This is a small post made in hopes it reaches a JavaScriptdeveloper, who in turn passes it along to another, then another, so-on-and-so-forth…

I use jQuery with nearly every project. While I find it easier and easier to roll my own JavaScript, I’m not one for reinventing the wheel. If a plug-in exists that does what I want, I’ll use it. The first thing I do is check if they have a packed version (size matters). If not, I pack my own. My problems start when developers don’t have a packed version already available. Chances are, if they don’t have a packed version available, it’s because the JavaScript packer breaks their code. Not because it’s bad code, and not because there is something wrong with Dean Edwards packer, but because when code is packed certain operations are changed if the code isn’t written perfectly.

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I’m tired of using the word “awesome” to describe things that are awesome so I went with majestic instead. Awesome, huh?

Rather than get techy about Google’s new AJAX Feed API I’ll focus on their much easier to understand wizard for creating a very simple AJAX Feed widget. To do that though, I need to cover the AJAX Feed API so much to say that it’s a way for you display snippets of an RSS Feed – or multiple RSS Feeds – on your website without doing anything more than click a button.

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Cushy CMS bills itself as an online content manager created to “take the work out of managing content” that is “Super. Easy. To. Use.”.

Account creation takes less than 30 seconds from start to logged in. They score big points from me on this. Had it not been so fast I wouldn’t be doing this review. Anything that makes me click a link from my email to verify an account and then manually enter my login details irritates me enough to pass it by completely. You can get signed up and start using it faster than you can type this sentence.

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One of the things I do when I need a break is work on side-projects that have little-to-no practical use but help to make a better developer. Every now and again one of those little side projects proves to be somewhat useful. Such is the case with sitesixteen’s web master marketplace.

The app is pretty self explanatory and while there are some additions and changes I’d like to make to it I’m not going to spend anymore time on it unless people actually use it.

Web Master Marketplace

In the process of writing the new WebMaster Marketplace over at MySpacePros I used InnerFade for jQuery and realized it wouldn’t work when it was packed with Dean Edward’s packer. I found the issue and fixed it (just a missing semi-colon), but contacting the creator didn’t go so well (Anyone speak German?) so I figured I’d post the fix here. That and it’s been a while since my last post.

If you’re wondering, it’s line 69. $.innerfade = function() {} should be $.innerfade = function() {};. If it’s not, it won’t compress.

Download InnerFade for jQuery (fixed and packed)

About once a year I’ll spend a day – sometimes two – evaluating IDE’s. I’ve been using Dream Weaver for the longest time, but for me it’s basically a glorified text editor with half decent code completion and syntax highlighting I’ve grown accustom to. It has almost no features I would like and my main complaint is it completely taxes one of my cores. I didn’t buy a quad core processor so a text editor could use 25% of my available horsepower even when it’s sitting idle.

Earlier this year I found the new – and always free – Aptana. Overall it’s good software. I wouldn’t say great, but it’s good. The problem with it also lies in its strength: It’s written in Java. It can be used on any platform, but it can be painfully slow when double clicking on files in the file browser and that’s a deal-breaker for me. It has some interesting features (like built-in FireFox preview) and for those looking to save their pennies, it’s by far your best option. I spent a few days here and there with it, but it never stuck. I spent a lot of time trying to configure it, but it just never felt comfortable.

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Spiffy Corners has actually been around for a long time, but I’m just now getting my blog setup and I need some content to get it going. It’s really nothing more than a generator for pure CSS rounded corners, but a lot of people have found it incredibly useful. For a long time Youtube mentioned Spiffy Corners in the source code of every page they generated. This latest version includes an improved color picker, a new design and a selectable radii of 3px, 5px or 9px (as of right now they are not integrated yet).

I know this solution is semantically bankrupt and purists loathe it’s very existence, but for many Spiffy Corners is the answer to the anti-aliased css corner question. I’ll post an update when I have the time to update the code to work with the radii, but for now it only outputs 5px corners.