Adding a New Property to an Object

In Javascript, you can add new properties to an object using dot notation or square bracket notation.

var myObject = {
      key1: "val1",
      key2: "val2",
      key3: "val3"
};

DOT NOTATION:

myObject.key4 = "val4";

Object { key1: "val1", key2: "val2", key3: "val3", key4: "val4" }

SQUARE BRACKET NOTATION:

With square brackets, it'll want the key name as a string.

myObject["key5"] = "val5";

Object { key1: "val1", key2: "val2", key3: "val3", key4: "val4", key5: "val5" }

Image Credit: Spot the Skylab by NASA at nasa.gov

Happy Holidays & A Joyful New Year

Winterscape Painting by Peter Mønsted, © Public Domain

Evolution of CSS Layouts

CSS provides a number of properties that affect the layout of elements on the page, including those associated with floats, positioning, inline-block, columns, flexbox and grid. Some of these CSS features are not generally useful for laying out entire pages. Positioning, while it looks promising at first, is problematic when elements have a variable heights based on content from a database for example, making it impossible to know ahead of time where to place each element.

Inline-block is good at flowing blocks next to each other and wrapping to the next line when necessary, but it can’t easily create layouts that span columns/rows. CSS columns are good for one purpose: laying out text in multiple columns, while flowing text from one column to the next, but it is not for page layout. That leaves: floats, flexbox, and grid, which are are the main focus here.

Floats have been the tool of choice for page layout for many years. They have the advantages of universal browser support, and the ability to flow other page elements around them, or below them with clears. Many page layouts can be achieved with floats, but they do not provide for vertical centering, and can’t produce the “holy grail” layout where elements are centered both horizontally and vertically. They are also complex to use, and were not intended for page layout.

Flexbox is a major advance for page layout. It’s not as universally supported in browsers as floats, but support is good and getting better. Flex items in a flex container will adjust their sizes based on the width of the container and available space. The “holy grail” layout is achievable with both horizontal and vertical centering. One disadvantage of flexbox is that it is only one dimensional. It can layout a row for each flex container, and column spanning is possible by using multiple flex containers, but two dimensional layouts with both row and column spanning are harder to achieve and generally require multiple levels of nested flex containers.

Grid is designed to solve the problem of global page layout. Unlike flexbox, it works in two dimensions, allowing you to control both the row and column positioning and spanning of elements. Like flexbox it intelligently resizes boxes based on the size of the container and available space. Browser support is not yet as good as flexbox, but it will be widely supported in the next year or two.

Grid is best for laying out large areas of the page, but for UI elements, or things like image galleries, flexbox is still the tool of choice as it can handle a variable number of elements (e.g. a variable number of images for an image gallery), and is still the best way to perform vertical centering. Thus, the ultimate “best” choice for page layout is a combination of grid and flexbox, with grid controlling the big picture, and flexbox for individual UI elements. At last, floats can now return to their original intended purpose of flowing paragraph text around images!

Image Credit: Chicago by NASA at nasa.gov

CSS Grid

I just learned this technique from Jen Kramer. You can use CSS Grid to create a layout that looks like an existing Mondrian painting.

Start with the painting you want to re-create, and identify all the grid lines, both vertical and horizontal. To determine the vertical grid lines, start with number 1 at the far left, then scan across the painting. Anywhere you see the right edge of a box, create the next vertical grid line. Number them in sequence from left to right.

Do the same for the horizontal grid lines. Grid line 1 is at the top of the painting. Then anywhere you see the bottom edge of a box, create the next horizontal grid line.


Now that you have the grid lines defined, you can easily determine the grid-row and grid-column values for each box. For example in the drawing above, box "e" has grid-row: 3/6; and grid-column: 2/3.

Next you need to determine how wide each column is and how tall each row is. Put these dimensions into the properties "grid-template-columns" and "grid-template-rows" of the grid container. When measuring these dimensions be sure to not include the black gaps between the boxes. For example, for row 2/3 in the diagram, measure from the top of box "g" to the bottom of box "b".

You'll also need measurements for the horizontal and vertical gaps between the boxes. Put these measurements into the "grid-gap" property of the grid container.

Next set the background colors of your boxes. The container should have a black background, and various boxes within the container should have their own background colors to match the original painting.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Regular Expressions

/ [^ ] * / g Door County is beautiful year-round

Match a sequence of zero or more characters that are not a space. The /g in the first one
above makes the match global.

/ [^ ] * / Door County is beautiful year-round

Without /g only the first occurrence in the string is matched.

/ .*[ ] / U Door County is beautiful year-round

Match a sequence of zero or more characters that ends with a space. The dot (.) will match any character, including spaces. The * says zero or more. Then there is a space, so the string we are matching must end with a space character. The /U option makes it "ungreedy", so that it matches the first, smallest substring it encounters, rather than the longest substring.

