It's an enjoyable trip, looking back...

I can't say for sure when I started blogging. Or, blogging as we now know it, at least. The first post here is circa April 2002, when I was in the middle of developing my own CMS. Before then, I had something like this. That was all long before I launched v6 of this site, in 2008, when I eventually migrated to WordPress.

From version to version, blogging has consistently played an integral role in the way I've presented myself online.

I don't feel much sentiment toward the majority of my blog content, which is a good indication that I never took it all that seriously. My archive is littered with trivial rubbish and outdated content which I no longer want to associate with. That, coupled with a lack of motivation, a desire to minimise information overload that blogging presents, the meteoric rise in microblogging, and how I now feel about amateur blogging in general, are my primary reasons for deciding to retire my blog indefinitely.

Moving forward...

My immediate plan (albeit long overdue) is an exercise in rebranding.

If you follow my activity elsewhere online, you might have noticed my new logo design, which I recently launched across all my social networking profiles. Next up, I will be redesigning this site. This will be accompanied by the simultaneous launch of a new brand to represent my business venture. Sparing the detail, my intention is to separate my personal and professional identities. I've outgrown my coda alias for business purposes, and am really looking forward to starting something fresh.

I do intend to keep my blog (after a thorough purge of my 800+ posts), and will carry it through in the redesign, but it will remain inactive and will not be a feature of the site.

To the readers of this blog over the last 8 or so years, old and new, I thank you for your time and sincerely hope you found some value in what I've posted here, or in the comments that followed. I have some good (and some not so good) memories of my blogging experiences and appreciate that I could share them all with you.

Please connect with me on Twitter @coda_za, where I continue to microblog more trivial rubbish, until the next big thing...

Follow @coda_za

Cheers for now!

Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary.

v1.5 released - View Demo or Download

I've made a couple of improvements to the plugin. The ones worth mentioning:

• You can add alternative content to the container element (that you pass to the plugin). This will be replaced by your tweets when the plugin is executed by jQuery. If JavaScript is disabled or the plugin fails, your visitors will still see your alternative content - a good idea therefore would be to include a link to your twitter profile.
• All styles are now added to the container elements via a new ".twitted" class (view CSS). If you're upgrading from the old plugin version, you'll need to transfer your old styles across into the new syntax.
• 3 new customisation options: slideDuration (if slideIn is true, this will change the duration of the slide effect), showProfileLink (set to false if you want to hide the link), showTimestamp (set to false if you want to remove the timestamp from tweets - the timestamp is then added as a title on the individual tweet list items).
• Fixed the jQuery slide effect "jump" bug (hat-tip: Dan G. Switzer, II)

If you have any feedback or bug reports, please leave a comment below.

I started writing a new post today containing various tips, tricks and best practices for the jQuery JavaScript Library that I've picked up over the past few months, but instead ended up developing my first jQuery plugin.

Introducing jQuery plugin for Twitter v1.0 - View Demo
A simple, unobtrusive and customisable client-side method for easily embedding a Twitter feed into a web page.

To begin, download the source files (.zip) and familiarise yourself with the necessary JavaScript and CSS files that need to be included in your page:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="jquery.twitter.css" type="text/css" />
<script src="jquery.twitter.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Next, add a div element with id "twitter" to your page, wherever you want the feed to appear:

<div id="twitter"></div>

Lastly attach the plugin to that div with the following jQuery code (the customisation options are pretty much self-explanatory I think):

$(document).ready(function() {
	$("#twitter").getTwitter({
		userName: "jquery",
		numTweets: 5,
		loaderText: "Loading tweets...",
		slideIn: true,
		showHeading: true,
		headingText: "Latest Tweets",
		showProfileLink: true
	});
});

It's obviously a little more involved, but that should be enough to get you up and running!

The most recent version of this plugin will always be the one available for download on this post.

Please let me know if you decide to use it, or have any feedback.

Using a Plugin Development Pattern (by Karl Swedberg) as a starting point, the plugin is based on Twitter's HTML Badge Customizer.