[downinflames68]

I know that MacNN is invaluable for helping people with Mac Hardware/software issues... is there a large forum like this full of knowledgeable people about website coding? Specifically, this is my website:

grüv design llc

and I want to get the image carousel working using this:

jCarousel Lite

but I'm not sure how. Just need some basics on how to use JQuery and stuff, and I'm really not sure where to ask. Thus far googling has resulting in a slew of useless websites.

Thanks in advance!

[Phileas]

Wordpress

Headway theme

Done

PS: Sorry, I thought you were looking for a redesign. My answer doesn't help you at all. Apologies.

[downinflames68]

Uh... okay. ?

[mduell]

Did you try the installation instructions? Pretty simple.

[shifuimam]

Also, as a total aside: get rid of that mailto: link! Not only is that great for spam harvesting, it sucks for anyone who doesn't have a local software mail client set up on their computer (or a Firefox addon that lets you use a webmail service like gmail).

Make a web form to handle contacting, and put your email address on that page as an image in case anyone wants to email you directly. It takes about twelve seconds to write a form to send mail.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

Also, as a total aside: get rid of that mailto: link! Not only is that great for spam harvesting, it sucks for anyone who doesn't have a local software mail client set up on their computer (or a Firefox addon that lets you use a webmail service like gmail).

Right. Because the type of people who're going to hire Rob are going to rely on Gmail for their communications infrastructure.

[Doofy]

Off-topic a little, but let's go for it.

Award-winning young designers with fresh ideas; eager to make a name for themselves by making a name for you.

Translation: We're a new company. We don't have the experience to handle your account.

Bamboo Drying Rack; 3rd Place in the International Greener Gadgets contest, hosted in New York City, 2009

Translation: We'll do your design work for you if you can't get the first or second place winners to do it for you.

We don't want to compete - we want to work together, push each other farther, and design products that stand out from the crowd.

Translation: We are communists.

Contact Us (at Gmail)

Translation: We can't afford six quid a month for a Dreamhost account.

Solutions

Translation: We couldn't be arsed to write another page for this, but "solutions" is a buzz word. So there.

Projects

Translation: We didn't have any content for this page because nobody's hired us yet.

In the spirit of constructive criticism to help you out, Rob.

[besson3c]

Rob, if you are still having difficulty with the jQuery carousel implementation, you might want to check out the YUI Carousel: YUI 2: Carousel Control . It uses YUI 2 which is not as nice as YUI 3, but it's another option should you be interested in an alternative.

[iMOTOR]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Translation: We are communists.

ROTFL, for some reason.

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Translation: We couldn't be arsed to write another page for this, but "solutions" is a buzz word. So there.

Wholeheartedly agreed. It's pretty clear that whoever wrote the copy isn't a writer. There's a lot of buzzwords used as a substitute for actual content.

Rob, I'd sit down and figure out what it is you're really selling. To give you an idea how this works:

Volvo don't sell cars. Volvo really sells Safety.
Apple doesn't sell electronics. Apple really sells innovation.
Fed Ex doesn't sell a parcel delivery service. Fed Ex really sells peace of mind.

Knowing what it is you're really selling is the most important thing any business can possibly know about itself. Internally, it provides a compass, externally it avoids commodotization.

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

Also, as a total aside: get rid of that mailto: link! Not only is that great for spam harvesting, it sucks for anyone who doesn't have a local software mail client set up on their computer (or a Firefox addon that lets you use a webmail service like gmail).

Make a web form to handle contacting, and put your email address on that page as an image in case anyone wants to email you directly. It takes about twelve seconds to write a form to send mail.

No, no, no. Forms are a pain in the ass for anybody who uses a corporate email account, i.e Rob's target market. Form emails don't contain signatures, they don't turn up in your sent mail, they are annoying and unprofessional.

If you have decent spam protection - for example by using gmail for domains - then you don't even really have to bother about protecting your email.

[shifuimam]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

No, no, no. Forms are a pain in the ass for anybody who uses a corporate email account, i.e Rob's target market. Form emails don't contain signatures, they don't turn up in your sent mail, they are annoying and unprofessional.

...hence including the email address on the contact page.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

Make a web form to handle contacting, and put your email address on that page as an image in case anyone wants to email you directly. It takes about twelve seconds to write a form to send mail.

Huh ? Is it 1999 again ?

Spam bots have no problems using sophisticated OCR. None of the image crap or "me (at) isp . com" will help. Good spam filters are the only viable defense these days.

-t

[Phileas]

^ Exactly.

The name (at) address format is actually easier to harvest than a raw email address.

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

...hence including the email address on the contact page.

