5 Firefox plugins for website development

The age old debate: IE vs Firefox? Well, we already know that Firefox is fast taking over IE’s dominance as the favorite web browser – but there are still a those that choose IE because they don’t know any better. I hope that after reading this (if you aren’t already using Firefox that is) you will be convinced that Firefox is the way to go.

First things first, if you are not using Firefox to develop and build your websites you need to start. Firefox is the defacto standard and if you are trying to build a website in IE you are making things 10 times harder on yourself so, let’s make you a better person. (more…)

Tags: css, development, plugins, tools of the trade

New jQuery plugin targeting usability for password masking on forms

Last month, Jakob Nielsen wrote a blog post titled “Stop Password Masking” – a usability related article on how password masking on web forms, while providing a degree of “over the shoulder” security, is a step backwards regarding usability. Especially with the ever-apparent increase in the use of mobile devices to access online features.

While working on Configurator, the backend UI for our new Template Management System, Morph, we decided on including an option for users to show their password on the login form.

This seemingly easy script however was not available as a jQuery plugin, and the only script we could find online used regular Javascript to add a “show password” option to login forms.
(more…)

Tags: configurator, jquery, Morph, password, plugins, usability

Joomla plugin available for MailChimp

MailChimp honestly makes our email marketing fun and easy! One of the reasons is that they keep on developing new cool and powerful things around it (their plugin page just keeps growing).

Joomla plugin for Mailchimp

No longer valid – “This extension has been unpublished for the following reason: Security issue(s).” See update further down on this page!
This Joomla! plugin will place a Subscribe box for your users to use. Allowing your users to sign up without refreshing the page with AJAX as well easy management for the site admin. Very simple to use. (thanks to generationsix!).

You don’t have a Mailchimp account yet?

Since we have a Mailchimp account, you can get USD 30 and 3 Inbox Inspector reports if you become a MailChimp customer today. Just sign up for a free trial here (there’s no obligation, no credit card required, and they keep your information private).

UPDATE 2009 June 5

In March Mailchimp blogged about mod_mailchimp2 – a new Mailchimp plugin for Joomla1.5.

“This 1.5 Native module will place a simple Subscribe box on your Joomla site allowing your users to sign up without refreshing the page by using an AJAX call, plus includes easy management for the site admin.”

Visit the plugin/download site.

Tags: eMarketing, Joomla, newsletter, plugins

MarkItUp – A lightweight, powerful and flexible editor engine

Whilst doing my usual rounds on the web this morning, I stumbled across a real gem.

This particular gem is a simple (yet incredibly powerful) Markup Editor. You may be thinking that this is another WYSIWYG Editor (What You See Is What You Get), but it is a bit different. With a true WYSIWYG Editor it is exactly that – what your seeing is how your content will look. You don’t actually see the markup (code) that constructs the html output. In the case of a Markup Editor, when you select one of the easily recognizable buttons for H1, H2, H3, Image, Link, etc – it actually outputs the code. You will recognize this behavior from many Forums, which often use BBCode.

A brief history.. (more…)

Tags: development, jquery, plugins, tools of the trade