By comparison the JavaScript language is free to develop and requires no compiling, allowing quick updates. It is also more widely available to users as a lot of office computers do not pre-install Flash for security reasons.

The advent of HTML5, a web standard which is still being finalised, is providing a number of advanced functions which is making in-roads into Flash’s functionality and makes the argument for Flash a weaker one.

Considering the lack of Flash support on the iPhone, poor support on other mobile devices, and the recent announcement from Adobe (the makers of Flash) that they will be suspending development of Flash, it seems an increasingly simple statement that the days of Flash are coming to an end.

However, Flash is well proven, relatively well supported on desktops and can handle complex graphic manipulation very well. If style is more important than function then Flash has to be taken as a serious contender. That is, unless JavaScript can be proven to do the job just as (or almost) as well.

To that aim I set myself the task of producing a simple arcade game using nothing but JavaScript. Doing so also made it very easy to feed top scores back to the server for long-term storage.

I think the results turned out rather well. The game is fun and includes effective sprite collision detection with some subtle features such as adjustable deflections.

Many WordPress sites allow avatars in the comments section of pages and posts, but the default options are fairly limited.

Avatar settings for your WordPress installation can be found in Settings -> Discussion page once logged into the WordPress admin screen.

Once Avatar Display has been set to Show Avatars your site will now display the default “Mystery Man” avatar unless the users have set up a Gravatar logo.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could provide anonymous users with an avatar of your own design that matched the design of your site? Well here’s how…

You need to be familiar with your functions.php file in your WordPress theme. You can do it via the WordPress admin page and going to Appearance -> Editor and selecting the function.php from there, but I personally don’t recommend editing themes in this way.

My preference is to set up a development installation on your PC and then tinker with files on there using trusty old notepad (look out soon for an article on how to do this).

So, assuming you are happy editing functions.php, simply add the following piece of code and it’s job done.

I’ve saved the new avatar image in my theme’s image folder and called it chicken.png but you can save it anywhere you like.

For my site I’ve called the default avatar “Chicken”, this is how it will display in the admin screen, but again you can call it anything you like.

As you can see from the screen shot on the left, the new default avatar can now be selected. Anyone now posting to my site that doesn’t have a Gravatar avatar will now display as a chicken (it’s nothing personal, I just have chickens in my site to brighten it up).

The avatar can be any size, that is dependant on your theme stylesheet configuration, but default sizes are 40px by 40px and I would recommend sticking with this size.

All in all it’s not been a good year in the garden. We lost our three hens to a fox in the Spring which had a big impact to our garden. The garden is a lot quieter now, and a lot less fun place to sit and relax. The hen house was starting to show some signs of weather damage so we were thinking of replacing it with something new, come the spring we’ll see if there is enough space in the garden for some new chucks and fingers crossed we’ll be eating nice organic home produced eggs once more.

On the veg front I moved my successful raspberries down to the allotment along with my blueberry bushes, and they haven’t appreciated the move and neither have shown much interest in growing. They are currently holding their own, so hopefully they are just getting used to the new location and will kick into gear next Spring.

The onions didn’t suffer the same insect attacks from last year, but it was still a fairly un-dramatic crop, and no chance of the strings of onions we managed in our first year.

The sunflowers were a great success, but they haven’t produced big enough flower heads to produce sunflower seeds for the birds to feast on. I’m sure the bees have enjoyed them however. We were only going to plant a few but so many of the seedlings survived that we ended up planting the whole length of the garden.

I’ve never tried growing main crop potatoes in the ground, it sounds like a lot of work! Instead I go for second earlies in tubs on the patio. You need to make sure they get plenty of water as they tend to dry out quickly, but being on the patio means they are very easy to put the garden hose on them. It’s really satisfying to rummage around in the tubs and fish out lovely potatoes that can go straight into the steamer for a really fresh meal. The additional benefit of a number of potato tubs is that they store potatoes very well, almost in a clamped condition. We should be eating our own potatoes for number of months yet.

I don’t know why I grow tomatoes, I’m really not a fan of eating them raw and our Summers aren’t really long enough to ripen them. If I ever get a green house I’ll have a more serious attempt at growing them. However, there is nothing like the smell of a tomato plant when it’s in full bloom. Our green tomatoes are currently under newspaper in the garage, so we’ll see how well they ripen, otherwise it’ll be green tomato chutney for us.

Another repeat offender in our garden are squashes and pumpkins. I try them every year but haven’t had much luck with growing them from seed. We tried some garden centre bought plugs this year and half of them survived and are now slowly growing fruit. Fingers crossed this year we’ll be getting some butternut squash for making some lovely autumnal soup.

I didn’t think the runner beans were going to do very well this year, they seemed to be very slow at getting any decent growth. With only a short Summer things didn’t look good, but they’ve really caught up and it looks like we’re really going to have a bumper crop. There are still plenty of flowers on the plants, so it looks like we’ll be sharing our runners with the neighbours or we run the risk of turning into a runner bean!

Every year I plant Brussel sprouts with the aim of eating our own sprouts on Christmas Day, and every year I let the side down and have nothing to show for my efforts. This year isn’t doing too badly, daily checks for butterfly eggs has kept the caterpillars at bay. Checking for eggs is very easy and only takes a minute, just look under the leaves and if you find cluster of yellow eggs just run your fingernail across them and you’ll get them all off the leaf. The eggs won’t hatch on the ground so you can just flick them onto the soil. By doing this you can avoid the more icky task of trying to catch catepillers. There is a good guide with some photos here. We’ll now see if this year will see our first sprout harvest on Xmas morning.

Well, I think for once I might be ahead of the curve on this one.

Website designers are always asking the question which screen resolutions should I be catering for? Or to put it another way, which is the most important screen resolution that most users will expect to view the site without needing to use a horizontal scroll bar.

The following table shows roughly when screen resolutions have become the defacto standard for web designers.

Since wide-screen laptops become more affordable a couple of years ago they have become the standard browsing device. So, the stance I’m now taking is that no new web site should be built around the 1024 pixel width any more.

There has been a strong rise of SXGA+ usage and since January 2011 the percentage of users with a screen resolution greater than 1024 pixels wide is 85%. An independent data source can be found at the www.w3schools.com website.

That doesn’t mean we should ignore 15% of your user base, there are a number of things you can do to continue to support them.

1. Ensure the website has at least one sidebar, ideally two. They contract the copy space into the width of a XGA screen thereby saving the user from the need to scroll left to right to view the main copy of the site.
2. All browsers can easily shrink screen content; ensure users are aware of this feature. Pressing CTRL & Minus on Windows machines, and Command & Minus on Apple Macs will do this. A couple of clicks will reduce the site to fit on a smaller screen.

A website that makes the best use of the screen space will maximise the impact it has on the user. It also allows you to use a larger font size (I recommend 12px as a minimum) that makes your site easier to read for users with less than ideal eyesight.

There are those that recommend the use of dynamically resizing websites, and for a long time I was in favour of such sites. However, when a site has a strong graphical design it makes dynamically resizing sites hard to maintain. It can also prove difficult to get accurate screen sizes out of mobile devices, so it’s much easier to leave the screen resizing to the browser.