Bytes of Developing in the Dark

Tipsy - JQuery Tooltip Plugin

I needed a quality tooltip plugin and after looking at a few I fortunately stumbled upon Tipsy (homepage & github). If you’re in the market for one, its worth checking out. Based on Facebook’s tooltips and used by Twitter, Github, plus others.

Secure Google Apps Email Using SPF

Almost every domain I get my hands on I end up adding Google Apps as the email server/software. The other day I was setting up yet another installation when I stumbled across this helpful slicehost article about preventing email from your domain being forged and being treated as spam by other clients.

Googles own support page outlines that all you have to do is:

• Add a new TXT record in your DNS settings
• Set the value of the record to: v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all

jQuery Cookie Plugin

Very easy implementation for interacting with browser cookies using jquery

$.cookie('the_cookie'); // get cookie
$.cookie('the_cookie', 'the_value'); // set cookie
$.cookie('the_cookie', 'the_value', { expires: 7 }); // set cookie with an expiration date seven days in the future
$.cookie('the_cookie', null); // delete cookie

• Download
• Demo (view the source to see example js code)
• Associated blog post

Nginx Access Restriction

A detailed article about how to add basic access restriction on a website using an nginx web server. Use either the perl or ruby script mentioned here to generate an encrypted password.

CakePHP Flash Messages

A method you can use to check whether there are flash messages to show:

$session->check('Message.flash')

An example of how you can use it to add custom DOM elements and JavaScript animation:

<?php if($session->check('Message.flash')) { ?>
  <div id="flash-messages">
    <?php $session->flash(); ?>
  </div>
  <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
    setTimeout(function () { 
      $('#flash-messages').fadeOut('slow'); 
    }, 4000);
  </script>
<?php } ?>

Source: Iamkoa Labs