Jimmy Harrell’s Blog

Ever wondered what a particularly complex CSS selector really means? Here’s your chance to find out! Simply enter one or more semi-colon separated selectors or rulesets into the following “Direct Input” area, or provide the URL of a stylesheet in the “URL Input” area. Best of all, the SelectORacle will flag potential errors and other problems, and it won’t choke on any actual rules. You’ve always wanted to know what makes those line-noise posers tick– now you can.

Have you guys heard of FEBE and CLEO? If not and you’re an avid Mozilla Firefox Browser user, by far these are the best extensions Firefox has to offer. Why? Well it’s simple. FEBE allows you to manage all of your extensions and CLEO works alongside of FEBE. It allows you to package all of your extensions into one single .xpi file which you can name whatever you like. Once you have this .xpi file, then you can upload it to any ftp server and share it with other developers/users. This also means that now everytime you install Mozilla on a different machine that you don’t have to re-install all of your extensions. You simply get your .xpi file (for example my xpi is named. JimmyHarrellsExtensions.xpi).
1. I”ll download this xpi file on whatever machine I’m on.
2.Install Mozilla Firefox browser on my machine.
3. Click File–> Open on the Mozilla browser window and simply open up the .xpi file.
4. Mozilla opens installs all your existing extensions and you’re done.

Woo hoo.

CleanCSS is a powerful CSS optimizer and formatter. Basically, it takes your CSS code and makes it cleaner and more concise.

Why optimize?

Well for two reasons mainly. It helps you get smaller CSS file sizes and better written code. The way the optimizer works actually lets you decide how much compression you want. From super compressed (virtually unreadable and editable by a human being) to visually pleasing. I prefer the standard setting because it gives you a little of both.

Another cool feature is that it helps you with shorthand coding. I am by no means an expert at CSS. I do not have all the shorthand methods memorized (yet!). For those of you using Dreamweaver, like myself, you’ll find that it likes to use longhand code. By this I mean putting each seperate rule on it’s own line. This can get tedious copying and pasting it make a small change. A lot of that stuff can get consolidated into one line, like backgrounds and borders.

So your main reasons for wanting to optimize are to make sure your CSS files are clean. There is a certain art form in clean and concise code. And I’m not even a programmer and I can see that. I’m an artist, so this tool really helps speed things up.

This Q&A was taken directly off Clean CSS. To get to the site you can go to my site in my Sig Line and simply Click on “My Top Ten Sites” in the left Nav Bar. Have fun and remember to optimize your CSS.

Boy oh boy this is a hidden gem for you Dreamweaver lovers. Do you use snippets? Snippets are simply blocks of code that you use to make your life easier as a developer. Whether it be JavaScript snippets, HTML snippets etc. There may be a snippet that you use all of the time. I know I do for popups etc. Anyways this is how you can take all of your snippets for Dreamweaver at home and put them on your work computer or simply share them with other Dreamweaver Developers.

For Windows XP and Dreamweaver8 Users only ( I’m sure its something similar for other OS’s and versions of Dreamweaver)

1. You’ll need a Flash Drive or FTP site.
2. On windows you must have hidden files and folders enabled. If you don’t, ope n up your MyDocuments folder and click on –>Tools–>Folder Options–View and under Hidden Files and Folders be sure to check the Show Hidden Files and Folders Option. Now you’ll be able to see hidden system files.

3. Now that you’ve enabled hidden files go to MyComputer

C:\DocumentsandSettings\[UserName]\ApplicationData\Macromedia\Dreamweaver 8\Configuration

Then find the “Snippets” folder

4. Copy and past this folder either on your Flash drive or FTP site.

5. When you get to work or whereever you have Dreamweaver8 running, simply make sure you have hidden files and folders enabled and overwrite your snippets folder with the new one.

6.Open up Dreamweaver and Abracadabra you now have your new snippets loaded from you old machine.

Foxmarks. Ever wondered how you can take all your Favorite Bookmarks on your home computer and have them at work? Well now you can with the Mozilla Foxmarks add-on. It simply allows you to login and automatically upload/update your existing bookmarks on your local machine to the Foxmarks server. Then when you open up Mozilla FF at work or whereever simply login to your Foxmarks account and sync up. Now you have all of your bookmarks at work. It’s that simple.