SilverStripe

Free Code: "Unobtrusive JavaScript" Tree Control

Posted by Sam on 30 October 2005

Here's a tree control that uses semantic HTML, unobtrusive JavaScript, and is easily reusable in a bundle of applications.

Here's the first of what will hopefully be a bunch of code that we donate to the web at large.  I made this a few months ago, but it's been serving me well.

There are a lot of tree controls out there, but most of them are tacky, heavyweight relics of the"DHTML" era.  I felt it was time for a change.  In particular, I wanted to adopt "unobtrusive javascript" techniques.  Among other things, the script has these notable features:

• All of the styling is in a seperate CSS file.  The only thing that the JavaScript manipulates is class names.   This gives you a lot of control over the design relatively easily.
• There is a no "set up code".  The script searches for <ul class="tree"> and applies its magic to that.
• All of the content as loaded in a set of nested <ul>s - the simplest, code that I could think of that was semantically linked to heirachical data.

Go here for demo, instructions, and a bit of information about how I put it together.

If you've got comments, requests, suggestions, etc, email me on sam@silverstripe.com.

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1 Comments Tags: tree control

New Zealand E-Government Guidelines

Posted by Sam on 29 October 2005

at standards-schmandards.com

Peter Krantz has posted a summary of the NZ government's compliance with their new e-government guidlines. A few points have come out of this.

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0 Comments Tags: egovernment, standards

What I read: Minding the Planet

Posted by Sam on 28 October 2005

From time to time I showcase blogs that I like reading. These often have very little to do with content management and the web, but you might find them interesting.

Minding the Planet is a blog I read fairly regularly.  In addition to musings about the "semantic web", Nova, the author has plenty of really interesting posts out of left field.  It's a refeshing source of curious facts about the world with Nova's unique perspective.

What's the semantic web?  Well, maybe I should let Nova tell you.

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0 Comments Tags: semantic web

A great perspective on Web 2.0

Posted by Sam on 26 October 2005

at headrush.typepad.com

Kathy Sierra knows what she's talking about. "Creating passionate users" is an excellent blog.

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0 Comments Tags: web 2

Why I switched to Google Reader

Posted by Sam on 26 October 2005

A brief review of Google's new RSS agregator.

So Google comes out with an RSS agregator and of course I give it a go.  Google really is the new Microsoft, except without the bitter aftertaste.  Maybe corporate america isn't all bad.   Maybe I just have a double standard ;-)

I've been using it for about a week now, not exactly a huge amount of research.  However, today I crossed a significant milestone:  I've delete my Bloglines bookmark and adopted Google Reader as my agregator of choice.  Why is this?

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0 Comments Tags: rss