/ ^https?:\ / \ / / http://www.https.com

Match "http://" or "https://" at the beginning of a sequence. s? says match a single s if there's one otherwise skip. The two forward slashes which are special characters have to be escaped with two backward slashes.

Some regex rules:

• Dot (.) matches any character, except newlines. If you provide a /s modifier then it will match newlines too. Example: /^The.*/s would match any sequence of text where the first line starts with the word "The", until it reaches the end of the text being searched.
  
• If you need to explicitly match a dot (aka period), then you need to escape it. Let's change the example above as follows: /^The.*\./s Now it will only match until it encounters a period, which could be on a different line of the text.
  
• The ^ character in the above examples means match from the beginning of the text being searched.
• You can also match at the end of the text being searched with $. So /\.$/ would match any string that ends with a period.
  
• Instead of matching zero or more, you can also match one or more using +
• You can also match zero or one, using ?
• Curly braces let you define a length range you want to match, so you write {minlength,maxlength}. Example: Suppose you want to match a series of the character "a" that has a length between 3 and 6. You can do it like this: a{3,6}
• Square brackets defines a set of characters to match. So [ab] will match either a or b. This could also be written as [a-b]. If you wanted to match any lower case alphabet character, you'd write [a-z].
• You can also use an "or", so that you match one string or another. Suppose you want to match "abc" or "xyz". You write it like this: /(abc)|(xyz)/ Actually the parenthesis are not needed, but are good for making it clear.
• Note that the starting and end slashes / are the delimiters of the regular expression (the start and end). You can place modifiers, like the g after the ending slash to change the way the regular expression is interpreted.

Door County © by Leif and Evonne, CC License

Secure Shell

If you SSH into the command line in your server, or SFTP into your server, or use github, you'll need a SSH key. On your Mac, type cd~/.ssh and you'll be taken to the hidden ssh directory. Hidden files receive a period in the front. A directory listing (ls) will give you the private and public keys, id_rsa and id_rsa.pub. If you already have these keys, you can write over them for the sake of this exercise. First copy both keys in backup files.

Then let's run the keygen command from the terminal: ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "myblog@gmail.com"

which will generate a new set of keys. One of the parameters "rsa" is a type of encryption scheme. ls -l will show the new and the old backup keys.

To add the new key to the ssh-agent: ssh-add id_rsa

Do a "cat id_rsa.pub" and copy the contents of your public key. Then go to your github account, and under Profile, find "Settings" and choose "SSH keys" from the left pane. Add "New Key" then test your new key by doing a pull to make sure everything still works with github. You'll also be copying the new public key over to your server.

To connect to github.com over SSH and test your new key:

$ssh -T git@github.com

If you receive a message telling you that you have successfully authenticated, then all is well.

Chrome Debugging from JSFiddle

I didn't know you could do this. I just learned about it. Bring up the Developer Tools either by pressing Command, Option and J together or choosing View > Developer > Developer Tools. Stay at "Sources", and expand fiddle.jshell.net in the left pane. Choose index which will show you your code.

httpd.exe

is short for HTTP Daemon processes. If you are having port issues with Apache, terminate all the httpd.exe processes. Apache starts up multiple processes because it is expecting to handle multiple incoming requests and hand off the requests to different child processes for faster performance. If you kill off one of the child processes, the httpd parent process will automatically restart the child once it detects that the child is dead. None of this sounds good but that's the terminology and there's even a "daemon" in there. So to kill httpd successfully you have to kill the parent first.

git

To see if Git is installed on your computer: $git

If you don't have git, to install it: http://git-scm.com/downloads

To find out which version of Git that you have: $git --version

"which" tells you where the command is located on the disk so it gives you the path to it. It will only work on executables. To find out where Git is installed: $which git

There's one file called .gitconfig in the home directory with global git settings. To setup username and email key to associate with your commits:
$git config --global user.name "Josephine March"

To make your Git color coded: $git config --global color.ui true

If you change your permissions, git will ignore it if you run this command:
$git config --global core.filemode

Telling git to use nano as your CL text editor. This is very helpful with merges.
$git config --global core.editor nano

To see all the configurations:
$git config --list

To add a single untracked file into the repository:
$git add {filename}

To add all untracked files into the repository:
$git add .
$git add --all

To show what changes have been made:
$git diff

To show what changes have been made in a single file:
$git diff {filename}

Adding a file is staging. If you want to undo a stage:
$git reset HEAD {filename}

If you make changes in a file that's in a git repository and you have not yet staged them, you can reverse the changes with this command:
$git checkout {filename}

Github.com, place to store git repositories

d r w x r - x r - x Miné Jan 31 22:00

First slot: Is it a file or directory? Next set of triple slots is for the User, then the next three is for the Group and finally the last 3 spots is for Everyone. File permissions can also be represented using octal notation. r is 4(2^2), w is 2(2^1), and x is 1(2^0). So if it's readable, writeable and executable, it means it's a 7. If a file or directory is readable and executable but not writeable then that's a 5. You can convert between symbolic and octal representation using this tool.