As an image? Yeah, that'll spell professionalism right there.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

Also, as a total aside: get rid of that mailto: link! Not only is that great for spam harvesting, it sucks for anyone who doesn't have a local software mail client set up on their computer (or a Firefox addon that lets you use a webmail service like gmail).

Make a web form to handle contacting, and put your email address on that page as an image in case anyone wants to email you directly. It takes about twelve seconds to write a form to send mail.

Blech, worthless. The idea that keeping your email address off the Web will prevent spam hasn't been true since the mid-'90s. If people are emailing you, your address will get harvested (right from their computers) and sold and you will get spammed. You have only two choices:

1. Don't give anybody your email address.
2. Invest in a good spam filter.

Anything else is snake oil.

Also, putting text in images is evil unless you're also going to put the text in the alt attribute.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Translation: We can't afford six quid a month for a Dreamhost account.

Six quid a month? Six quid a year with Gmail for Your Domain.

[exca1ibur]

I am using this one for a new redesign at work and have it intergraded it into a DJango template. No need for JQuery and some good custom options and can be modified pretty easy if needed, visually or backend.

Step Carousel Viewer

[shifuimam]

Okay, so axe the image thing. I still say that not providing anything but a mailto link is poor design. You can do both.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Blech, worthless. The idea that keeping your email address off the Web will prevent spam hasn't been true since the mid-'90s. If people are emailing you, your address will get harvested (right from their computers) and sold and you will get spammed. You have only two choices:

1. Don't give anybody your email address.
2. Invest in a good spam filter.

Anything else is snake oil.

Also, putting text in images is evil unless you're also going to put the text in the alt attribute.

3. Use a form with robust error checking to allow people to email you, do not list your email address.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by exca1ibur 

I am using this one for a new redesign at work and have it intergraded it into a DJango template. No need for JQuery and some good custom options and can be modified pretty easy if needed, visually or backend.

Step Carousel Viewer

That script requires jquery.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

Okay, so axe the image thing. I still say that not providing anything but a mailto link is poor design. You can do both.

Oh, yeah, I agree with this. I hate mailto links — even besides the webmail issue — because most mail programs are pretty friggin' heavyweight and I don't want to have to open mine just to ask if you do posters.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

3. Use a form with robust error checking to allow people to email you, do not list your email address.

Assuming you mean "…and never let anyone email you directly and don't email them back," that was option 1.

[exca1ibur]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

That script requires jquery.

Yeah you're right, I got so many JS files on this damn page, you don't want to know. LOL I did some one liner links in there and missed it. LOL

[downinflames68]

So how do you add Jquery though? That's what I don't understand. Again, this wasn't meant to critique my website, it was meant to help me figure out how to implement Jquery by pointing me to a proper forum. But if you want to help, that's fine too. I just have no idea how to add Jquery to my site. The instructions don't really say how either.

[starman]

I just added jQuery to my site. Very easy. You just include it in the HTML.

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.3.2.js"></script>

That's all I had to do.

EDIT: relative/absolute pathnames still apply...

[downinflames68]

Translation: We're a new company. We don't have the experience to handle your account.

I don't have that much experience but I know a lot of people who have 20+ years, and a lot who have 2-5 years. I'm just trying to use this as a springboard to getting other people together. Rarely is it possible for one designer to just come in and do everything.


Translation: We'll do your design work for you if you can't get the first or second place winners to do it for you.

Fair enough, I should change that I guess. I figured third in an international contest where the first two were retarded was pretty good.



Translation: We are communists.

Nah, just trying to get more work to everyone. Get smaller groups of independent designers together.


Translation: We can't afford six quid a month for a Dreamhost account.

I don't even know what you mean.


Translation: We couldn't be arsed to write another page for this, but "solutions" is a buzz word. So there.

Yep. And it isn't done yet. Hence why the carousel doesn't work, and I don't have anything up for the projects page yet.


Translation: We didn't have any content for this page because nobody's hired us yet.

Nope, I was working for some major companies all summer/fall. I can't really put their stuff on my site due to NDA's though, so I'll have to use older work.

[downinflames68]

Originally Posted by starman 

I just added jQuery to my site. Very easy. You just include it in the HTML.

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.3.2.js"></script>

That's all I had to do.

EDIT: relative/absolute pathnames still apply...

So I just reference it with that HTML code, and POOF it works? Or do I download and install it somewhere?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by exca1ibur 

Yeah you're right, I got so many JS files on this damn page, you don't want to know. LOL I did some one liner links in there and missed it. LOL

For Rob's sake, I also have a bit of a problem with the sort of just-add-water approach to attaching Javascripts to a site. It is easy to grab scripts on the internet and attach them, but too much of this with a simultaneous lack of understanding can cause vexing problems.

