Page 18 of 22 of the Unsolicited Advice Archives

1. Why doesn't my scale3d() / scaleZ() transform work?

   One of the trickier parts of 3D transforms is understanding how the scaleZ() and scale3d() functions work. When applied to an element, they will often appear to have no effect. But then at other times, or in other combinations, they will. Confusing right? So what's going on? Well, it has

2. A look at the Page Visibility API

   You're sitting in your office with your speakers un-muted. Maybe you're making plans for dinner, and decide to check out the web site of that hot new restaurant in the North Trendy neighborhood. Of course, you're not supposed to be making dinner plans while on the clock. So when Busybody

3. WordPress: Adding custom galleries to your theme

   WordPress has a gallery feature that allows you to include a set of images with your posts. The syntax is simple, using what's known as a shortcode. WordPress has an entire API devoted to shortcodes. In WordPress 3.5, it's possible to add a gallery using the gallery short code

4. @supports API lands in Firefox Nightlies

   This is old(ish) news to those of you who have been paying attention: support for the @supports API — CSS.supports() — landed in Firefox late last month. So far, a complete implementation is only available in Firefox Nightly builds. It should show up in a Firefox release sometime soon. Opera

5. Supporting and detecting @supports

   Opera recently added support for the @supports feature of the CSS Conditional Rules Module. Using @supports offers a native way to feature-test support for CSS properties and values. @supports (display: flex){ /* Include flexible box styling here */ } You can also test for negation, and provide rules for cases when a feature

6. Make fewer DOM updates with createDocumentFragment()

   During a recent conversation about some code I've released, the other party asked me why I didn't use a document fragment. I think my reaction was more or less "What, well, um, I don't know, so I'm just going to bullshit and pretend I know what you're talking about or

7. Meet the datalist element

   UPDATE: Browsers vary a bit in how they render datalists based on the type of form input. Eiji Kitamura has a demo that illustrates how they all work. One of my favorite parts of HTML5 forms is the datalist element. Opera added support in version 9.0. Support in

8. Array.prototype.map() versus Array.prototype.forEach()

   Both map() and forEach() are native JavaScript methods of the Array object. Both methods accept up to two parameters: a required callback function, and an optional argument that will become the object referred to by this within the callback. That last part is confusing, so let me illustrate with some

9. 

   Striped border bug on transformed elements in ≤ Opera 12.02

   Opera's border rendering on elements with a rotate transform applied. Opera 12.02 (and older...