Click on the image to see a larger version.

Using PHP we can convert the form field variable by doing the following:

$personsname= "tom peters";
$PersonsName = ucwords($personsname);

echo "<p>The old string - $personsname <br />";
echo "The new string - $PersonsName </p>";

There are a few more examples that you could experiment with for example:
strtolower(); will convert a string to lowercase.
strtoupper(); will convert a string to uppercase.

Today we launched the all new website for the new Falcon Ridge development, a unique development of 15 contemporary lodges at the old Dobwalls Adventure Park site.

The lodge features include:

• Double glazing
• Floor to ceiling windows in the lounge and bedrooms
• Solid timber cladding
• Flat screen TV
• Fully fitted kitchen
• Beautiful bathroom suite
• En-suite master bedroom
• Engineered oak plank flooring
• Recessed halogen lighting
• Stainless steel electrical sockets
• Architectural detailing
• Unique contemporary style
• Wonderful decking area creating the perfect link between outside and in.

Falcon Ridge is an exclusive and unique development of 15 luxury holiday homes, marrying beautiful quality and contemporary styling with a truly wonderful and natural setting. Offering contemporary living in a magnificent location, each home at Falcon Ridge is nestled within its own landscaped and spacious plot each with its own wonderful outlook – a truly perfect environment in which to relax, unwind and breathe.

The two bedroom homes at Falcon Ridge reflect the wonderfully natural setting in which they exist. Extensively built from timber harvested from sustainable forests – still the most beautiful building material available - before being blended with contemporary styling and state of the art appliances.

Click here to launch the website

lodges for sale, holiday lodges for sale, residential holiday homes for sale, holiday lodges for sale cornwall, beach holiday lodges for sale

A common assumption by newbie cssers is to specify each individual property line by line (this is by all means not wrong, but it is however a longwinded way of writing your css). Below in the next set of examples i will try to explain some of the basic methods for shortening your css.

Inefficient code
#selector {
margin-top:25px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:25px;
margin-left:0px;
}

Efficient code
#selector{
margin:25px 10px 25px 10px;
}

As you can see we have manage to shorten the css styling from 6 lines to only 3. The way this works is by setting the properties in order: Top, Right, Bottom and then Left.

Similarly to simplify your code further you could use the following for the padding attribute:

#selector{
margin:25px 10px;
}

This works by setting the top and bottom margin to 25px and the left and right margin to 10px;

If the all of the attributes are the same (e.g top, right, bottom and left) you can simplify your code once again:

#selector{
margin:40px;
}

The example above shows an example where a 40px margin is required on the top, right, bottom and left of your div.

This method isn’t just used for the margin attribute it can also be used for things such as padding and the same principle can be carried into things such as font, background, border etc. Below i will show some example of long winded css compared to shorthand css.

Fonts

Example 1
#selector {
font-weight: bold;
font-family: verdana;
font-size: 115%;
}

Example 1 in short hand
#selector{
font: bold 115% verdana;
}

Background

Example 2
#selector {
background-color:#003366;
background-image:url(images/background.gif);
background-position:top;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}

Example 2 in short hand
#selector{
background:#003366 url(images/background.gif) top no-repeat;
}

Borders

Example 3
#selector {
border-weight:1px;
border-style:solid;
border-color:#ffcc00;
}

Example 3 in short hand
#selector{
border:1px solid #ffcc00;
}

As you can see the above examples show a clear demonstration of how to code more efficiently.

Body is your friend

Another common mistake that i often see when editing other peoples work is the constant use of font this, font that, and its used on nearly every div, or element of the xhtml document.

