Replacing social sharing buttons with javascript-less alternatives

Social sharing widgets slow down page loading For every public facing site there comes the moment where its content has to be shared in social media. We all know the dreaded "Like" or "Tweet" buttons on many sites or blogs. They not only compete for the reader's attention but also for screen real estate and … Continue reading Replacing social sharing buttons with javascript-less alternatives →

Internet Explorer: Disabling clicks on a page

Disabling clicks on a webpage should be easy: put a div in front of it with a fixed position which should get all clicks. With IE that is not easy because a completely transparent element will forward clicks to the underlying element. Some solutions I found: Alpha filter with background Adding these CSS properties (IE8 … Continue reading Internet Explorer: Disabling clicks on a page →

Hiding the address bar in mobile browsers

The port of Super Star Trek [1] to an HTML 5 mobile app involves some times dealing with the fact that the app does not have full control over the device but runs inside a browser. One of the restrictions thus applied is the omnipresent address bar in the browser. For many applications that is … Continue reading Hiding the address bar in mobile browsers →

Changing sub-pixel rendering in Ubuntu 12.04

In older Ubuntu releases one could change the sub-pixel rendering in the system settings, but that option was unfortunately removed in newer releases. Fortunately it is still accessible via gnome settings [1]: Open dconf-editor In the left pane, go to /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/xsettings In the right pane, change the value of the rgba-order key to bgr: or … Continue reading Changing sub-pixel rendering in Ubuntu 12.04 →

Shortcut icons on Unity desktop

Noteworthy as Unity's turn away from the desktop towards the launcher might be, I'm an old dog and like my screen crowded. The (manual) way to create a new desktop shortcut icon to an application is to create a shortcut file in the Desktop directory, i.e: /home/george/Desktop/Firefox8.desktop And the contents: [Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=1.0 Name=Firefox … Continue reading Shortcut icons on Unity desktop →