JH

Refreshing blog, new design and new domain

It has been a while since the last time I change the design of this blog, it is almost three years ago. The web landscape has been changed rapidly since then, with HTML5 becoming more standard and CSS3 is more supported, that made my old design outdated. So the thought came to me, it is the time for a new design.

blog-redesign1

Also with this opportunity, I also introduced a new domain for this blog, jeffri.me. Starting today, jeffri.me is the default domain for this blog, while my old domain – jeffri.net – will redirect to this new domain. In case you are wondering, why did I change a dot net to dot me, well, no specific reason. I just feel like it, it’s shorter by one letter and it’s more personal.  :) Besides, it’s not like my old domain ranked high, although it’s 5 years old now. I will keep jeffri.net for as long as I live though.

Responsive layout testing

While working on a responsive website, testing it could be tricky. The usual way (and effective) is to resize the browser window and there’s many plugins on the browser that do just that. Another way is to use an available tools on the web, many of these are awesome, like The Responsinator and Screenqueri.es. Another one that is also my favorite is RWD Bookmarklet by Victor Coulon.

These were all cool and I frequently used it. However, these tools were made for testing on mobile and tablet display resolution, what if, you want to test a laptop or desktop resolution as well? In my case, I have 1280×800 laptop, so I never knew how the website will look on higher resolution screen. There’s also many display resolution on mobile now to consider, not just iOS resolution.

And so I created a simple tool to test responsive website, with a wide range of resolution to select, from mobile to tablet to desktop. Also HDPI display is common now, so I added a device pixel ratio selection that calculate the effective resolution. For example, Motorola RAZR have QHD display with pixel ratio of 1.5, so the effective resolution is actually 640×360, that is the resolution the phone display on it’s browser.

Feel free to use the tool here: responsive.jeffri.net

A little bit of disclaimer, I don’t store any data from your usage. There’s no trip to the server when you use it, at all. :)

Hope you find it useful! Cheers!

Pure CSS3 responsive navigation with :target

This is an experiment I tried when working on WPMUDEV mobile navigation a while back, basically to make the navigation work with CSS alone. Using :target pseudo-class, this is possible, but of course it won’t work very well on every navigation.

For the sake of this demonstration, I have made a responsive navigation that will scale between smartphone, tablet and desktop.

Background image on table row

Applying a background image on table row is a classic issue that never get right, at least not in a first few pages on Google search when I looked on a solution. In fact, the only cross browser solution is to apply the background to the table cells instead. But what happen if you want a repeated background across the table row?

The problem

Let’s say you wanted to apply a background to a row that has disabled class.

The CSS:

table tr.disabled {
	background: url('disabled.png') repeat-x;
	color: #aaa;
}

Result:

Ouch! The background is in fact applied to the table cell, not the table row as we intended. It looks ugly as the image start in every cell!

Cleaning MSI GX633 Fan

My current notebook, MSI GX633 turned 2 years old by this March. In past months, the notebook run pretty hot that it’s not even possible to run everything at maximum. A more intense task like video playback would raise the temperature to more than 90 degrees Celcius. I can’t even use the maximum clock (the processor run at 550 Mhz, 1.1 Ghz and 2.2 Ghz), so I’m limiting it to the middle clock, and even so it still heat that much.

I have tried a few solutions to solve this overheating issue, first is undervolting. It’s kind of challenge to find which tools that can undervolt AMD Turion X2 processor, and I found K40Stat worked for me. I was hoping this could solve the overheating, but it’s not. I always get BSOD at the end. The next solution I tried is buying a laptop cooler (opted for Targus model), but it didn’t help much either. In the end, I could only run half the clock of the processor to prevent it from overheat.

In general, overheating is caused by accumulated dust on the air intake and outtake, blocking off the ventilation. Even though the solution is simple, by cleaning the fan and the ventilation, but it require me to open the notebook cover. Since this is my only work computer, I’m always avoiding this but I finally build up the courage to do it as the heat is unbearable anymore. Read on to find out how I clean my fan and solve the overheating issue. :)