Matthew J Richards - Freelance Web Developer North Wales

...Hire Me!

Now. I'm not usually one to blow my own trumpet, but this opportunity simply couldn't be missed.

A few weeks ago I was contracted by Dave Foy of Definition Design to carry out some client side DOM/Javscript coding. Dave had been let down by an existing contractor and desperately required the services of an honest, competent web developer. To make matters worse, Dave was due to preview the site to his client the following day.

In his desperation and I imagine somewhat in vain; Dave did a Google web search for 'freelance jquery developer', and guess what, muggins here came up tops.

Dave contacted me via the contact form on this site, I replied as soon as I recieved the message and 45 minutes later we were on the phone discussing requirements, a few hours after that the work was complete, tested and fully documented.

As far as I can tell, Dave was and still is "over the moon" (excuse the pun) with my work and in particular the level of service I provided. So much so it spurred him to write about it on his personal blog, quite possibly reinstating his faith in humankind at the same time!

You can read his article in full: 'Service is not dead' over at his web site.

Dave was a joy to work for and I very much look forward to working with him again in the near future. From the work I've seen he is a cracking designer and I will more than likely be seeking his services in the future. The pint is most certainly half full.

In my eyes the whole episode was a perfect example of Karma working. Remember folks, "What goes around comes around".

(Photograph courtesy of Copleys)

The original Suckerfish Dropdowns article published over at A List Apart quickly became my/the favoured method of implementing lightweight, standards compliant, semantic and "accessible" drop down menus.

This clever little method makes use of the CSS :hover psuedo class, however, no suprise here, IE doesn't support :hover on elements other than anchor tags.

The sfHover() function was born:

1. sfHover = function() {
2.   var sfEls = document.getElementById("nav").getElementsByTagName("LI");
3.   for (var i=0; i<sfEls.length; i++) {
4.     sfEls[i].onmouseover=function() {
5.       this.className+=" sfhover";
6.     }
7.     sfEls[i].onmouseout=function() {
8.       this.className=this.className.replace(new RegExp(" sfhover\\b"), "");
9.     }
10.   }
11. }
12. if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload", sfHover);

Now, it doesn't take the brightest spark to twig that we can use javascript to mimic other CSS pseudo classes unsupported or ignored by certain browsers... Which is exaclty what the Sons of Suckerfish provided us with. A javascript method of mimicking :hover, :target, :active and :focus pseudo classes.

However... It's just not pretty enough! And if you like me, have adopted (and fallen in love with) the jQuery Javascript framework, you know there's a much nicer way of doing things!

I present to you:

jQuery Perciformes v1.0 - The entire Suckerfish family under one roof!

A jQuery plugin housing methods to mimic :hover, :focus, :active and :target psuedo classes.

Alternatively you can:

• View an online demonstration (usage examples)
• or Download the ZIP with both example and plugin