Who is User Agent Man?

Photo of Zoltan Hawryluk
Photo: Don Kittle

I am Zoltan "Du Lac" Hawryluk (and yes, Zoltan is my real name) and User Agent Man is my blog of all things web development.

I am a web developer born and raised in Toronto, Canada. I do research on all types of web technologies. I am also the author and contributer to all sorts of open source projects including both as a primary author (e.g. Progressive Pushstate and The CSS3 Font Converter) and well as a contributer (e.g. Picturefill, Viewport Units Buggyfill and a Slack plugin for Pidgin and Adium).

When I have time, I like to write about what I learn here so I can give back to the web development community. More about me.

Recent Posts

cssSandpaper Now Supports transform: translate() and rgba() Gradients

May 6th, 2010 by zoltan · 1 Comment

In the first in a planned series of posts, I update cssSandpaper with new features. This week I add IE support for translate() support to CSS transforms and alpha channel support to linear gradients.

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CSS3 Please – Another Great Cross Browser CSS3 Solution.

April 6th, 2010 by zoltan · 1 Comment

Although I have been doing a lot of work on cssSandpaper lately (JavaScript API for cross browser CSS3 animation anyone?), I have also spent a little time on an equally worthwhile project CSS3 Please. While cssSandpaper tries to give developers an all-in-one interface in which to do transforms, gradients and other nifty effects via simple CSS and JavaScript, CSS3 Please gives developers the opportunity to fill in the blanks of a stylesheet and see how CSS3 properties can be coded without the aid of JavaScript so that they work across the browsers that support it.

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Cross-Browser Animated CSS Transforms — Even in IE.

April 5th, 2010 by zoltan · 25 Comments

This is a follow-up article to my original CSS3 Transform article where I extend cssSandpaper to support scripting. Now you can animate Css3 Transforms (as well as gradients, opacities and box-shadows) in all browsers, including IE, without a lot of issues. Includes lots of neat examples.

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Cross Browser CSS Transforms – even in IE

March 9th, 2010 by zoltan · 127 Comments

The CSS transform property allows developers to rotate, scale, and skew blocks of HTML via CSS. There are variants that work natively on all major browsers … except for IE. I created a new library, cssSandpaper, that implements CSS3 transforms (as well as gradients and box-shadows) in IE. It also allows developers to use one transform declaration, instead of three vendor-specific ones for Opera, Firefox and WebKit browsers.

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Cross Browser HTML5 Drag and Drop

January 10th, 2010 by zoltan · 68 Comments

HTML5 Drag and Drop is one of the least understood modules of the HTML5 specification and it can be a pain to implement in a cross browser fashion. This article is for those who want to use it today in their web applications and goes into a lot of detail so you can “get the job done”

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Introducing: The Type Rendering Project

November 30th, 2009 by zoltan · 1 Comment

Join a project that will allow developers to find ways to make web type look better right now.

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How to Detect Font-Smoothing Using JavaScript

November 29th, 2009 by zoltan · 74 Comments

Not all @font-face fonts look good when font-smoothing is turned off. Now you can detect whether a font smoothing technology is being used and serve alternative fonts for those users.

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Configuring JavaScript Applications With XML

October 27th, 2009 by admin · No Comments

I have been hacking JavaScript for close to 12 years now, and love it.  But just like anyone you have been enamored with for a long time, there are bound to be things that drive you crazy about the object of your affection.  Sure, your feelings are stronger than when you first met, but sometimes, […]

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More @font-face fun

October 9th, 2009 by zoltan · 10 Comments

My first post @font-face in Depth got a huge amount of unexpected attention.  Thank you all for your comments and criticism.  Since the post, there have been quite a bit of information I have read about and thought I should share. SVG fonts for Opera and Chrome Jonathan Snook wrote a great article regarding Opera […]

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@font-face in Depth

September 20th, 2009 by admin · 68 Comments

The fact that we can now choose any font to embed inside our web pages and applications using @font-face is something to celebrate, and removes a long existing set of handcuffs placed on web designers. This article covers how to use @font-face in all browsers, as well as some interesting little-known technical details.

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