There are sometimes when I truly wonder if designers and developers have it out for me.

Take for instance, the ASP .Net 2.0 login control. The designer wants it to look one way, however the .Net login control call only gives you so many options for style and layout. What is a front end architect to do?!

Thankfully, I’ve been blessed with the knowledge of the view as template option in Visual Studio 2005. The “view as template” option allows you to expand the normal login control code to a more complete view including the table that incapslates all the labels and text boxes.

To get to this magic option, do the following:

1. open the page with the login control you want to expand
2. view the page in design view
3. select the little black arrow to the right side of the control on the page
4. select ‘view as template’ in the drop down
5. switch back to the code view and skin to your hearts desire

If you spend any time at all watching viral videos online or are into viral marketing, you NEED to watch this video!

The team over at Cakke has mashed together some of the greatest viral moments (online and off) into one amazingly funny video. It’s really interesting to note just how many of them you have personally seen. Sometimes we don’t even know we’re participating in a viral activity, but this video really drives it home how many times we’re touched by this marketing magic.

In fact, I’m virally promoting this video right now… weird huh?

Game, set, match! Every Friday Coudal Partners, hosts a live weekly match of layer tennis.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with layer tennis, it’s a design game where two elite designers are pitted against each other in a design-off. Each designer has an allotted amount of time to return his serve, in Coudal’s matches it’s 15 minutes. They are given a topic by a referee, and must keep elements of the last serve within their design. At the end of 10 serves a winner is declared by a forum of spectators.

This week’s topic was of course Halloween! The opponents, Jason Santa Maria and Brian Taylor. The competition was fierce, the topic one both opponents know and love. The match was narrated by freelance writer Matthew Baldwin, who described the blow by blow action in gripping detail. By the end of the match we had been horrified by the best, with images of blood, flies, clowns and blood-sucking zombambis. Declaring a winner was difficult for the onlookers, but finally Jason was declared the ultimate layer slasher.

For photos of the gore and more information on the players and narrator check out the full match.

Recently we’ve completed four sites for Civigroup Companies. Within those sites you’ll notice several instances of sIFR (flash replacement text) inline with content. This is no easy task for sIFR text.

While trying to accomplish this feat of magic, I spent quite a bit of time researching different aspects of sIFR and how it works with CSS to understand how to make this work properly and of course, all while being cross browser compliant! So, in order to perhaps save someone else the time and hassle of trying to figure out the magic equation, I figured I’d share my experience.

Step 1: set the sIFR class on a span tag where you want the text to be.

<span class="h1inline" style="width: 325px;">Heritage. Commitment. Vision.</span>


Notice the width style attribute, this is required to make sure safari does not include extra space behind the span and before the rest of the copy.

Step 2: set the attributes in the sIFR-screen.css sheet to make it an inline block element along with the rest of your styles.

height: 25px;
display: inline-block;
overflow: hidden;

Notice the display: inline-block; this is also a safari required attribute.

Step 3: Tune height if necessary in the sifr-config.js

tuneHeight: '-5'

This will help if you plan no not only having your sIFR text inline, but also a link. I was having difficulties with the underline of the hover state being cut off by the flash doc.

 And viola you have sIFR text inline!

What is a Facebook Developers Garage? It’s an opportunity for developers, marketers and any one else to learn more about Facebook, Facebook applications, marketing through Facebook applications, building applications and everything in between. Highlights of the event include a presentation by Dave Morin of Facebook on Platform and a detailed look at the evolution of the Red Bull Roshambull application by Nate Warner of Red Bull. Seating is limited to the first 150 that RSVP to this event, so if you have interest be sure to get in early! Click here to RSVP

Date: Wed, Nov 14th, 2007

Time: 6-9 PM

Location:
Tempe Center for the Arts,
700 W. Rio Salado Parkway,
Tempe, AZ

Agenda:
6:00 pm - Networking & Refreshments
6:30 pm - Keynote Speaker: Dave Morin, Facebook
7:15 pm - Marketing Facebook Applications – Chris Johnson, Terralever
7:30 pm - Application Presentation: ‘Roshambull’ presented by Nate Warner, Red Bull
7:40 pm - Facebook Application Development, presented by Scott McAndrew & Joel Neubeck, Terralever
7:50 pm - 5-minute Apps and Ideas mini-presentations (If interested, contact one of the Event Admins)
8:30 pm - Live Social Networking
9:00 pm - Let the afterparty begin (location TBD)