While you already use many functions in WordPress to communicate with the database, there is an easy and safe way to do this directly, using the $wpdb class. Built on the great ezSQL class by Justin Vincent, $wpdb enables you to address queries to any table in your database, and it also helps you handle the returned data. Because this functionality is built into WordPress, there is no need to open a separate database connection (in which case, you would be duplicating code), and there is no need to perform hacks such as modifying a result set after it has been queried…

When applying CSS3 inset box-shadow or border-radius directly to the image element, the browser doesn’t render the CSS style perfectly. However, if the image is applied as background-image, you can add any style to it and have it rendered properly. Darcy Clarke and I put a quick tutorial together on how to use jQuery to [...]

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As a site developer, web designer or site administrator, you’ve probably had to go through the process of choosing between platforms. But maybe not recently—if you’ve been designing and developing web sites for very long, chances are you’ve already got your favorite go-to platform that you always use. And if your go-to content management system isn’t already Drupal, maybe it’s time to take another look…

Created by Ryan Dahl in 2009, Node.js is a relatively new technology which has gained a lot of popularity among Web developers recently. However, not everyone knows what it really is. Node.js is essentially a server-side JavaScript environment that uses an asynchronous event-driven model. What this means is simple: it’s an environment which is intended for writing scalable, high performance network applications…

In what feels like a case of deja vu, Google has recorded the acquisition of at least 1,022 patents from International Business Machines in August of this month (there’s a 1,023rd patent listed in the USTPO assignment database as well, but the patent number appears to be wrong). The USPTO recording date for the [...]…

Pop quiz: What’s significant about the number 61?
(a) Number of points required to win a standard game of Cribbage
(b) The country code to call Australia
(c) Number of Top 100 universities that use Google Apps for EducationAs all Aussie Cribbage enthusiasts attending college in the U.S. may suspect, this is actually a trick question—all three answers are correct!

Today, U.S. News and World Report released their 28th annual ranking of the top higher-education institutions across the nation…

The September edition of what’s new out there for web designers and developers includes new web apps, JavaScript frameworks, a couple of fun dummy text generators, useful apps for working with clients, and a number of great new fonts.

Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.

As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments…

In July 2011, Microsoft adCenter rolled out a new feature allowing advertisers to target their campaigns within a 100 mile radius around a particular location.

With “radius targeting,” advertisers can select to target the area around an address, zip code or latitude/longitude coordinate, giving them extremely precise control over where their ads will be displayed. After entering a location, advertisers choose how large of a radius they want to target (from 5-100 miles) from a drop down menu…

In July 2011, Microsoft adCenter rolled out a new feature allowing advertisers to target their campaigns within a 100 mile radius around a particular location.

With “radius targeting,” advertisers can select to target the area around an address, zip code or latitude/longitude coordinate, giving them extremely precise control over where their ads will be displayed. After entering a location, advertisers choose how large of a radius they want to target (from 5-100 miles) from a drop down menu…

In the beginning (well, beginning with jQuery 1.2.3 in early 2008) there was the jQuery.data() API. It offers a way to associate JavaScript data — strings, numbers, or any object — with a DOM element. As long as you manipulate the DOM element with jQuery, the library ensures that when the DOM element goes away, the associated data goes away as well. This is especially important for older versions of IE that tend to leak memory when JavaScript data is mixed with DOM data…

We’ve covered advanced commenting systems for WordPress before, but what about those bloggers who want to use the stock WordPress commenting system?

Not everyone wants to manage a third-party comment system. And those are the users who will find the comment plugins below really useful.

Below are eleven plugins that can handle everything from adding tweets about your posts to your comments section to stripping out potentially malicious code to preventing spam comments…

It’s that time of the year again for the Chrome team, when we pause on our anniversary to reflect on the amazing life and times of the web. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been three years since we launched our open source web browser, Chrome.

In that time, the web community has continued to inspire us, bringing the power of the web into all kinds of apps and experiences, with all modern browsers making great strides in speed, simplicity and security…

As the technology for mobile devices grows, so does the opportunity for development. Many companies are not creating their own apps, but instead utilizing HTML5, Javascript and CSS3 to aid in the creation of web apps and mobile websites. Reducing the initial investment, companies can get the most out of the money they are spending and release it to the public themselves on their own terms…

Endless layers in Photoshop. Overstuffed image folders. That jQuery plug-in that has 12 files associated with it. Hundreds or thousands of individual pieces go into making a website. No wonder we go off the deep end when we can’t find a closing div — er, section tag. We work with a ridiculously large number of things, and how we organize them (or choose not to) is often left to personal preference…

Topics:
ajaxcssjavascriptjQuerymobile

It’s been a little while since we’ve released any code examples here in the FG Lab, so today we’re happy to present a
new jQuery Mobile plugin called Pagination: a jQuery Mobile plugin for sequential pagination between pages with support for touch, mouse, and keyboard!

The Pagination plugin creates touch-drag navigation between separate HTML pages…

Today our good friends at Vzaar are giving away 25 lite accounts of their professional commercial video hosting.

As you know, websites like YouTube are great for hosting your online videos.

The biggest downside is that you have little control over the environment in which your video is shown, and there’s nothing that says your video can’t be taken down without notice (or any server uptime guarantee)…

It all started in the middle 90s. The Internet in Italy was slowly coming out from its early age when it was somehow still synonymous with cyber-culture. World Wide Web was becoming larger known and young dudes with 14k remote modem connections were spending their nights updating rudimentary personal pages on Geocities all along the Belpaese.

