As there is currently no way to make a website go full screen in Safari. I have created a bookmarlet.

Just drag the bookmarklet below to your bookmarks bar:

Full Screen

Only works on Safari 5.1B

So now, the latest Safari has been released with the full screen javascript APIs, it shouldn’t take to long for the others to catchup.

Now, I wouldn’t usually use the term catchup with regards to Safari, as lets be honest. It is never one of the usual suspects for innovation. WebKit yes, safari no.

After all, Safari was the last one in the fullscreen game. But it’s the first with a javascript API. It was introduced in WebKit nightlies back in January.

In my opinion this is great for a small number of websites, think videos / games / experiences. For websites I use on a daily basis, I doubt I will come across it much. But for the websites that I already arrive and then leave. This is going to become terribly annoying.

Why are they first? Apple make ‘glossy’ decisions.

Put it this way. There are so many reasons not to add a javascript API if you take a wholly ‘usability’ point of view. What if people add the code to bogus buttons. Think popup ads but worse. It’s a decision you have to go with, and see how it pans out.

Marketeers… Please don’t force people to do something they don’t know they are doing. Think autotweets!

If you want to this API in use, grab Safari 5.1b and visit my test page.

If you already know me. You are probably aware that I waste precious time and money making pointless worthless sites.

Examples of such waste of spaces (within the last few months):

http://instac.at

http://isthissitebuiltwithhtml5.com

http://obamasmessagetoamerica.com

http://sydlawrence.github.com

Why do I do this? Simple, I enjoy it. And I learn things / teach things. Sometimes, other people enjoy them :)

Take instac.at for example. I used the instagram API for the first time, and I learnt css transitions. It was the first time I used css transitions instead of js effects. It took me 4 hours to make, not really that much time in the grand scheme of things. So far to this day it has provided over 240 hours of “entertainment” to over 15000 people.

Obama’s message to America was the first time I hooked into html5 audio for timings. Listening out for the timeupdate event. I also used more css transitions on here.

Some people in the past have said “You have too much time on your hands”, I disagree, I make time for learning & teaching you things :)

Yes, I could just run through a tutorial, create exactly what they have told me to do. Or even watch a screencast of someone walking me through how to do something. Personally, I come up with a new simple idea and make it forcing myself to try something new.

Recently, one of my students asked me what was the most important to know as a developer, whatever development you do. In my opinion the most important thing to know, is that you will always need to be learning.

As a web developer, the web as we know it was not here 10 years ago. YouTube was only founded just over 6 years ago. What will the web be like in 10 years time? Not a clue. But I will still be wanting a job! So I need to adapt constantly as new technologies emerge.

In my opinion that is the beauty of it all. Learning new cool stuff to play with all the time.

What do you think is the most important thing to know as a developer? Reply in a blog post and let me know via twitter (@sydlawrence).

#1thingtoknow

Update: Right after writing this blog post, I created http://isittherapture.com. To make this site I used the new HTML5 Canvas tag. I used 2 rendering techniques to populate to canvas tags. One used the drawing technique. The other used the pixel maniuplation technique. And for those interested, in 24 hours this site saw almost 3000 unique visitors, over 100 facebook likes, and almost 100 tweets.

I know I am a geek, but I love technology. Let me tell you about something that happened today.

Recently, I have been writing a book proposal. Usually I use my laptop. I also use dropbox, if you don’t know, it is a magic fairy dust document syncing service.

So, I have been writing this proposal which is ‘on’ my laptop. Today however I am sans laptop, but have my iPad with me. I was on a ferry when I decided I might as well make use of my time, so I hooked my iPad up to the interwebs via my iPhone, grabbed my half written proposal from my dropbox. Continued writing it on my iPad and eventually I got it to a point where I was happy with its content, but needed to tweak working / arrangement etc. I prefer to do this type of thing on paper so that I can scribble in red pen all over it and pretend I am a teacher.

So I emailed the document to my printer that is at at home next to my desk. So that it is there waiting for me when I get back.

I love technology!