For example
#mydiv{
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:62.5%;
font-weight:bold;
}
.mytextarea{
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:62.5%;
font-weight:bold;
}

By utilising the body tag correctly you can save your self a lot of hassle and extra code.
Simply start by setting everything in the body tag like below:
body{
font:bold 62.5% Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
colour:#000;
}

Additionally if you know that you want everything to have the same font, whether it be an input element or just a standard div, make use of the star hack:
*{font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}
To find out more regarding the star hack click here

50 beautiful css designs
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2006/12/19/50-beautiful-css-based-web-designs-in-2006/

Nice Blog
http://creativebits.org/taxonomy/adobephotoshop?from=50

Mega Proxy
https://www.megaproxy.com/freesurf/ 

Popup
http://www.kirupa.com/developer/flash8/centered_popup_window2.htm

HTML characters
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_13.html

Highslide
http://vikjavev.no/highslide/#examples

CSS TRICKS
http://css-tricks.com/the-different-techniques-for-applying-the-png-hack/

Brushes
http://www.bittbox.com/illustrator/28-free-illustrator-brushes-for-making-swooshes-and-swirls/

Excluding posts on the index page of the blog was one of those things that i knew was possible but never really got around to actually doing it!

I thought i would share the solution to the problem as i managed to find a quick and easy way of excluding the posts.

Here’s how you do it

Step 1
Locate the index.php file in your current active theme. This is usually situated in the ‘wp-content/themes/’ folder of your server. Once you have located this folder pick your current theme and look inside to find the index.php file. You will then need to download this file and open in your default editor.

Step 2
Once you’ve managed to open the file do a search for the following line of code:
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

You will then need to insert the following code so you have something that looks like this:
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php if (in_category('79')) continue; ?>

Step 3
Notice that the category 79 has been used in this example.
To find the id of the category that you want to exclude from the homepage simply login to your admin page and head over to the manage > categories section. Once there simply mouse over the category name that you wish to exclude and notice in the url there will be an id number (this normally displayed to the bottom of your browser).

Extra Steps
If you want to exclude multiple categories simply duplicate the same line of code as shown above changing the id number. See the example below:

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php if (in_category('79')) continue; ?>
<?php if (in_category('29')) continue; ?>
<?php if (in_category('30')) continue; ?>
<?php if (in_category('12')) continue; ?>

This is its as simple as that!

After crawling the net i managed to stumble across a good site with some very nice examples, both build wise and visually.

The site links to a number of Horizontal and Vertical drop down menus. 

Click here to check them out.

I have uploaded a zip file with an example of a few include statements. This can be found at the bottom of this post.

Example Code

<?php include("includes/filename.php"); ?>

Take a look at the attached example and see how you can use the php include function to speed up your development time.

Things to note

Unless your machine is set up to allow php files to run locally you will need to upload it to your server to test.

Download

PHP Include Example Download

Using the code below (actionscript 2.0 but should still work in 3.0) we create an array and trace the results.

The Code

Array.prototype.shuffle=function(){
for(i=0;i<this.length;i++){
var tempvar=this[i];
var ranVar=random(this.length);
this[i]=this[ranVar];
this[ranVar]=tempvar;
}
}
myArray=["flash","dreamweaver","illustrator","in-design","photoshop"];
myArray.shuffle();
trace(myArray);

This would return a trace with answers such as:
‘dreamweaver, flash, in-design, photoshop, illustrator’

Example of Inefficient use of code

_global.variable1 = 0;
_global.variable2 = 0;
_global.variable3 = 0;
_global.variable4 = 0;
_global.variable5 = 0;
_global.variable6 = 0;
_global.variable7 = 0;
_global.variable8 = 0;
_global.variable9 = 0;
_global.variable10 = 0;
_global.variable11 = 0;
_global.variable12 = 0;
_global.variable13 = 0;

In the above example we are simply setting a whole load of global variables in flash. You can imagine that if the number of variables increased, say for example 40 variables, you would need 40 lines of code to achieve the desired result.

To simplify this process i have created a simple snippet of code could be contained within a for loop, creating and setting all of these variables in only 3 lines of code. By using a for loop we can add or decrease the amount of variables increased by changing just one variable.

Efficient use of code

/// set how many variables should be created
number_of_times = 13;

/// loop 13 times creating 13 variables with the value of 0
for (var i = 1; i<(number_of_times+1); i++) {
_global["slide"+i] = 0;
}

The Benefits

This makes it much easier to increase or decrease the amount of variables created, simply change “number_of_times = 13″ to a greater number.
If for example we wanted to rename the varaibale from “variable” to “myVariable” we would ammend one line of code… not 13 as shown in the initial example.

This method can be applied in a variet of different ways helping you become more productive and efficent with your code.

I hope this simple little explanation helps someone out.