Brothercake
a round peg in a square hole, that still fits
Brothercake is a professional web-developer based in the UK, specialising in advanced JavaScript programming, and accessible site and application development. This site is a portfolio for my work, and a collection of useful resources such as scripts, games and articles.
There's also some bits of personal stuff,
and occasionally I sound-off about something or other 
Latest news and stuff
- Quite Times at brothercake.com
- General News | 18th March 2013
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It's been quiet here at brothercake.com for some time now, but change is in the air, and it won't be like this for long.
I have a brand new site in development which will be ready in the spring. I've had to pause work on that while I focus on a necessary update for Dust-Me Selectors (Version 4.0, which will be ready by the end of March). Once that's done and dusted (if you'll pardon the pun!) I'll be able to re-focus on the new site and get it ready for publication.
The new brothercake.com is a completely overhauled architecture and design, running off a custom-built CMS that I've spent much of the last year working on. I'll be publishing much more regularly, with (at least) weekly posts and articles, and as many scripts and tools as I can find the time and energy to develop.
That's all for now
- Bad Kogan!
- Opinion | Published 21st June 2012
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So kogan.com has introduced the world's first browser "tax", on customers who use IE7, and apparently they've received a lot of praise for this. Well let me add my voice to those who think this is absolutely appalling. It's a stupid and callous idea, and I can only desperately hope it doesn't set a precedent.
So what's next — a tax on screenreaders perhaps, for the extra time and effort involved in making sites accessible to them? Perhaps a tax on people who don't have Flash installed, because it's such a pain in the arse to sniff for that and design fallback behavior!
The real problem here is not the effort it takes to support IE7. The real problem here is false expectations ... more →
- Dust-Me Selectors 3.01 for Firefox (Final!)
- Development Tool | Published 7th April 2012
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Dust-Me Selectors 3.01 for Firefox is finally released, and available now from the add-ons directory. more →
It's been a sketchy year for Dust-Me, as the company who used to support its development no longer does so, and for a while it wasn't clear whether I'd have the time and resources to maintain it. But snatching development days wherever I could find them, Version 3 was eventually finished, and I realised that I owed it to the community to keep the project alive — especially since there really isn't anything else quite like it.
To all of you who've encouraged the continual development of this extension, and particularly to Will Morrison — a big thank you
Version 4 is already in development, and new features will include:
support for Sitemap XML files, expanded data export and import options,
some new preferences, and proper documentation.
I'm also investigating the possibility of being able to scan for different kind of data, or grouping and analysing rules in different ways. For example, identifying class names and attributes that are used by CSS, and those which are not. Perhaps the extension could identify rules which are not used by any media, or media which are not addressed by any rules. Or identify how images are used, whether by CSS, or markup, or not at all.
Quite a few possibilities suggest themselves, so I'll be guided by feedback on which of them would be useful. And of course, if you have any other suggestions or ideas for new features or improvements, please do let me know
more →