I just came across ColorBox, a customizable lightbox plugin for jQuery. From their site on why you should be using ColorBox:

• Supports photos, photo groups, ajax, inline, and iframed content.
• Appearance is completely controlled through CSS so users can restyle the box.
• Behavior settings can be over-written without altering the ColorBox javascript file.
• Completely unobtrusive, requires no changes to existing HTML
• Degrades gracefully, all content displayed can be accessed without JavaScript.
• Preloads background images to avoid flash of unstyled content on first use.
• Can preload upcoming images in a photo group.
• Lightweight: only 12kbs of JavaScript - only 2kbs gzipped & minified!
• Written in jQuery plugin format and can be chained with other jQuery commands.
• Generates W3C valid XHTML and CSS
• Released under the MIT License.

I have used several different lightbox-style plugins in the past but most of them have felt very clunky. (ThickBox, I’m looking at you…) ColorBox looks like several steps in the right direction.

Anthony Short has released his take on a CSS Framework, CSScaffold:

I’m working on my own spin on CSS frameworks, except that mine is a little bit different. It requires PHP to make CSS better, rather then relying on the bad system that we have to work with.

It’s based on Shaun Inman’s CSS Cacheer which uses PHP to add dynamism and flexibility to CSS.

Be sure to check out the HD version of the CSScaffold introduction to get a better idea of how it works.

(via Shaun Inman)

Kris Wallsmith just posted a great tutorial showcasing Symfony 1.2’s flexibility by demonstrating how to add subdomain requirements to routing.yml:

A question came across the mailing list today that provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the flexibility of the symfony 1.2 routing system.

Evert Harmeling posed the following:

How can I point sub1.domain.com/test to a different route than sub2.domain.com/test inside the same application?

This is not supported natively by the symfony core, but the routing system can easily be extended to meet Evert’s requirement.

This is a neat extension of Symfony’s core. I’ve written before about using subdomains to load Symfony applications in the same project but this is a bit different as it’s switching subdomains within the same Symfony application.

The Apple Blog does a head-to-head comparison of Querious and Sequel Pro (successor to abandoned CocoaMySQL) and it looks like Querious wins:

When it comes to MySQL 5 servers, Querious matches and exceeds the features of Sequel Pro with style. If you don’t need to connect to a MySQL 3 or MySQL 4 database, Querious is just more polished and feature-rich than Sequel Pro and is well worth the small price tag.

… well, as long as you don’t need to use MySQL versions 3 or 4.

Querious looks promising:

Querious is a new MySQL database management application written from the ground up exclusively for Mac OS X Leopard. Unlike mindless Mac OS X versions of applications made for Windows or Linux, Querious is a stunning new app that is precise and easy to understand, giving you full control without getting in your way.

I used to use CocoaMySQL but the project was abandoned and has since resurfaced as Sequel Pro. Apparently Querious is much faster at working with large data sets.

Abduzeedo has a nice list of some very clever logos:

Logo design is a huge part of graphic design. A logo is a name, symbol, or trademark designed for easy and definite recognition. I’d like to share with you a selection of logos that I feel are some of the best around. Hope you enjoy.

I think the “Fashion Center” one looks more like a bowling ball than a button though.

An interesting initiative to get great typography to the web; check out The League of Moveable Type:

We’re done with the tired old fontstacks of yesteryear. Enough with the limitations of the web, we won’t have it. It’s time to raise our standards. Here, you’ll find only the most well-made, free & open-source, @font-face ready fonts.

Just came across the very cool looking Raphaël JavaScript Library:

Raphaël is a small JavaScript library that should simplify your work with vector graphics on the web. If you want to create your own specific chart or image crop and rotate widget, for example, you can achieve it simply and easily with this library.

It uses SVG for Good Browsers and VML for Internet Explorer.

On the whole, I generally prefer the way Safari renders and handles native form elements over that of most major browsers. One minor annoyance I’ve run into is that text inputs that are applied a custom style are still given a glowing halo-effect when focused. This is usually the desired effect since it is a huge visual aid to the user. Sometimes though, it gets in the way of custom styling and it’s necessary to turn it off. Here’s the relevant CSS to do so:

input { outline: none; }

(Hat tip to Artwork.Not.Available.)

Jonathan Wage posted a teaser of Doctrine 2.0 running on PHP 5.3:

Something we haven’t talked to much about is Doctrine 2.0! Roman has been quietly working on the next major major version of Doctrine, 2.0. This version will be taking a big leap by requiring PHP 5.3! The progress this new version of PHP is so great and it lends itself very well to the world of Object Relational Mappers.

Of note, it looks like memory usage is down and speed is up:

The Doctrine test suite uses 31% less memory and is 17% faster when running under PHP 5.3!

(Via the Doctrine Blog.)