It is moments like this that make me remember why.

So, tomorrow it is the Royal Wedding. People all around the UK (and world) are putting up bunting.

You can now put some union jack bunting on any website :)

Earlier today @netmag tweeted “We have our first BUNTING! ;) http://t.co/zJ9ObfY”

After seeing this I thought I would spend the next few minutes and make my very first javascript bookmarklet that I am releasing to the public.

Drag this to your bookmark bar: Add Bunting

But if you want REAL life bunting… check out this awesome sauce shop

Let me know what you think :)

(Source: sydlawrence.github.com)

Every time I mention AJAX in a talk, I can’t help but stress how important it is to use an a tag, or a button. I have just read a blog post by the guys over at 456 Berea st. One thing their blog post unfortunately assumes is that you, the developer, are in fact using a tags. The problem is that in truth, there are a lot of javascript calls not on an a tag nor a button. Why is this? Sloppy coding.

Lets start by explaining what the a tag, and the buttons are meant to be used for.

Interactive content is content that is specifically intended for user interaction.

The w3c specifies:

If the a element has an href attribute, then it represents a hyperlink (a hypertext anchor).

With regards to the button element, the w3c specifies:

The button element represents a button. If the element is not disabled, then the user agent should allow the user to activate the button.

Now, I may be wrong, but when AJAX comes in to play, I would presume this would therefore mean that if the AJAX is doing a content call, you should use:

<a href="{url}"/>

And if the user is performing an action. You, as the developer, should use:

<button></button>

Far too many people are using a div with an event handler. Why is this a bad thing to do?

• Accessibility
• SEO Friendly

Now, with regards to accessibility, there is another massive mistake people make. CSS styling, in this day and age, thankfully, almost all devs use the :hover selector. But what about the :focus selector? Some people use tab to navigate a website. The mouse isn’t the only navigation method. Not all accessibility is down to javascript turned off…

</rant>

I might be a little late to the game. But I had to wait to publish this blog post.

Almost a month ago now, Color, was released to the world. Along with the tech press being set on fire about it receiving $41M investment before it was even launched. For those of you living under a rock, the color app is a photo sharing app, but it only shows you photos within 100m of where you are positioned. Now there are a few other things it does which is quite clever ‘scary’. Each time you take a photo, it records your geolocation (obviously), data from the iPhone’s light sensor, a short sound recording. It uses this data to try and pair you up with someone similar, apparently.

The actual app itself, is not worth much at all. To prove this point, I myself have just launched a new location based photo sharing app (hence the delay for the post). My app is called ‘Local Eyes’. How is Local Eyes different to Color? Apparent to the user, there is little difference. I have spent a total of 12 hours on the app. Is 12 hours of my time worth $41M? I wish! (If you would like to give me $41M for 12 hours of my time, please let me know!)

The investment is not in the app, it is in the company behind it “Color Labs”. There is a lot going on in the background, not just with the ‘Color’ app, but the company itself. They are a data mining company, data is worth a heck of a lot of money.

Unfortunately, Color has had a bit of a rollercoaster ride since launch. At launch it got all the press it could have ever hoped for. This meant that thousands and thousands of people will have downloaded the app. (I don’t know the actual number). However, when people hear that an app has received that number of investment. They expect the world. Unfortunately color was a confusing app. It therefore received a lot of negative reviews. Getting back from negative reviews is very tough.

The reason why people don’t get Color, is because it only works when there are already users around you. Most users wont be the first people to share images. Not unless they know there are people there. I believe color should have launched at SXSW. That would have been a perfect launchpad for it. People would get the concept straight away. It is great for small events.

Local Eyes on the other hand, limits photos to 1 mile, and so it is more about what is going on around you, and not just the same thing you are seeing. I am about leave my full time job to concentrate more on (amongst other things) Local Eyes, and I have got lots of cool things I want to add to it, such as Instagram integration.

If you have any comments on Local Eyes, please let me know. But also, bear in mind, I have so far only spent 12 hours on it, working by myself and I dont claim it to be worth $41M ;)