Haas Neue Grotesk

Do you know what Crate & Barrel, Lufthansa, Energizer, SAAB, North Face, American Airlines, Urban Outfitters, NASA, Fendi, Staples and IRS Tax Forms have in common?

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BNF Notation For Syntax

BNF or Backus Normal Form is a computer science notation technique that's useful in describing the syntax of a language. This Wikipedia article is an easy example that shows how it works:

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How To Disable Text Area Resize

Resizable text areas are good as long as when you extend them, they don't "break" your page
visually.

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Data Security

There's a new report by leading computer scientists on encrypted communication.

Testing Mobile with Google Chrome

You can view sites as they would appear on a mobile device from your desktop browser. There is a hamburger menu on the right that lets you customize and control Chrome. From that menu, choose More Tools > Developer Tools.

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How to Hang a Picture

Never one good with a level, two by fours, and hanging, I consider myself successful if a picture is not noticeably crooked. But if you wanted to do it perfectly, the experts have figured out the science behind hanging pictures:

© cssbakery.com

The rule of thumb is to hang your picture at anywhere between 56” and 60” on center. For 57 inches, "on center” means that the middle of the picture is always 57” from the floor.

Measuring from the floor, mark 57” on the wall. Measure the height of your picture and divide by two. This is your center. Measure the top of your picture to its tightened wire, tw.

Subtract tw from ½ the picture’s height. This number will tell you how far above your initial 57” mark you should place your hook.

Example: A 20” tall photo with a tight wire located 2” below
the top should have a hook placed at 8” above the mark. 10” – 2” = 8”; the hook should be placed 65” off the floor.

Kelly Phillips Badal

* This post was made using a blockquote class from a previous CSS post.

Half Billion Dollar Art Heist Still a Mystery

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston was the setting for the crime committed 25 years ago.

Into Winter

Image by Susulyka CC BY-SA via Wikimedia Commons
Beech Forest in Mátra

Image Captioning Tool Enhancements

There's a new version of the Image Captioning Tool, my jQuery plug-in. I've added capabilities to truncate a larger image and also play an MP3 audio when the user hovers over an image. Move your mouse over the example image above to see how it works. To try it out on one of your images, see the Captioning Tool. Music by Coldplay.

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Basic CSS Drop Cap

Alorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus ornare velit sed libero tristique, ut pellentesque quam porta. Proin iaculis posuere aliquam. Aenean semper vulputate nisl et ornare. In adipiscing pretium ante vestibulum faucibus. Cras molestie, urna vel dignissim sollicitudin, mauris nisl condimentum leo, sit amet hendrerit nisi magna ut lorem. Sed ac porta augue. Sed feugiat odio at auctor venenatis. Donec eu scelerisque neque. Nulla facilisi.

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Javascript Apply

In Javascript, everything is an object. So, unlike Java and C++, Javascript functions are also objects which come with some built-in methods that you can call. One of the methods is apply which lets you call the function and explicitly pass the value of the "this" parameter as well as the arguments to the function as an array.

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CSS3 Keyframes & Animation Property

Start/Stop

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A New Search Engine: DuckDuckGo

Did you know that Google takes you on a quick detour every time you click on a search result? So Google knows not only what you searched on, but where you went with that search which is all stored indefinitely in a database on their servers.

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Rotating Text & Making Columns with CSS3

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Encrypting Email

Here's a few options to help you encrypt your email.

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Flat Design

Is less more in web design? Decide for yourself after seeing this flat design aesthetic discussion.

Believing in an Open Internet

A New York Times video by Brian Knappenberger.

Setting up SSL on an Apache Server

I administer my own Apache2 server running on Ubuntu, and I had previously setup SSL using a self-signed certificate. Recently I needed to start using a certificate signed by a Certificate Authority to avoid the "untrusted site" browser warnings. In this post I outline the steps I went through to set it up.

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CSS Vendor Prefixes

When a new CSS property is being developed, and does not yet have a final, consistent implementation across browsers, you want to write it using vendor prefixes for each browser. That's a total of four statements with vendor prefixes followed by the official, unprefixed property for future use when the new property's implementation is completed.

To review the prefixes, we have: -webkit- for Google Chrome and Safari, -moz- for Firefox, -ms- for Internet Explorer and -o- for Opera. If you are unsure whether a CSS property needs a vendor prefix, there's a website which will answer that question for you.

