David Stiller’s blog

Operators are elements in a programming language that combine, compare, or change values in an expression.  Common operators, such as < (less than) and > (greater than) are familiar to most developers.  Those, for example, are relational operators; they compare two values and return a Boolean (true or false) that describes the relationship between them (A is greater than B or it isn’t).  Other common relational examples include <= (less than or equal to) and >= (greater than or equal to).

Of the various categories of operators — relational is one of many — there are a handful that are undeniably lesser known.  One of those is the conditional operator (?:), so let’s take a look at what it has to offer.  Keep reading »

It’s often desirable to quickly resize the browser to a given set of dimensions:  800×600, 1024×768, or maybe, “Hey, how would this look on a widescreen laptop?” (1280×800).  Granted, HTML design shouldn’t be too dependent on browser dimensions — after all, we live in a world of cell phone, PDA, and PSP browsers — and even on “normal” computer screens, many browsers are skinnable, so who knows how much area the viewport actually gets?  Regardless, it is darned convenient to be able to snap the browser quickly to whatever size you like, even if you’re only doing it to make tutorial screenshots.  The following three approaches are my favorite.  Keep reading »

This is a Quick Tip, but it’s not related to Flash or any other software.  Has nothing to do with computers, in fact.  This is about how to catch fruit flies — whole bunches of ’em, with barely any effort.  Keep reading »