Firebelly Design

November 19, 2009 by Brandon Weiss

I was going to write a post about how terrible WYSIWYG editors are, and how everyone needs to stop using them, but I actually found an article that says pretty much exactly what I would have said.

Before you read it though, I should probably define a few terms:

WYSIWYG

What You See Is What You Get (pronounced whizzy-whig) is a type of text field that allows you to format text to be displayed on a web page, without having to actually know HTML. If you’ve ever written an e-mail using a service like Gmail, or written a blog post using something like WordPress or Blogger, than you’ve used a WYSIWYG editor.

Textile

If HTML is a markup language, Textile is a markdown language. Instead of writing HTML markup, or using a WYSIWYG editor to write the markup for you, you can use Textile, which is essentially just a bunch of simple shortcuts that get converted to HTML. So, for example, instead of writing <strong>bold</strong> to make something bold, you can just wrap the word inasterisks, like so: *bold*.

RedCloth

RedCloth is simply a gem (an extension for Ruby) that allows you to easily convert Textile to HTML.

Alright, now you’re ready to read the article.

Comments (1)

November 18, 2009 by Antonio Garcia

Traditionally cut along ethnic divides and railways, Chicago's 77 "community areas" are typically so different and disconnected from each other that understanding and relating them can be a complex and challenging maneuver. Firebelly knows this firsthand, working for both Humboldt Park and Wicker Park Bucktown.

Thanks to a new tool on our friend Justin Massa's nonprofit site MoveSmart.org, Chicago's neighborhoods are getting easier to research, explore and understand. The site's Neighborhood Finder provides Chicagoans with interactive maps and data so they can search the City's neighborhoods in smarter, more innovative ways. MoveSmart.org's methodologies are a positive and powerful step to helping natives and newcomers overcome the stereotypes, ignorance and prejudice held by so many regarding communities outside their own. If you dig their approach, support 'em!

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