As a freelance web developer I’ve met tons of entrepreneurs with great ideas. Unless I end up working with them, their ideas are typically forgotten amidst the deluge of rapid fire modernity that is the world of web development.

However this is not the case of my former client Bartek Ringwelski, co-founder of SkillSlate.com. While I didn’t work with him on it, I actually ended up using the site. Furthermore, I actually was pleased by the end result.

My apartment was a mess, my parents were coming to visit the upcoming weekend. Being a unique combination of lazy and busy, I knew I was going to hire a maid service. I began my search through my usual means (google), and was frustrated from the onset. My search turned up all sorts of results that weren’t even close to maid services, weren’t in my area, and offered little relevant information to me. The sites that had the best information were most often expensive companies, and not accessible individuals.

So then I tried SkillSlate.com. SkillSlate is like match.com for services, with a heavy emphasis on personal fit in additional to professional fit. Basically, they highlight the important details of WHO the service provider is and WHAT he/she provides. Finally, the SkillSlate directory puts all this together, allowing consumers to search for high quality, trusted individual service providers in their area. Individuals get more business and consumers feel secure that they have received high quality, less expensive work.

There is a huge need for this type of service in cities. I like hiring local service providers as opposed to larger companies because it’s a lot cheaper. I really think SkillSlate.com will pick up steam in big cities; I know it helped me out.

One of the hot topics in our industry these days is the technique of Responsive Web Design via the use of CSS3 Media Queries. The term Responsive Web Design was first coined by Ethan Marcotte in A List Apart. It revolves around the use of CSS3 Media Queries to deliver different CSS properties dependent on the browser’s dimensions. This allows us to create one unified stylesheet that will deliver a unique experience to all browsers; regardless of dimension and device. It’s flawless in application because it only affects devices that understand it, those that don’t fall back to the usual CSS properties they do understand.

But don’t take my word for it. You should really read Ethan Marcotte’s article. And then read Smashing Magazine’s tutorial of how to use CSS3 Media Queries. And then maybe play around with it a bit yourself – check the source code here, I’ve started to myself. I’m not here to teach you the technicalities of using CSS3 Media Queries, so definitely check out those links if you are still confused about the nature of the properties or Responsive Web Design.

So far, there are three really great examples of Responsive Web Design out there, and each reveal a different design approach.

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“Useless” is of course, in the eye of the beholder.

Just wrote a small, dumb plugin to mimic a typewritter effect for text in jQuery.

Check the demo out here, get the plugin here, and check out the github page here.

If you’ve developed an ajax site, at some point you may have ran into the problem of not being able to make ajax requests across different domains or sub-domains. And if you haven’t run into this problem yet – don’t worry, it’s coming.

Fortunately, my buddy Kenny whom I work with at HUGE wrote a quick PHP class to solve this problem. Basically, rather than routing requests directly to the other domain, you route them to a PHP file hosted on your local domain with the ajax-proxy class instantiated. The class then visits the URL on a separate domain and saves the response text via PHP, which has no cross domain limits. This response is then returned by the PHP class, and finally to your Ajax function!

There are a few other attempts at proxies out there, but as far as I know Kenny’s ajax-proxy is the only one that also sends cookies along with the request. So if the domain you are requesting to requires a cookie which is set on your original domain – no worries. Ajax-proxy takes care of it for you!

Don’t take my word for it. Read Kenny’s blog post for better details. Or just check it out at HUGE’s github account!

(Because you don’t have to listen to me) –> Check out USTORE.js @ github, or check out the JS file itself!

Two of the cooler new features in the HTML5 spec are localStorage and sessionStorage. You might wanna think of them like cookies, but on steroids.

LocalStorage allows for data, in name value pairs, to be stored within the web browser. This data will persist past window closures and browser crashes, and will stay consistent across multiple tabs & windows of the same URL.

SessionStorage is exactly the same as localStorage with a difference – the data only lasts for the life of the browser window. If the window is closed, or the browser crashes, the data is dumped. The data will be independent across multiple tabs & windows of the same URL.

Native support for the localStorage and sessionStorage API’s can be found in the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera, and even IE8! So as usual, the nut to crack lies in how do we get this to work in IE6 & IE7?

Well, there is a jQuery plugin out there called jStorage, among a few others, that successfully emulates localStorage across all the major browsers, including IE6+. But what of sessionStorage?

While working at HUGE, I’ve been able to put together a small javascript library that does just that. Both local and session storages are supported by USTORE.js.

Check it out @ github, or check out the JS file itself! Official docs will be coming soon.