Tony Miller's blog

Guest Lecture: Mashups 101

Tony Miller — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:07:06 +0000

I had the privilege of speaking to a senior/graduate level course in Urban Planning taught by Dr. Anuradha Mukherji. My topic was web application mashups, and specifically the creation of maps mashups for someone with no web programming background. Here are the slides from my talk:

UNC CAUSE 10 Presentation

Tony Miller — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:27:59 +0000

Here is the slide deck from my UNC CAUSE 10 presentation. My talk was given to an audience of IT (and some non IT) staff from throughout the 17 campuses of the UNC System. You can see from my comments that people received the information favorably. It’s always easy to be enthusiastic about something that really interests you.

Mastering PowerShell – a Free e-book

Tony Miller — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:14:58 +0000

Today’s post is a copy of a free e-book called Mastering PowerShell. It’s available by using the linked image or by visting the powershell.com e-book page.

WordPress 3.0

Tony Miller — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:52:15 +0000

Features, features, features, see the video at: http://wordpress.org/development/2010/06/thelonious/

Google Chrome: Way Fast

Tony Miller — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:56:39 +0000

From those crazy Google folks:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mobile Safari View Source Bookmarklet

Tony Miller — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:11:12 +0000

I’ve come across this information from other sources, but Rob Flaherty has the best description of how to actuallycreate and use bookmarklets on the iPod/iPhone/iPad:

http://www.ravelrumba.com/blog/ipad-view-source-bookmarklet

Thanks to Rob for explaining this to the newbies to mobile Safari!

I’ve tried out the bookmarklet on an iPod Touch, and it works great. I’ll have to get some of my coworkers with iPads to see the results.

Teaching WordPress

Tony Miller — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:15:11 +0000

I was recently asked to give a quick class on the options and features available to faculty, staff, and students for the blogs at ECU. Using the Slideshare.net plugin, I have published the following slide deck:

Web Site Spring Cleaning: Font Stacks

Tony Miller — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:52:57 +0000

When designing a page, one of the issues that should always be considered is what font is specified for body text, headings, and other HTML elements. Unless you use specialized font embedding techniques, the best you can do is figure our which fonts have the greatest saturation on the major computing platforms and order the font-family specification accordingly. You don’t want to use only one font name, because there are differences between the “standard” fonts in Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and mobile systems. In addition, the very basic serif, sans-serif, monospaced, fantasy, or cursive should always be the final fallback, because the official HTML specifications demand that any browser implement a means of rendering those. What font is actually chosen for those rules is platform dependent, and may be ignored when using text only browsers that have very limited means of modifying the rendered information.

In the spirit of Spring Cleaning, I recommend an article that provides the very latest word in font stacks, including screen shots of platforms and browsers:

http://www.awayback.com/revised-font-stack/

jQuery and JavaScript Tips

Tony Miller — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:19:27 +0000

Excellent resource:

http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2009/11/more-jquery-and-general-javascript-tips-to-improve-your-code.html

The one that most appeals is the jQuery Selectors Lab

Icons, Icons, Icons

Tony Miller — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:56:28 +0000

I love icon sets, it’s amazing to see the various ways to re-imagine logos and application functionality. Courtesy of WebAppers, a gigantic set of icon sets:

http://www.webappers.com/2009/12/07/the-best-free-web-icons-for-different-purposes/