Hi,

In this video I introduce you to two things:

1. Basic object oriented concepts.
2. The Javascript object hierarchy.

The goal of this video is to give you a birds eye view of Javascript, to hopefully make it easier to understand how to use this language in later videos.

This video is from my very soon to be released Javascript basics video tutorial course.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com

Hi,

I just released and brand new course on the Javascript framework called jQuery. JQuery is a very popular Javascript library that many web designers will find themselves working with.

You can find about 40 minutes of free videos from the course here:

www.killerjavascript.com/beginners-jquery/

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com

Hi,

As you may know, I am a big Wordpress fan and I use it on a few of my ‘killer’ sites. Anyway, I just discovered that the Wordpress nerds have used the Google Gears project to speed up the Wordpress admin user interface.

What is Gears?

Gears is basically a browser add-on that allows Javascript code to run much faster. To use Gears, you as a programmer, has to build it into your Javascript code (as the Wordpress people did ..) and for people to benefit from Gears, it has to be installed into their browsers.

.. You can learn more about this in this video I just created:

You can install Gears (into your web browser) here:

http://tools.google.com/gears/

Please note that Gears works with Firefox and Explorer only.

I hope you guys find this useful.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

Hi,

Once in a while, I use email questions sent to me as the subject of an article, this time the question is about whether someone should use a Mac or a PC if they want to get into web design.

… I’m thinking of becoming a web designer and I was wondering if I would be better off with a Mac or a PC? Is there any advantage to using one over the other when building websites?

Thanks,

Jason

Short answer: there is no real advantage on either PC (Windows) or Mac when it comes to web design. Here are the two reasons why:

• The technology’s behind websites (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP etc…) are universal.
• All the major software used in web design production can be found on both Mac and PC. The one exception maybe Web Expression from Microsoft.

Outside of web design, some would argue for Mac and others for PC. I use both, but I can see how some might prefer one or the other. That said, prior to the soon to be released Windows 7, Mac has had Windows beat hand-downs … all things considered.

With Windows 7 coming out though, I’ve heard from many reliable nerd sources, that Microsoft has really improved things a lot.

… I will almost certainly be upgrading my XP box when Windows 7 comes out.

Conclusion:

If you are looking to jump into web design, you are pretty much free with regards to which type of computer to get. I would be making my computer choice based on other things, for example:

• Stability of the operating system.
• Ease of use.
• Cost
• What looks nicer to you!

I hope that helps,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

I just updated to Firefox 3.5.2 in hopes that it might fix some issues I have been having with it on Mac. I can’t say if it has fixed anything yet, but I did discover something new: Firefox now supports the free Open Video Format.

What? Don’t we have Flash already?

Yes, we have Flash, Windows Media, Quicktime and others to embed video into our web pages, but in all those cases, we need to use an outside plugin. With this new video format, you just use plain old HTML!

Some details from Wiki:

As originally recommended by HTML 5, these browsers support Theora when embedded by the video element:

* Mozilla Firefox 3.5
* Google Chrome as of version 3.0.182.2 [1]
* Opera video build

-

Theora is the name of this free video compression format/codec and it produces video quality that is about the same as h.264 – the video format Adobe has decided to use to replace their own FLV format. So it should be pretty good.

To encode your videos into Theora, you will need to find a video encoder that does this. There are already several out there and I am sure more will come out over time … since already several browsers can play Theora videos. For now, you may want to try a video encoder that you can install right into Firefox!

Learn more about Theora.

Final comment

This is cool except for the fact that until Internet Explorer allows us to embed Theora … it’s a no go. Internet Explorer still has the vast majority of browser market, so we as web designers have to build within its’ limitations.

Thanks for reading,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com