I was at Tesco checkout last night behind a couple who looked like they were doing their weekly shop. They had all the normal products including a couple of boxes of Fosters. The guy behind the till asked for his ID and he presented it without a problem, he then asked for her ID which she didn't have.

The checkout assistant then explained that he couldn't serve them alcohol unless they both had ID - as you can imagine a big WTF moment followed before the checkout supervisor clarified that unless they both had ID they would not be served, just in case he was buying for a minor. 

I can imagine in this case that he simply ditched the girl in the car and went back to someone else on the checkout however as you can imagine this has huge ramifications. What if you were in a supermarket with a baby and wanted to buy beer - does this mean that instantly you are buying it for the baby and won't be served? If I stand next to someone under 18 in the queue they could have asked me to buy it for them too.

Does anyone work in a supermarket and can clarify any of this?

Low sign just spotted in town outside the Bellstone in Shrewsbury - wouldn't like to think how many people have walked into this considering its on the main path to the flower show!

(picture is reconstruction)

I use many of these plugins on a daily basis and would recommend them to any web developer.

1. Firebug

Firebug allows you to inspect elements on a web page and see the associated attributes. You can edit in real time allowing you to quickly make changes to an elements colour, position, border or behavior. 

Firebug has a number of extensions that will be covered later on in this article.

2. Web Developer Toolbar

The Web Developer toolbar has various web developer tools. The most useful I find are for disabling certain elements on the screen such as JavaScript or clearing cookies and session data.

Clicking display alt tags under the images menu is a quick way to see if you have missed any. The resize menu lets you test your site in different resolutions.

3. Extended Statusbar

Extended statusbar is useful to way to see how large a page is to download and how long it takes to load. I often use this to help monitor slow loading pages.

4. Colorzilla

Colorzila allows you to mouse over elements on the screen to see the colour. Its very useful if you need to match a colour or check a colour is correct.

(Note US spelling 'color').

5. MeasureIT

MeasureIT simply allows you to measure elements on a screen and gives you the measurement in pixels. Very useful for checking the height of objects, text spacing and the overall width of the page.

6. Screengrab

An easy way to take screen shots of a page. Especially useful if the page includes scroll bars as it saves you copying and pasting multiple screen shots together.

7. YSlow

YSlow shows you various options on how to speed up your website. Clearly not all are suitable/cost effective for a website such as ImAFish however many are very relevant. Each item is given a rating from A to F and a full explanation on how to implement. YSlow is developed by Yahoo.

8. Page Speed

Page speed is similar to YSlow however covers slightly different criteria. As you can see for ImAFish it highly recommends combing external JavaScript.

9. Linkification

Linkification is a simply little plugin that converts any URL on the screen into a clickable link. Quite useful for those times someone has forgotten to turn a URL into a link.

10. IE Tab

IE Tab is a nice plugin to test your page in Internet Explorer without actually having to open the Browser. It's also useful if you want a fresh session for a website without having to open another browser.

This is really cool - drag your mouse around the video to see a 360° view of the festival.

(If the video doesn't work from your RSS reader or Facebook read the post on ImAFish).

“By using a Google Streetview-like camera, a system with six lenses, not as a photo but as a video camera, an all-encompassing picture is captured.

From the point where the images were recorded, the viewer can look in any direction, let his eyes wander through the crowd, or stare at the ground or the air, which makes viewing a video an experience without boundaries.” More on the Yellow Bird website.

Some of the best motivational posters - potentially not suitable for work.

Part 2 now online here.

This one is truly awesome, the PC crowd at The Gateway in Shrewsbury have decided that 'guide dogs' is clearly too offensive for some people (or the dogs?) and the more intelligent 'enabling dog' is better suited.

What next?

"No parking, enabled person drop off point only"

"The enabled ramp for enabled chariots."

ImAFish now has a Facebook page!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shrewsbury-United-Kingdom/ImAFish/98736350063

I've been working for some time on how to get ImAFish on Facebook and make it even easier for our users to get the latest ImAFish content. For a while I've had my Facebook profile importing my ImAFish blog however it wasn't an ideal way to seperate my personal life from the awesome ImAFish content people have come to love.

A Facebook page gives the ideal scenario for yet another way to syndicate ImAFish's content. Along with recent content I'm intending on uploading some of ImAFish's older content such as photo galleries (I posted some of the conceptual ImAFish art yesterday and my best HDR photos).

In the first 24 hours we've had 40 'fans' to the ImAFish group helping inforce the huge following we have online and how essential people find ImAFish to their weekly reading.

If your a huge fan of ImAFish then please follow our group on Facebook.

Many thanks to those who have already followed.