HTML5: empty values and email validation in browsers

Browsers don't test empty values when validating an email address so that such values will validate. To avoid this, an input of type email must have a required attribute set. Validation takes place only when inputs have a value. I've summarized my tests in the following video.

In defense of web suicide

I think web suicide is one of the bravest actions currently available in a society which seems to get more intrusive as time passes. We got no privacy, no hidden secrets. Our human relationships are treated as "tweets", "comments", "feedbacks" or "posts". We are allowed to know all the intimate details of a person's life and when this person is so exposed we pretend to know him/her better than his/her real friends. Recently Mark Pilgrim closed all his web sites and all of a sudden most people started to worry about his health. Why that? Because we're so accustomed to confuse our digital life with our real life that we simply can't accept the fact that a person may actually be more worried about his real life than keeping his web life alive. Digital life is, to put it in psychological terms, a derealisation of our real self. It's a fake self, it's a movie we're directing, it's not us. We pretend we're true when we write something, but we're lying, though we're not conscious of that. I'm lying even while I'm writing this post because I can change my words, I can choose the most appropriate expressions and modify them. In the real life it's much more difficult to do that, since the physical presence of other people may affect my judgement. The web has the words, not the emotions.

WordPress: handling post thumbnails

Some WordPress themes don't support featured images and post thumbnails. Other themes proudly claim to support them, but when you try to display your images the functionality provided is somewhat broken. So the best thing you can do is to implement this feature by yourself. Let's see how.

Introduction to jQuery for CSS developers

Most CSS developers are simply afraid of jQuery and JavaScript in general. They think they have not enough programming skills to get to the bottom of it and write proficient and fluent code. Well, simply put, you're totally wrong. Before jumping to the wrong conclusions, you should get an overall idea of how jQuery and JavaScript work. You'll be probably very happy to find out that you can actually write your own scripts without having a degree in computer science. Don't you believe me? Well, let's see some examples.