New grid system for front end design

A new grid system is out: http://lessframework.com/ -

Browsing images: Lazy load

Came across Mark Delamere's portfolio site recently, and though: nice way to display long vertical series of images, similar fading effect as the one used on Google Images.

This effect is rendered through the Lazy Load plugin for Jquery.

http://www.appelsiini.net/projects/lazyload

Luke 0.8 for Zend Lucene

The more I use Zend Lucene lib, the more I think I should go for a different lib next time I integratet a search engine (such as Sphinx for instance). Java Lucene is fast and not too greedy resource wise. Zend Lucene on the other hand becomes quite slow and resources greedy as soon as amount of data reaches a certain volume.

In a previous post about optimising Zend Lucene index I advised to use Luke (Java Tool used to optimise Lucene index) to speed up the optimization process (which Zend Lucene does quite badly).

The thing to keep in mind is that the current version of Zend Lucene relies on Lucene 2.3, whereas Luke versions available on the Google Code website are only compatible with Lucene 2.4 ...

So you'll need the Luke 0.8 version, which is available here.

Java optimiser for Zend Lucene Index

Found this interesting utility today: http://code.google.com/p/luke/

Zend Lucene is a great library to add search engine capability to your site, but it consumes so much memory that you may need sometimes to turn off the index optimiser. In which case you'll see the number of index files increasing dramatically.

And you may end up (as I did) being unable to index any more, or optimise the index, as number of index files the application needs to open is too high.

Quick fix is to run Luke on your index, and optimise it (Luke uses Java version of Lucene + Hadoop library) - et voila!

web Goodies | September 10

Long time I have not posted cool front-end plug-ins. Here is a list of plug-ins I intend to use in upcoming projects:

New fonts
I intend to use new fonts such as Lucida, which are web safe (At least as web safe as Georgia for instance, see cheat sheet here)

CKFinder
CKFinder is a free alternative to KCFinder, Image management library for WYSIWYG editors.

Form Builder
I am working on a B2B micro site builder project, and would definitely do with a nice Form Builder. This one is quite cool, think I'lll purchase the code. http://www.appnitro.com/machform

Live traffic visualisation
Hummingbird can let you track traffic in real time, which is kinda cool . It's "pre-alpha" release, not sure yet what I would do with that, but will definitely keep an eye on it. Node.js is probably what I will use in a soon future though, as it looks like an easy way to implement network features for an application. V0.2 is now available.  

Free the foxes
If you can't be asked designing for IE6... you can always  use this good looking plugin which detects browsers and offers alternatives..

Slick Grid
This javascript plugins promises the ability to render very large tables without drop in performance.. Worth the try.

Sublime Video
Yes, with device such as iPad which don't support Flash, we now need to consider using also HTML 5 to play videos. Sublime video looks like an interesting offer, switching automatically between flash and HTML5 depending on the device detected.

JQuery Mobile framework
JQuery Mobile gives us the ability to add a bit of fancy for mobile format. As we design systematically for mobiles now, it is definitely a library I'll be using on a regular basis in the future.

MediaCore
This is a CMS dedicated to podcasts. Wordpress seems overkill in comparison, when a client only needs the ability to present a micro site with podcast.

ElFinder
This is a Jquery plugin which let you manage files. Quite neat, may use it to replace the current file manager in the JDD, or in future bespoke projects (has got PHP & Python connector).

IP Info DB
Not really fronte-end, but since I was working on integrating this geo-locator today, I though I would add this little IP locator goodie to the list as well. This is a Database allowing you to geolocalise visitors on the fly.

brand guidelines | available online

I think it is good practice to publish your brand guidelines online. I came across Identity Works website today, which lists company websites with brand guidelines available.
http://www.identityworks.com/tools/guidelines_and_standards_manuals.htm

Most of the links provided are dead now, but you can still find good example, such as http://www.alzbrandguide.org.uk

The website also provides very useful information such as Corporate Identity Process Chart, a series of questions to ask in order to scope out the Corporate Identity, and links to very useful information such as real case studies: http://www.corporatebrandmatrix.com