Kyle Hayes | Proficiency by Derivation » Projects

Easily Generate Placeholder Images in Designs and Web Pages

Kyle Hayes — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:26:10 +0000

I came across a neat site called dummyimage.com that allows you to append an image size to it’s URL as so: http://dummyimage.com/300×250. However, what I didn’t like about it, is that I could not add text to the image to describe what the image is a placeholder for. I took upon myself to create my own service that does this and I plan on expanding it to do more as well.

Last night I created fpoimg.com. It works in very much the same way as dummyimage.com, only you can add text to your images. The next iteration of the site will allow you to change the colors of the background and foreground. Anyway, the way you use the site is if you want to create a basic placeholder or FPO (For Placement Only) image you simply go to http://fpoimg.com/345×480 and the image will be provided to you. You can save this image if you like, or you can refer to it directly in your code such as in an image tag:

The first number is your width in pixels, the second is your height in pixels. Additionally, if you want to add some text to the image to describe it as a placeholder, you simply append that to the URL as so:
http://fpoimg.com/345×480/Advertisement

This will create the following image:

It’s really that basic! Here are some more examples:

I of course do plan on tweaking this service as needed such as caching the images and providing the ability to change their colors. If the service becomes more popular, I have a feeling I’ll need to invoke some kind of limit as well so as not to crash the server.

Is Your Kid the Next Face of Gap?

Kyle Hayes — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:22:01 +0000

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, I know it, but I have good excuses! The first is still an excuse as I’m still working on it, but, I was asked by Apress / Friends of ED to write a book on the Dojo JavaScript Toolkit. It’s been quite the journey to say the least. It has been a desire of mine in the past few years to publish a technical book. When Apress approached me, I couldn’t resist. It’s been a lot of work but it’s almost done. You can check it out and pre-order it on Amazon.com! Needless to say I’ve had my head in Dojo quite a bit the past few months.

With that, I’ve also been working on a very large project at work that I’m one of the technical leads on. That project is the Gap Casting Call which is a contest that Gap runs every year to find the next faces of BabyGap and GapKids. They partnered with us at Family.com to build and host the online photo contest. Enter your kids to get a chance at winning! There are a lot of great prizes and a lot of great entries!

On to my next project at work where I get to learn and use GWT. More to come in the future I’m sure. Until then, thanks for staying up to date with me, and sorry it has been so long since I’ve posted.

CFPownce 0.11a Released

Kyle Hayes — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 06:07:00 +0000

After noodling around in Service Capture to watch the calls that were being made from the Pownce AIR file, I began working on a CFC to interact with the unofficial Pownce API.

After numerous attempts and a great deal of pain figuring out as well as help from the newly created PownceAPI Google Group, I got my CFC to work.

Currently you can only get all your notes from Pownce. But this is a great start! The hardest part about that was the password digest authentication string that you have to pass to Pownce. Everything else is just a matter of method calls.

I dropped the project into Google Code as well as RIAForge.

My planned features for this are:

Add ability to post notes
Add ability to post links
Add ability to post files
Get only specific notes by date, type etc.
Build a HTML webpage client
Build a Flex webpage client

Amazon Rank Update

Kyle Hayes — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:04:00 +0000

I know I haven’t done any work on AmazonRank in a while. Today, when I noticed that it was published on Flex.org and it was having some issues, I thought that I should put some work into it to get it to return results better.

The ehancements I made to this version are:

Improved error-catching to eliminate issues with Amazon data attributes that don’t exist for a given item
Added a height attribute to the item rows to eliminate the issue where titles with many words would push other items off the display in the widget
Background of the application is now invisible so the widget merges in seamlessly with your website.

You can download this update at RIAForge:

You can see a demo on the bottom left-hand column of this page or any other of my blog pages.

Amazon Rank 0.3: New Features

Kyle Hayes — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 17:01:00 +0000

I have added a couple of features to my AmazonRank widget. You can now click on any of the items in the list and the widget will fade in the item detail for the selected item. The detail shows you the full name of the title, author, actual Amazon SalesRank, and the price.

Additionally, you can jump to the product page on Amazon.com from the item detail.

I have also updated the download on RIAForge. Click the link below to check it out.

Amazon Rank Receives Graphical Update

Kyle Hayes — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 06:01:00 +0000

My Amazon Rank widget has been updated to 0.21a due to some graphical changes. An example of these changes are to the left.

Now I know there are quite a few features missing still, but I would like to get some additional ideas. Please comment below and leave suggestions. Thanks!