Stefan Gabos web developer extraordinaire
Monthly Archives: July 2011
Jul
2011
Zebra_Form, version 2.7.1 now available
In version 2.7.1 a bug was fixed where dates would never validate for languages other than English - thanks to alfred; the form now completely adheres to http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H44.html which requires that all controls have an associated label - previously, the honeypot element did not have an associated label - thanks to Alexis; some minor optimizations in the PHP code and some clarifications in the documentation regarding the "resize" rule;
Jul
2011
Zebra_Form, version 2.7 now available
- added a new validation rule called filetype; with this rule one can restrict the types of files that are upload-able by specifying a list of allowed file extension; it's important to note that validation is not done by file extension but by the MIME type of the uploaded files; for this, a new file is available in the root of the library called mimes.json containing the currently supported extensions and associated MIME types;
- the library now makes use of the Zebra_TransForm jQuery plugin to replace radio buttons, check boxes and select boxes with nicer ones; see the newly added "fancy_form" method for configuration;
- due to popular request CAPTCHA images are now easier to read;
- if the script was run on a virtual host, it could not correctly determine the path to the "process.php" file (this file is used for validating uploads client-side and for CAPTCHAs);
- fixed a bug that would break the file upload control when the form name had dashes in it (i.e. "my-form"); thanks to MarcosBL;
Jul
2011
Zebra_TransForm, version 2.0 now available
Zebra_TransForm is a tiny (4KB minified) jQuery plugin for styling the appearance of checkboxes, radio buttons and select boxes without sacrificing functionality and accessibility: the elements preserve their tabindex order, give visual feedback when having the focus, can be accessed by using the keyboard, and look and behave in the same way in all major browsers.
In version 2.0 fixed a bug where the plugin was not updating in real time the selected value of a selected box, if the value was selected by pressing the ENTER key; fixed a bug where in IE7 horizontal padding was not taken into account for select boxes; fixed a bug where disabled select boxes were not styled; fixed a bug where where select box replacements were not replicating the original select box's font styles; fixed a bug where where floated select boxes were incorrectly replaced; fixed a bug where margins of the replaced elements were not taken into account; fixed a bug where select boxes were not properly styled on Safari.
Jul
2011
Zebra_TransForm, version 1.0 now available
Zebra_TransForm is a tiny (3KB minified) jQuery plugin for styling the appearance of checkboxes, radio buttons and select boxes without sacrificing functionality and accessibility: the elements preserve their tabindex order, give visual feedback when having the focus, can be accessed by using the keyboard, and look and behave in the same way in all major browsers (and degrades gracefully in IE6).
Jul
2011
A better, object-oriented jQuery Plugin Boilerplate
A boilerplate for jump-starting jQuery plugins development. Contains lots of comments to help you get going easily. It is truly object-oriented, it implements public and private methods as well as public and private properties, making it the ideal candidate for when building both simple and complex jQuery plugins. It does not adhere to the suggestions made by the jQuery documentation regarding Plugins/Authoring and by doing so it provides better performance and memory usage by not creating multiple instances of itself and attaching them to the target DOM elements.
Jul
2011
Zebra_Session, version 2.0.1 now available
In version 2.0.1 the constructor method now accepts an optional link argument which must be a MySQL link identifier. By default, the library made use of the last link opened by mysql_connect(). On some environments (particularly on shared hostings) the "last link opened by mysql_connect" was not available at the time of the instantiation of the Zebra_Session library. For these cases, supplying the MySQL link identifier to the constructor method will fix things. Thanks to Mark for reporting. Also, some clarifications were made in the documentation.
Jul
2011
Zebra_Database version 2.5 now available
In version 2.5 a new method is available: "get_link" which returns the MySQL link identifier associated with the current connection to the MySQL server. Why as a separate method? Because the library uses "lazy connection" (it is not actually connecting to the database until first query is executed) there's no link identifier available when calling the connect method; a new argument is now available for the insert and insert_bulk methods which allows the creation of INSERT IGNORE queries which will skip records that would cause a duplicate entry for a primary key; the default value of the "debug" property was set to FALSE
Jul
2011
Zebra_Form, version 2.6.1 now available
In version 2.6.1 a bug was fixed where the settings for client-side validation would get reset if a file upload control was added to the form (thanks to kszys); fixed a bug where the client-side validation would crash when the format of the date contained day names or month names (thanks to Chris); fixed a bug where determining the path where the library is located (for executing the process.php file required for AJAX-like uploads) was not working for certain configurations (thanks to kszys); fixed a bug that would crash the script if date format would contain “/” (slashes) (thanks to Jack Ryan); fixed a bug where the length rule was tested even if the element had no value nor was the required rule set. unless the required rule is set, the length rule is not to be tested as long as there is no value entered; additions to the documentation of radio buttons and checkboxes (thanks to kszys); additions to the documentation of the “upload” rule where it is now stated that after the rule is run, the DOM element the rule is attached to will get an attribute called file_info which will contain information about the uploaded file, usable in the JavaScript part of a custom function; Spanish language file added (thanks to José Machado)
Who am I
I am a 32 year old web developer working from Bucharest, Romania. I am coding since I was 14 and I am extremely passionate about it. For the server side of things I use PHP/MySQL while on the front-end I write valid HTML 5, nice CSS and lots of JavaScript code using jQuery.