AJAX stands for Asynchronous Javascript And XML, which is a bit of a misnomer, because the technology is only optionally asynchronous, and almost never uses XML anymore. The name describes the intentions of the original architects, and it has a nice ring to it, so it was kept in spite of the evolution of the […]

Once your site has built up a reasonable body of content, it is usually a good idea to add a search function to the site, to make it easier for your visitors to find the information they need. This is, after all, the primary purpose of putting the information on the site in the first […]

We recently built a sliding image gallery for The Library. The technique is very simple in its most basic form, but can get exponentially more complicated as you add extra functionality. I’m not going to go into any of the complications, though. Today, just the basic concept. The sliding image gallery is used to display […]

Each of the browsers have their own quirks and irritating ‘features’, and today we’re going to discuss one of Internet Explorer’s contributions. The issue is that IE delays rendering layout changes until the entire javascript thread has completed. In other words, if you have a javascript function that changes the text of an element three […]

Every now and again I am given suggestions about what to write in these blog posts, and one suggestion comes up frequently: “Why don’t you write about the stuff you did for SAHA”, they will say. I’ll usually respond with something like, “Well that’s quite a difficult thing to put into a blog post”, but […]

A few do’s and don’ts for working with web-safe and non-web-safe fonts on your website.

Black Square has just completed a new website development for the KZNSA art gallery in Durban, with a custom CMS for management of exhibitions and artists.

The Web 2.0 buzz has been around for quite a while now. This post attempts to explain just what it is and, more importantly, describe how you can use it practically to fulfil the goals of your website.

Flash is great – it provides animation, and it allows users to interact with your information visually. This means that, for example, if you are presenting your company history in a timeline, your user can click on dates, scroll the timeline, see neatly zooming pop-ups with info and so on. Without Flash, this info would […]

One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced so far in the development of the Assemble-a-Site project is that of horizontal stacking. The global layout system requires that the header and footer each contain three columns, and each of these columns needs to stack its content blocks horizontally. Our content management system is designed to allow […]