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Sorting with grid

April 12th, 2017

A while ago we showed you a way to use flexbox for sorting lists and tables. This month the powerful CSS Grid layout system went unprefixed in all major browsers.

In short Grid is for two dimension grids, while Flexbox is better suited for one dimensional layouts, like a nav bar. They can work together, a grid cell can be a flexbox container and vice versa.

The grid system is rather easy to grasp, it doesn’t have much surprises.

Let’s go over to the sorting trick:

Just push the buttons or table header to sort the stuff.

How does it work

Sort the elements on text and write the grid order attribute for CSS.

<li style="grid-row-start: 7;">scstqehfr</li>

The main `win` of css sorting is you don’t need to modify the DOM, which is expensive in most browsers. That said, you need some CSS trickery to get tables look like tables at the moment a tbody has a grid or flexbox display-layout.

Read more about the Basic concepts of grid layout here.

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Install Android browsers without Google Play

{,,}
 March 13th, 2017

Android is the most used operating system for phones. Unfortunately software updates for android phones are not always available nowadays, so the only way to keep your phone secure and up-to-date, is to use a community driven version of Android.

Well, Android is open source, so you can always build something like LineageOS to get a recent version of Android for your device.

I certainly can recommend that. Even older phones are running quite nice, especially when all the proprietary (Samsung/Google) stuff is not installed. Don’t flash GAPPS and your phone feels like new.

Of course that means you don’t have something like Google Maps, but safety has a price, and to be honest, OsmAnd Maps is an excellent replacement.

Software for Android phones outside Google Play store

So now you have a recent LineageOS Android version on your phone, now you need software. You can use the F-Droid repository full of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software).

F-Droid

Opera Browser for Android outside the Google Play Store

You can find the Opera Browser, both the Mini, Mobile and the Opera Android version here:

https://www.opera.com/mobile/download/versions/

Firefox Browser for Android outside the Google Play Store

Firefox for Android is the only mobile browsers that has support for extensions. I can really recommend it.

You can find the Firefox browser, the apk package  here:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/android/all/

If you want to try out a beta version of Firefox for Android, you can find it here:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/android/beta/all/

And Firefox Aurora, the nightly builds:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/android/aurora/all/

When you use Android AOSP, you can have a hard time finding the right browser for your device. Don’t ask me why, but all those links are more or less unfindable, because they are hidden from search-engines.

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

Hope we can help.

Android AOSP is a great operating system for phones, and more or less the only way to use an Android Phone safe and secure for more then two years.

UPDATE

Firefox seems to change/hide direct download links for their Android browser. I guess Google is making the rules, and forbids public downloads.

Google is getting a pain in the ass here, why are they discouraging people to run 100% transparent open source software: Google that behavior is doing evil!.

There is always the FDroid Firefox version, I can recommend that.
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/

And of course there is the public development on Github, which offers releases as well:

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/releases

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Breaking the bad, pushing a worse internet (part II)

June 21st, 2015

In an earlier post we lamented the behavior of multinationals by dropping noble classic Internet principles like Graceful degradation and progressive enhancement to strengthen their business model at a high security and privacy cost for users.

Go to a site with JS disabled and you see Nada. Zilch. On Google, on Twitter, Facebook tells us it can do much without JS. Nonsense, that is their policy, it’s not your fault.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in browser, CSS3, HTML5, Javascript, Webtechnology | 1 Comment

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Fixing Tracking Contact Form 7 with Google Analytics in WordPress

October 1st, 2014

Contact Form 7 advices to add this code to the Additional Settings field at the bottom of the contact form management page

on_sent_ok: "_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Contact Form', 'Submit']);"

Actually that is a bad idea. Be tracked by Google is not every one’s favourite idea of a free internet, so people block Google Analytics either by any tracker blocker, like Ghostery or Disconnect, by Googles official `opt out extension` or by simple blocking the script in a firewall.

Yes, Internet is the only one place on earth you have to `opt-out` to live quiet and peaceful.

When a user has blocked the Analytics script and visits your contact form, he can’t submit it. It will not submit nor show any error-message. It will do nothing, except show an obscure JS error in the console.

`Uncaught exception: ReferenceError: Undefined variable: _gaq`

To fix this, wrap your code up in a try and catch, so it won’t stop on the error and submitting will not halt:

on_sent_ok: "try{_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Contact Form', 'Submit']);} catch(e){}"

Integrating Contact Form 7 and Google Universal Analytics this way is more robust.

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Sorting with Flexbox

August 13th, 2014

The Flexible Box Layout Module is a very powerful tool to style your webpages. It offers simple solutions for things like `the Holy Grail`

Here we do a dirty sorting trick:

Just push the buttons or table header to sort the stuff.

How does it work

Sort the elements on text and write the order attribute for CSS.

