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{ Category Archives } Web Design

Running pages locally

I want to start using github pages for documentation, which would allow me to host them on github but still edit them locally and just push the edits. The problem is debugging. Anything that relies on AJAX is a security risk if I'm trying to get local files, so browsers reject any $.get('localfile.json'). I understand […]

Working with Amazon S3

I use Amazon S3 for static storage, since nearlyfreespeech.net charges for storage. I've written how I've set up my .htaccess and my PHP files to use it. But now my work has decided to block all access to S3 (as "personal storage sites"), so I can't use my bililite.s3.amazonaws.com sites any more. But I'm smarter […]

Input elements that fill the available space

With my status plugin, I'd generally like the input element to take up the whole line, or at least the part that's not taken up by the prompt and by other messages. Evidently, that's a common concern, with a pure CSS solution that relies on overflow: hidden to create a new block formatting context that […]

Simpler line numbering plugin for Prism

Looking back at my line numbering plugin for Prism, I realized that it's working too hard by manipulating the DOM. Prism works by string manipulation anyway, so there's no harm in using that to wrap the lines rather than searching through elements. The code is now only 6 lines long. It still uses CSS and […]

Formatting the Torah

The Torah as traditionally written has two kinds of paragraph breaks: "open" and "closed". Open paragraphs are the same as in English typography: the next paragraph starts on the next line. Closed paragraphs start the next paragraph on the same line, after a 9-em gap. In the image on the page linked to above, there […]

Fun with ::before and ::after

I've noted in the past that the CSS pseudoelements represent inserted content in the element (i.e. span::before refers to a virtual element inserted within the <span> before the rest of its contents, not to content that is inserted before the <span> itself. That makes it useful for things like decorative guillemets for next and prev […]

Using <blockquote>

Typography Butterick has a few rules for block quotations: Reduce the point size and line spacing slightly, and indent the text block be­tween half an inch and a full inch on the left side, and op­tion­al­ly the same on the right. Since I'm using both Hebrew and English quotes, I'll indent on both sides. Rather […]

Writing and the Web

I haven't been blogging or programming a whole lot over the past year, since I started teaching two Tanach (Bible) classes. Even two hours a week, irregularly, represents a lot of work, and pretty much has sucked up all my intellectual free time. So not much Javascript. But I have been recording the notes (sort […]

Github!

Well, I've finally decided to join the 21st century and get my projects on github. Some of them are useful enough that others have expressed an interest in extending them, and it will force me to have the discipline to use version control consistently. The projects I have on there are: bililiteRangeIncludes the original bililiteRange […]

google.load('jquery') is Dead

Not sure when this happened, but google.load('jquery', '1') is frozen at 1.7.1. Now the official Google Libraries recommends loading the version explicitly: <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.0/jquery.min.js"></script>. That means I have to edit my pages by hand every time they come out with a new version. I suppose that makes things stabler; I don't upgrade until I want […]