After getting really excited about CloudFlare, I was setting it up for a client’s WordPress site when the it disappeared during a DNS update. The CloudFlare-served error told me that the web host wasn’t serving data to web traffic, which seemed odd.

The web host was HostGator (shared reseller account), and a chat technician confirmed my suspicion: they do not (yet) support IPv6 mapping that CloudFlare provides. So if you’ve enabled the IPv6 feature from CloudFlare’s settings and your site suddenly disappears, make sure your host supports the IPv6 protocol. Disabling the feature (it’s just a feature you can disable!!) restored the blog to its happy former state. That is all.

MediaTemple started pimping CloudFlare months ago, and I passed on it until today when I got an email announcing that it became a free service. I figured I’d give it a shot, and less than an hour later I’m impressed enough to write a post and share my early review with both my readers.

Full Article »

I’m not sure why, but in Windows (only!) Firefox 4.0.1 seems to think it’s cool to put a red box-shadow on any input field of the “email” type. Just leaving a note here in case it’s helpful – it’s easy enough to fix:

input[type="email"] { 
	box-shadow: none;
}

Every website that I build ends up being better than the last. Something becomes more efficient, or some new little detail becomes standard. One such detail has been automatically-sizing textareas, similar to Facebook’s. It’s a simple idea: the user types more text, the text area gets bigger. It requires no extra UI, it makes perfect sense as it happens, and it degrades without issue. The jQuery plugin I keep coming back to is James Padolsey’s autoResize.

I’ve also made a habit of having textareas size automatically when the page loads, in the even that there’s already text in the field to be edited:

$('textarea.autosize').autoResize().trigger('change');

More than once, I’ve been stuck having to use images where a logo and/or some type is flattened onto a white background. The goal is to achieve something similar to the “Multiply” layer blending mode, but be able to save a PNG with a completely transparent background and no nasty, pixelated artifacts. About a year ago, I found a perfect Quartz-based app (or plugin, I forget which) that could remove the solid background from an image while preserving reflections, drop shadows, and the subtle parts of an image that have more complicated opacity. Unfortunately, I never bookmarked the author’s site nor did I write a blog post or a Tweet or anything that would have been useful.

After hours of searching for said app, I stumbled upon Mikeal Simburger’s KillWhite, a Photoshop plugin (and 64-bit PixelBender plugin!) that does the same thing. And what a relief. It works just as well as the mysterious app I first used, and even better is that Mikeal is working on a version that will key out a selected color.

Comparison:

1. Retail Me Not
2. Amazon Prime
3. Monoprice

Nuff said.