser. Staff just don't care; "It works" and it makes no profit to update.

But now with the new IE8 business are finally slowly updating their browser and IE8 is gaining a lot more interest. I'm not saying IE8 is great, because there are much better browsers available (FF, Opera, Chrome), but IE8 does care much more about standards.

So with this 'great' news, I'm ganna discontinue adding support for IE6. There was already an InfoBar for all >IE6 users, but now I'm not ganna care about IE6 to much anymore. For my JavaScripts I mostly did add support for IE6 missing hover, however the missing CSS Selector support had to be added manually.

Keep your browser up-to-date.

gr J

Today I'm releasing a new plugin for jQuery: StyleSheetSwitcher.

This plugin makes it possible to have multiple stylesheets on your site and makes it easy to switch between them.

You can find all information and files here and you can even view the plugin working on this example page.

Welcome to my site and my blog.

I'm not good in posting and my grammar skills aren't high.
On the other side, I like to post about my interrests and I hope you like it too.

Have fun reading.

gr J