<li style="order: 7;">scstqehfr</li>

Then set the elements to display flex on the ol element:

.sorted{
display:flex;
flex-flow:column;
flex-direction:column;
}

Be aware:

Sorting this way is kind of superficial, it’s only ordered through CSS: It will show the elements in different order, but in the DOM there is no change at all. So traversing or accessing elements can be surprising, it will go in original/DOM order.

Sorting an table through Flexbox ruins the layout, because it resets the display property from `table-*` to `flex-*`. An additional trick to write the width explicitly is needed to maintain layout.

Posted in CSS3, HTML5, Javascript | No Comments

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Breaking the bad, pushing a worse internet

June 3rd, 2014

Some (and not all are alchemy wizards) are claiming that users break the internet by disabling JavaScript.

What is JavaScript? It is one of the three (technical) pillars of websites. The other two are HTML and CSS.

All have a different function:

  1. HTML = content
  2. CSS = style
  3. JavaScript = functionality

The content consists of all the text and images (and officially video and sound), the things you want on informational webpages. Style adds colours, margin, font-sizes and things like that, it makes the content more readable. JavaScript adds functionality and interactivity to webpages. Or can turn websites from informational documents into applications.

So how can users break the internet?

Of course they can’t.

Users can disable images, so browsers don’t download them. Don’ t forget to re-enable them before starting shouting on Twitter…

Users can disable CSS or override CSS which is nice for colour-blind or other visually impaired people.

JavaScript is needed for applications, like like games,  navigation or photo-editing,  and it can make informational documents more dynamic. On informational websites JavaScript is not viable, but needed to serve advertisements.

Users can disable CSS and JavaScript historically. At first because it was new and not widely supported, later because you don’t always need  it. All three types, HTML, CSS and JavaScript are served in different resources/files.  That means webpages will load faster with just HTML, instead of HTML, CSS and Javascript, because less resources have to be downloaded, and HTTP-requests are quite expensive.

CSS is nice too, but JavaScript can be an annoyance. It is a script language that executes by forehand unknown scripts (from probably different sources) on a user computer.

JavaScript impacts severely:

  • speed
  • security
  • privacy
  • costs (on  paid/metered connections)
  • battery usage on mobile devices
  • memory usage, especially on devices with less memory

If you have been infected by a virus, it must have been while visiting websites with JavaScript enabled.

So there are very good reasons  to disable JavaScript for users on at least a lot of unknown websites. You can always reload/refresh with JavaScript enabled, if you need it.

Cooking meth(ods) in business cuisines

Internet-companies read a different story: JavaScript is the fuel for their money machine. Tracking users and serving advertisements is an indispensable part of their business model, with JavaScript they can collect major users statistics. They can follow users over the internet, measure where you hover with you mouse, how long you read, how much you scroll, see what’s in your clipboard, operate your microphone or webcam, where you are, what your friends read, collect images, tracking what and how fast you type.  Yes, every script has access to that.

So companies need JavaScript much more then users. A little lie that `users are breaking the internet by disabling JavaScript` can help their business enormously, especially if you design a few sites that actually break the internet, because the sites do not work without JavaScript. Or they mix-up style with functionality. Push JavaScript and make users hooked to JavaScript. Especially target the mobile platform, because phones are a more valuable source for private information than desktops.

And if a users wants some privacy, blame the user! To disable JavaScript is a crime. You break the internet! What fear can do for you.

Smart-phones are stupid-phones and worse

A phone isn’t something you control, a smart-phone is controlled by major multinationals that run programs on your phone and collect information 24 hours a day and that info is continuously send to the cloud owned by the multinationals.

How much does a smart-phone phone home compared to real user initiated telephone calls. I would say a 100 times. Disconnect your phone from the internet, it can’t do anything any more. Stupid isn’t it? Smart means in control of some major company.

A smart-phone is a kind of ankle monitor. The new Android wear will undoubtedly have an indestructible variant for individuals under house arrest or parole.

Only the first take is free

Informational webpages that show no content without JavaScript is like delivering a newspaper without ink, well there is an accompanied stickersheet, just put the stickers on the right place. That sounds silly, and it is silly. The only way companies design such pages is that they force the users to enable JavaScript so they can collect and track and serve advertisements in return. Yes, the first browser Google designed had no possibility of turning JavaScript off. Google still blocks all extensions that users can install to block unwanted JavaScripts running on their device. Companies push apps on phones instead of letting users use webpages, because with apps they have better control and get more and easier access to detailed user-profiles.

Yes, it’s all about money. And real money isn’t made with cooking simple food like chicken nuggets or serving simple content. You need something sneaky and hidden, you need something in return.

You can be sure about one thing: bringing internet to the poor for free means multinationals want to run programs on the poor guys phones, watches and glasses too. It’s business, not charity out there.

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