As soon as the potential of the new medium was revealing itself, more and more geeks with different backgrounds began experimenting deeper with HTML, Photoshop, Flash and the first releases of web-oriented programming languages…

Being a chrome junkie and also a keen productivity evangelist I’m predictably a huge fan of javascript bookmarketls. I use them all day long and over time I’ve built up a few that I have made myself that I thought I’d share today.

What is a javascript bookmarklet?

A javascript bookmarklet is a small piece of javascript code that you can execute in your browser by bookmarking a link. I’m shamelessly going to steal Rand’s image from his old post on bookmarklets:

The Basics – Cached Pages & Site Searches

What I’m covering in this blog post are all kinds of weird and wonderful bookmarklets but I want to re-post the basics here for you since these two bookmarklets I literally use 10s of times a day:

• Quickly run a Google site: search for the site you’re on - Site Search
• Jump to the Google cache version of the URL you’re on – Google Cache

Rand actually wrote a post that covers a lot of the standard bookmarklets (including the two above) and if you’re new to them I strongly suggest you check it out: 30 SEO bookmarklets to save you time

Open Site Explorer Bookmarklets

Of course you can use the moz toolbar to quickly grab stats and jump to your favorite tools but sometimes I prefer the speed and elegance of a bookmarklet instead so here’s a bunch of them that work with the new open site explorer URLs:

• Open Site Explorer Links
  • OSE for the homepage of the domain you’re on
  • OSE for the URL you’re on
• Open Site Explorer Top Pages
  • OSE top pages report for the domain you’re on
• Open Site Explorer Anchor Text
  • Anchor text phrases for the domain you’re on
  • Anchor text phrases for the URL you’re on

(By the way, while I’m mentioning OSE – you do know that CSV downloads are back right? Woop! Good job moz team!)

Domain Insights

These bookmarklets are designed to give you some insights about the domain you’re browsing…

If you are an run an online ecommerce program, it’s very likely that you have come up against the coupon code dilemma. You offer a deal that allows customers to use a coupon code for a free item, free shipping, or to get a discount. However, what do you do when the promotion ends? If you leave the box open, studies have shown that customers will pause in the transaction and go search for a code, sometimes leading to cart abandonment and lost sales…

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” – Frederic Bastiat

Business Ethics vs Sustainability

The concept of business ethics is usually a self-serving approach to marketing.

Some people would rather make money dishonestly than honestly, getting satisfaction out of screwing people over (hi Andy), but gray is a broad spectrum…

The August edition of what’s new out there for web designers and developers includes a number of new web apps, JavaScript plugins, tools for creating smartphone apps, and browser tools, along with fifteen great new fonts.

Most of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.

As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments…

It used to be that if you wanted to create an animated, interactive interface for a website, you needed to use Flash. You might be able to get away with some basic animations using JavaScript, but if you made it too complicated, all you’d end up doing is bogging your visitor’s computer down and causing problems.

Plus, JavaScript was potentially more complicated to use than Flash, at least for those who aren’t fond of coding…

It’s been a fun ride.

In three and a half years, I went from a programmer with very little writing skills (just trying to not forget things I learned) to really being listened to by a wide range of people.

Traffic, Oh! So Much Traffic

Millions of people. I can’t imagine how many football stadiums that would fill up! Sure, all I was doing was pushing the knowledge needle forward for people through open source code, but it really sunk deep into my heart what I was doing…

For some sites, image galleries are an absolute must. Portfolios are the first to come to mind, but galleries are also useful for blogs, e-commerce sites, and really any site that regularly displays multiple images on a single page.

Below are 25 fantastic jQuery gallery and slideshow plugins.

They’re all free (though some require different licensing for commercial use, have premium versions available, or offer paid add-ons)…

Architecture tends to be an abundant source of inspiration, with so many classic and modern styles blending throughout cities all over the world. One such iconic source that many turn their photographic eye to, is city skylines. The looming structures carving out a recognizable silhouette as they climb high against the colors of the day or night sky.

Today we have collected an inspirational showcase focusing on these skylines and some of the breathtaking photos they have lent their architectural compositions to…

(Cross-posted on the Online Security Blog)

Earlier this year, we introduced a security feature called 2-step verification that helps protect your Google Account from threats like password compromise and identity theft. By entering a one-time verification code from your phone after you type your password, you can make it much tougher for an unauthorized person to gain access to your account.

People have told us how much they like the feature, which is why we’re thrilled to offer 2-step verification in 40 languages and in more than 150 countries…

New WordPress themes are released on what sometimes seems a daily basis.

But not all themes are created equal. Differences in quality become more pronounced in free themes, but there’s even a lot of discrepancies in premium themes, both in terms of visual style and actual code.

Below are more than sixty new WordPress themes released since March. Roughly half are premium themes (ranging in price from around $15 to about $70) and half are free…

There is a lot of buzz around QR codes at the moment, so we thought we would take a look at some of the most creative and stunning QR code business cards on the web.

We love QR codes as they connect offline and online while challenging traditional design at the same time.

First of all, in case you have been living under a rock, let’s answer the obvious question. What the hell is a QR code?!

A quick response (QR) code is a two dimensional code that can be scanned and read by smartphone cameras to transfer information…

As our interfaces get more complex, JavaScript testing is becoming more critical. With browser testing, you should get as close to native events as you can. Jörn Zaefferer recommended I check out jQuery Simulate. In my case I just needed a pure JavaScript way to simulate browser click events at a given location, so I ripped out the jQuery dependance and created a wrapper just around the mouse events…

Over my programming career, I have made a lot of mistakes in several different languages. In fact, if I write 10 or more lines of code and it works the first time, I’ll get a bit suspicious and test it more rigorously than usual. I would expect to find a syntax error or a bad array reference or a misspelled variable or something.

Coastline near Mwnt on the west coast of Wales…