An article covering form validation with jQuery and some basic JavaScript OOP concepts. Check it out:

Form validation with jQuery from scratch

I just finished off a small project I have been working on for a while on my free time. It’s a full screen image gallery that automatically scales the image with kept aspect ratio to fill the browser background. I also spiced it up with a flickr search engine, thumbnails, captions, preloader and some other goodies.

View Demo

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Stylegala is having a surprise party.

Follow up on Twitter and hook up!

Devkick has been taking a break. A loong break. The team has been up to some heavy client work and this site has not been updated for over three months, except some minor forum posts. Sorry for that.

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European graphic design from the early days is a powerful inspiration source for designers all over the world. The new graphic design movement, also known as swiss graphic design or International typographic style that emphasizes cleanliness, readability and objectivity has had a huge impact on all areas of design ever since it was developed in Switzerland in the 50’s.

The typical large, straight typography, sophisticated grid systems and a simple, clear message are all useful ingredients when designing web sites as well. So as a casual and relaxed weekend inspiration pack, I have hand-picked a small collection of 32 great posters and other artwork from the golden ages of european graphic design. These are not all very typical swiss style, but many of the designs presented here are clearly inspired by it, one way or another.

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Regular Expressions is a powerful tool when parsing and validating strings. And combining regular expressions with the simplicity of jQuery selectors can create some fast and useful string parsers. This post will show you a couple of really useful parsers that you can use in various environments, or as a base to create your own.

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Some people have asked me about the comment preview functionality that DevKick is using in the blog, so I made it into a handy jQuery plugin called Modalpreview.

I got the idea when was looking for a quick way of adding a preview function to the comment form here on DevKick. I wanted something new and did not want to go server-side. I never liked the live preview thing, mainly because I don’t like when stuff happens on the page automatically when I press a key. So I thought, why not just use a modal window to present the textarea as HTML before submitting the form?

That would prove to be a lot harder than it sounds like.

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Here at DevKick we collect high-quality components, sort them into categories and present them on the site with regular updates. But once in a while, we flag our current state and present all components since the previous milestone in a handy blog post with direct links to each component’s home page, demo and downloads.

So here is Milestone 01 - a handy collection of hand-picked, quality components sorted in framework/programming categories with the most popular component presented first in each category. Note that these components have been selected and tested during the last three months times to make sure each meets a certain quality criteria. Enjoy!

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Tripoli, the generic CSS standard for HTML rendering, have reached the Beta stage. By resetting and rebuilding browser standards, Tripoli forms a stable, cross-browser rendering foundation for your web projects.

So, what’s new in the beta?

There are many new things in Tripoli. I have listened to the public voices from people using it in real world projects during the last 6 months and the result is even more stable, generic and dynamic. Here’s a quick run-down:

• no more print styles
• a brand new layout plugin
• more ways of implementing Tripoli to simplify installation
• hundreds of tiny corrections since the alpha
• even less specific styles in the base component, expand tripoli as far as you need
• the heavy IE expressions in the late alpha has been removed for better performance

Tripoli is the same as before, only much better and more dynamic. If you are using tripoli today and would like to upgrade, you should be able to do so without any major issues.

Read more and try it out in the Tripoli project page. If you are new to Tripoli, you might want to check out two earlier blog posts as the project was initiated: Introducing Tripoli and Tripoli Beta in Development

A menu with a visual active state is a popular technique on web sites for obvious reasons:

1. It gives the user a clear signal of where he/she is on the site, especially for visitors coming from a search engine or deep link
2. It can be attractive and signal a well-structured and balanced site
3. Used carefully, it can replace the classic breadcrumb trail.

This article aim to explain how some popular techniques are used to achieve an active state, including a digestion of our latest laboratory project called :path. I will also show you some simple examples of different visual approaches, including some very popular sites that doesn’t use active states at all.

Is active states on navigation anchors crucial? Should you always use them or are there cases when it is not such a good idea? Use the comments form to discuss the topic.

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