Archive for February, 2007

AJAX/PHP – the beginners guide to loading external content

Feb 27, 2007 Author: Jamie | Filed under: Code, Dev, General, Javascript, PHP

I’m going to assume that we all know, or have atleast heard of Prototype and script.aculo.us the two combine to form one powerful javascript library enabling developers to become designers (well, kind of).
– Example and code at the bottom –

I have created a ZIP file to get you up and running right away: Download it now!

I was showing a friend a few days ago something i made for a university module, Multimedia Applications Desgn (a mouthful i know). Basically we had to create a website promoting our group as a duo, thats all your getting about the project as its not really relevant and a tad embarrassing should anyone find the site!

There was a part of the site that my friend really liked and wanted to incorporate into his final year project… after sketching it out for him on paper i reconed that other people could benefit.
This has probably been splashed everywhere, but i havent seen anything that incorporates all the same characteristics on Digg.

So here is a quick, hopefully easy to understand, tutorial of how its done.

Abstract
We are trying to achieve loading content into a ‘div’ element without refreshing the page, as well as showing a cool loading window inplace of the content as it is loading.

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If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines

Feb 23, 2007 Author: Jamie | Filed under: General, Humor

Saw this this set of jokes in my lecture slides last night.

UNIX Airways
Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport.
They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece,
arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to be
building.

Air DOS
Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again.
Then they push again, jump on again, and so on …

Mac Airlines
All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same.
Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don’t need to know, don’t want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.

Windows Air
The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off.
After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.

Windows NT Air
Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.

Linux Air
Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline.
They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves.
They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself.
When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of
the seat-HOW TO.html.
Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plan leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful.
You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, “You had to do what with the seat?”

I’m not sure of the true origin of these jokes, t’internet seems full of them!

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Image Manipulation using PHP and ImageMagicK

Feb 6, 2007 Author: Jamie | Filed under: Code, Dev, PHP

So there were a couple of problems with my last image processing functions (http://nodstrum.com/2006/12/09/image-manipulation-using-php/).

1. If you were trying to process a massive image > 1024pxÃ—768px it failed.
2. I only accounted for people processing Jpegs.
3. CPU spikes, because of the amount of processing that is being done with the image the CPU is really taking a hit.
4. The functions were really quite long.

These new function will use ImageMagicK, not all servers have ImageMagicK installed by default, check with your hosting provider.

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Transparency in IE6 and Other Browsers :)

Feb 2, 2007 Author: Jamie | Filed under: CSS, Code, Dev

This post will cover backgrounds (for DIVs) and transparent images (.PNGs)

As we ALL know; IE6 poses far too many challenges for designers, resulting in seperate stylesheets and hacks.
I found the need for a transparent background with links on top of it, in Firefox & Safari (and IE7) PNGs are supported, so all worked fine, but when tried with IE6, Yea, there were PROBLEMS! No PNG support and links within the transparent window disappeared.

There are links to the PNGs and Demos at the bottom of the post.

This is the difinitive way to make transparency work with all browsers!

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