CSS Drop Caps

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus ornare velit sed libero tristique, ut pellentesque quam porta. Proin iaculis posuere aliquam. Aenean semper vulputate nisl et ornare. In adipiscing pretium ante vestibulum faucibus. Cras molestie, urna vel dignissim sollicitudin, mauris nisl condimentum leo, sit amet hendrerit nisi magna ut lorem. Sed ac porta augue. Sed feugiat odio at auctor venenatis. Donec eu scelerisque neque. Nulla facilisi.

Sed tempus adipiscing eleifend. Aenean aliquam nibh quis enim varius cursus. Cras ut neque eget eros mattis volutpat. Nulla et pretium massa. Suspendisse potenti. Nam id quam mauris. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed sodales, leo dictum tempor auctor, nulla urna commodo lacus, eget vehicula nulla neque mollis velit. Quisque lobortis feugiat pharetra. Vivamus id nibh facilisis, dictum dolor quis, mattis tellus.

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Green Salsa

Four ingredients: Tomatillos, Serrano Peppers, Onions, and Garlic. The only rule: Every single vegetable must be roasted or grilled. Combine the cooked ingredients in the food processor. Season with salt and pepper to your liking. No oil of any kind needed. Enjoy!

Data Security in Cloud Computing

Christian Science Monitor article discusses the impact of the government surveillance programs on the American cloud computing industry. A recent report estimates an average $30 Billion Dollar loss in the next three years for US based companies.

Related 2014 news: Internet Giants Erect Barriers to Spy Agencies | Germany Cancels Deal with Verizon | NSA and Your Phone | 2014 House Proposals

Image Captioning Tool Enhancements

There's a new version of the Image Captioning Tool, my jQuery plug-in. I've added capabilities to truncate a larger image and also play an MP3 audio when the user hovers over an image.

Read more »

Elusive Beauty

Chasing Aphrodite documents the story of looted ancient artifacts that found their way to the Getty and the tenure of curator Marion True at the museum. Among other pieces, a million dollar, vine-like, delicate golden funerary wreath, and a $20 Million, 1,300 Ib statue of a woman in a flowing gown carved in limestone were returned to their source countries voluntarily by the Getty. Sharing the sepia image of the Getty Center by Michael Gäbler through Creative Commons.

Popular Programming Languages

A visualization for the most popular programming languages of 2012 on CodeEval.

Replacing CSS List Bullets with Images Using Sprites

• To create a CSS list like this one, include the styles for numberedlist class and write your markup as shown in the blue box. You can switch to an ol from a ul if you think it'll help your code semantically
• You can build your own sprite image in an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop or use this image which goes up to number 9
• If you create your own image, compute the new offsets for the background-position property which is where the spriting is done
• Good luck!   

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CSS Image Grid by Floating Different Sized Elements

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Ansel Adams Wilderness

© Copyright by Steve Dunleavy | Creative Commons Share-Alike License 2.0

The picture shows a mountain range on the Pacific Crest Trail. This is a follow up to a question in a previous image grid post. In this post, I have the first image displaying larger than the rest. The only significant difference in the code between this and that earlier post is the CSS rule that allows the first image in the list to be larger (CSS selector: #grid li:first-child img). The same thing could have been accomplished by giving the first li an id and targeting that id with the CSS rule. e.g. id="big-image" and #big-image. The other modification was to change the widths and heights in the CSS to reflect the different image sizes I am using here. Your grid images will likely be self-descriptive and distinct. The reason I used cutups from a single image was for simplicity.

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Converting Microsoft Word Docs to XML and Processing with PHP's SimpleXML

In this post, I'll describe how to do automated processing on a set of Microsoft Word documents. The task is to compare an old version of a document to a new version section by section, and generate an output table listing sections that were modified, added, deleted, or stayed the same.

You can do this sort of thing manually in Word by opening up the document and telling Word to compare it with the older version of the document.  Word will show you the diff marks and you could then scroll through the document and record all the section numbers and whether there are changes or not.  Very labor intensive and tedious.  In this case there are dozens of pairs of documents to be compared, and the whole process will need to be repeated every month as new versions of each document are created.  Clearly the manual approach would not work - this has to be automated.

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A Simple CSS Blockquote Class

Painted in 1865 for an exhibition where it was rejected by the jury, Bread and Eggs is a still life by Paul Cezanne.

Cezanne ignores the laws of classical perspective, allowing each object to be independent within the space of a picture while the relationship of one object to another takes precedence over traditional single-point perspective.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

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9-Slice Scaling

The CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders spec defines a new property called border-image. This is a powerful new way to draw borders of an element, using an image instead of a fixed color. But the usefulness of this property goes beyond just replacing border colors with parts of an image. It can be used to perform 9-slice scaling. This is a scaling technique where you divide an image into a grid of 9 images, like a tic-tac-toe grid. Then when you perform scaling, some of the 9 sub-images are scaled and others are not. Specifically, the corners are not scaled at all, whereas the non-corner images (the center and four sides) are scaled. This is shown in the diagram above.

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