floatmargin

Here is my first attempt at a jquery plugin, its something we have used several times at work. It does a couple of things:

1. allows you to style checkboxes anyway you like by hiding the actual checkboxes and using css representations of checkboxes;
2. and takes nested unordered lists and makes them collapsible

If you have html like this:

<ul class="mytree">
  <li>
    <input type="checkbox" name="foo" value="whatever" />
    <label>Item 1</label>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <input type="checkbox" name="foo" value="whatever" />
      <label>Child Item 1</label>
    </li>
  </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

All you need to use checkbox tree is this:

jQuery(document).ready(function(){
  jQuery(".mytree").checkboxTree({
    collapsedarrow: "images/checkboxtree/img-arrow-collapsed.gif",
    expandedarrow: "images/checkboxtree/img-arrow-expanded.gif",
    blankarrow: "images/checkboxtree/img-arrow-blank.gif"
  })
})

Those three options are the different states of each node in the tree. You can see a working example and see the required css at this demo. You can get the plugin at floatmargin.com/demos/checkboxtree/js/jquery.checkboxtree.js. Feel free to use the images and css from the demo. And leave any comments and improvements.

Shaun Inman demonstrates how to finally style file inputs.

While my mind was wandering today I somehow got stuck thinking about CSS3, I am not sure why I bother since I heard Eric Meyer tell An Event Apart Seattle that it isn’t exactly around the corner, but as often happens my curiosity got the best of me. When I should have been going to bed I ended up on the W3C site looking through draft CSS3 specifications. CSS3 apparently won’t be one specification, but is currently made up of many modules, all being worked on by different people. The one which really caught my interest was the CSS Advanced Layout Module.

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FreelanceSwitch has published a list of 35 Absolutely Essential Mac Apps. It has already been a huge help.

I recently tried making the switch to using a Mac as my primary computer, and I still find myself going back to the pc when I am facing a deadline. I think it is just because I know where everything I need is on the pc, there is no fumbling around (oh and there is actually a two button mouse right there on my laptop, why won’t Apple just add that already). But one thing I am realizing quickly is that there are a lot of useful applications on the mac to help improve my productivity that I would never find for a pc. I guess that happens when there is such a large percentage of people that use a product in one particular field.

David Greiner talks about the need for html standards in emails. For many reasons email clients all treat html very differently, and many organizations hang on to email slaughtering software like Lotus Notes. Will be a great day when we can create an html email and have an idea what will be seen when it gets to the reader.