Weblog


Mar 08
0

Introducing mapKey

I’ve been seeing more and more websites offering great navigation with the keyboard, and I started wondering how i’d put it to use in my own work. That gave me an idea to make a jQuery plugin to make it super easy for anyone to add keyboard navigation to their site. I love keyboard navigation a lot, so please use this plugin!

mapKey lets you simply target any link on your site or call a function with a keyboard character. Using it is pretty simple:

$("a#next-page").mapKey("right");

Or, to call a function:

$.mapKey("left", function(){
  alert("you hit the left button!");
});

$.mapKey(“right”, rightFunction);

Check out the demo, download it, or view the source on GitHub.

Posted by Josh Pyles on March 8 2010
Mar 08
0

What’s up lately

I haven’t been blogging much lately, as i’ve been super busy, but here’s some updates.

Uniform 1.5

I released a new and improved version of Uniform a few weeks ago, and it’s had a very positive response. New in 1.5 is a new sprite-based theme system, various speed and logic improvements, lots of bug fixes, and a new type of form control to style: File inputs. You can check out the mini-site here, and fork me or post bugs on github.

Contracting at Jive

I have been contracting in-house at Jive for the last month or so, and it’s been a great experience. I was mainly there to fill in for Sig as he became a new father, but i’ve been able to help out with a lot of cool things. It looks like i’ll be contracting there part time for the rest of March at least.

joshpyles.com

If you haven’t seen it, my personal tumblr is up in full force at http://joshpyles.com. I’ve been meaning to skin it for quite a while and I finally got around to it.

New domain alias: pixelmatrix.net/.org

I have been after pixelmatrix.com for a while, and finally pixelmatrix.net and pixelmatrix.org opened up so I swiped them. Probably keeping pixelmatrixdesign.com as the main URL for quite a while, but if I had pixelmatrix.com i’d definitely make that the main one.

New business cards

I had some new business cards letterpressed recently, and they look awesome. If you see me, ask me for one. Don’t forget that I still have some buttons too, which leads me to my next point…

Heading to SXSW this week

I’ll be in Austin, TX this week for SXSW Interactive. Make sure to say hi! I'll have buttons and business cards to hand out.

Posted by Josh Pyles on March 8 2010
Feb 10

Uniform updated to 1.5

If you haven’t already heard, I updated my Uniform plugin to v1.5, adding lots of bug fixes, and a couple features. Namely the ability to style File inputs. Along with the new release is a mini-site for the plugin. Check it out!

Posted by Josh Pyles on February 10 2010
Nov 17

jpyl.es

I made a fun little business card website yesterday. Check it out on the iPhone and on your desktop to see all of the awesomeness.

Posted by Josh Pyles on November 17 2009
Nov 17

XUI - Lightweight Javascript library for iPhone

This library is like a very small subset of jQuery, so it’s perfect for mobile. Check it out.

Posted by Josh Pyles on November 17 2009
Oct 28
5

GetGravatar updated to 1.2

With an update so big that it had to skip a whole point, i'm happy to announce that GetGravatar is now updated to 1.2. Now with 100% less PHP required, and 50% less AJAX calls!

Basically, I removed the dependency on the PHP file, and integrated a couple of functions from the awesome php.js project in order to speed things up significantly.

Quick download link

Continue reading →
Posted by Josh Pyles on October 28 2009
Oct 28

Finding Focus

Konigi knocks it out of the park here. I seriously need help with focus, and there are some great tips here.

Posted by Josh Pyles on October 28 2009
Oct 12

The Simplest Solution Never Comes First

Great article on prototyping and product development from the 99 percent. I always love hearing from designers who have worked on a huge project such as this, the Herman Miller “Setu” chair. Leaves us with hope: To those who search for it, the simplest solution is out there, it’s just not generally the first thing you come across.

Posted by Josh Pyles on October 12 2009
Oct 08

To Change Effectively, Change Just One Thing

Peter Bregman talks about effective change by changing only one thing. It’s an interesting read, and while it’s not entirely focused on web design, I think it can apply to anything. Found via the always awesome Konigi

Posted by Josh Pyles on October 8 2009
Oct 08

Scroll Magazine, Issue #2

The creative web design magazine Scroll has finally published their 2nd issue. Too bad it’s not available printed like the first one was. Still a great read if you have a chance.

Posted by Josh Pyles on October 8 2009
Oct 08

FMYI in the New York Times

FMYI recently launched the 6.0 version of their platform with a bit of a facelift from me. This is a write up in the New York Times about the new 6.0 release. I’ll be blogging about the experience as well pretty soon.

Posted by Josh Pyles on October 8 2009
Sep 21

New Sub-Pixel hack for Snow Leopard

So of course, with every major OS upgrade and Safari upgrade the sub-pixel hack is changed. For those who aren’t in the know, the sub-pixel hack is a technique used to force Safari to use softer text anti-aliasing creating a “smoother” look on the text. This time Ordered List found the new hack. Found via @tdreyno

Posted by Josh Pyles on September 21 2009
Sep 09

You’re Killing Me Zappos

Andrew Wilkinson from Metalab gives Zappos some tips on their site. Pretty good suggestions i’d say!

Posted by Josh Pyles on September 9 2009
Sep 07

Cufon and sIFR compared

Tyler Sticka compares and contrasts Cufon and sIFR side by side. Neat article if you’re trying to decide which one to use.

Posted by Josh Pyles on September 7 2009
Sep 03
4

Mod jQuery Sparkline to have a thicker line

9/14/09 - Update: jQuery.sparkline 1.4.3 now supports a lineWidth attribute

I prefer sparklines with a thicker line, something like 2-3px looks better to me than thin 1px lines in charts. I recently needed to use the jQuery sparklines plugin but there was no parameter for how to make the line thicker. After much searching through the source code I found the answer.

Continue reading →
Posted by Josh Pyles on September 3 2009

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About me

I am Josh Pyles, owner of Pixelmatrix Design. I live in beautiful Portland, Oregon with my wife Olga, and 2 cats.

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