Brian Grinstead

I presented on using Chrome Developer Tools at ComoRichWeb, a web developer user group in Columbia, MO on June 20th. Here are the slides and some other links:

I have been working on updating the FileReader.js JavaScript file reading library lately to help out with a few different projects. This library has provided a quick way to get started with reading files on a few different projects, like mothereffinganimatedgif.com and Instant Sprite.

While working on FileReader.js Web Worker file processing with FileReaderSync, I needed to figure out what was going on with the script inside a web worker. It can be very difficult to track down errors without standard developer tool support, like logging and debugging. Luckily, in Chrome Devtools, this is possible.

I was motivated to write a JavaScript plugin to make reading local files easier. I wanted this plugin to have no library dependancies so it could be accessible to anyone wanting to write an application that reads files. You can read the original blog entry about the motivation behind filereader.js for some more context.

Ever want to load a JavaScript Web Worker without specifying an external JavaScript file? There are a couple of different ways to do this by creating a blob and object URL - I wrapped this functionality up into a little plugin to share.

It can be annoying that when you drag out images of a browser window, they are named png.png (or something equally useless). I was playing around with fixing this - it is a little inconvenience in my CSS Sprite Generator that would be nice to have working (naming the file based on their input). Here is what I came up with (no library dependancies):

I've been working on updating my A* Graph Search Algorithm (A* on Github) and toying with the idea of adding variable costs to the grid, also known as weighted paths.

Ever want a textarea to expand based on the size of the input that someone types? I made a jQuery plugin to handle expanding textareas! The basic technique is based off of a cool article called Expanding Text Areas Made Elegant. Check out the Expanding Textareas Demo and play with the Expanding Textareas Source Code.

I put together a screencast explaining the colorpicker functionality recently added into WebKit Web Inspector (aka Chrome DevTools for brevity). For some backstory on how this got implemented, check out my initial colorpicker concept video or the description of the implementation.

I have been working a browser based gradient generator. I've never had the best experience using gradient generators, so I decided to see if I could do better.