For instance, there is the issue of whether event observers are inline or external, and whether the script's code itself is inline or external. Having a hodge podge of both can create confusion - I almost always encourage having absolutely every byte of Javascript code be done externally so that you can control it all in one place.

There is also the issue of multiple toolkits and prereqs. If you use Prototype, for instance, the global namespace will be polluted and you could potentially have variable/function name conflicts.

Finally, the standard routine for these sorts of widgets is to attach event observers to elements rendered within the DOM, this is no exception. Having multiple events firing in a conflicting manner without knowing how to trace this can be a huge hassle, as can canceling out other events with conflicting code.

You don't have to learn each line of code in a Javascript script, but you *should* learn about event observers and how they are triggered. Then, you should devise intelligent ways to decide when and how they are fired, and create some traffic cop code that creates your event observers and/or inits your JS function as needed.

One way of implementing this traffic cop code is to attach a class to your body tag named after the section you are in, e.g.:

<body class="mysite_mysection">

Then, in your Javascript you can write code such as this (this uses Prototype syntax, but you can figure out the intent of this):

if ($(document.body).hasClassName('mysite_mysection') ) {
establish observers for this page
}

Otherwise, if you just have your Javascript being inited on each page globally, you need to hope that there is proper error checking in place to back out when it doesn't find what it needs to work, that this is not going to produce an error that will conflict with your other Javascript, and that this is not going to conflict with your other Javascript by overriding stuff.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by downinflames68 

So I just reference it with that HTML code, and POOF it works? Or do I download and install it somewhere?

You don't even need to download it and upload it to your site's file structure if you include this code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>


This uses the version of jquery hosted on Google's servers. You just need to make sure it is pulling in a version that is compatible with your script (in this case it is using 1.3.2).

[starman]

Originally Posted by downinflames68 

So I just reference it with that HTML code, and POOF it works? Or do I download and install it somewhere?

Oh, yeah, sorry. You have to DL it, but it's a pretty small file.

Downloading jQuery - jQuery JavaScript Library

And yes, poof it works, at least it did for me.

BTW: It also worked for me locally, meaning I tried it with simple HTML/jQuery pair on my hard drive.

EDIT: What besson said is true, but I like to know that my site isn't going to break because of an offsite update, that's why I download it for myself.

There's nothing special about jQuery that I know of, it's just a collection of JS.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by starman 

EDIT: What besson said is true, but I like to know that my site isn't going to break because of an offsite update, that's why I download it for myself.

Google will not update an existing toolkit like this, they will put it in a new branch - i.e. jquery/1.3.3


The pros and cons for using an externally hosted toolkit like this are sort of mixed. Best case scenario your entire site will be sent to the user's browser faster because Google offers a lot of bandwidth and IT infrastructure in multiple parts of the world. The worst case, when Google lags for whatever reason, your site takes longer to fire the onload triggers that wait for the entire page to finish loading. These DOM onload triggers are very typical fare for Javascript code.

[starman]

Yeah, that too. I've been bitten by that before MANY times. In fact, NN suffers from that when their ads don't load properly.

[besson3c]

Speaking of having your Javascript code loading faster, you all should definitely look at compressing your text-based pages. It is better, IMHO, to do this at the Apache level, but you can also increase performance by running your scripts through a script that deletes white space too.

[starman]

Are there any benchmarks for that? It seems reasonable but for today's fast connections, can a little whitespace make that big of a difference?

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by downinflames68 

I figured third in an international contest where the first two were retarded was pretty good.

Coming in third against retards looks good?

Originally Posted by downinflames68 

Translation: We can't afford six quid a month for a Dreamhost account.

I don't even know what you mean.

He's saying businesses traditionally have their own domains rather than using gmail.com addresses, so he thinks it looks unprofessional. (Personally, I think gmail.com is marginally acceptable for business. Your own domain is better, but Gmail is the next closest thing to it.)

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by starman 

Yeah, that too. I've been bitten by that before MANY times. In fact, NN suffers from that when their ads don't load properly.

This is one of the most annoying problems ever! Not only does it slow down the site from loading, but IE handles all of this differently from W3C browsers which makes matters even worse.

In W3C browsers, it doesn't really matter the order in which stuff is loaded, it will ultimately give the last loaded stuff priority. IE doesn't do this, so you have to be very particular about the order in which stuff is loaded.

It was a while ago when I wrestled with this, this might be fixed in IE 8 now, I have no clue...

This is another reason why it is very smart to have traffic cop code that controls when things are loaded and triggered. You can use YUI's dynamic loading tool for actually loading your JS code when it is needed to improve your site's performance even more in reducing the amount of time it takes to render your initial page load. This is a nice little gain for iPhone users.

Not to pick on the author of these forums, but look at the code for this page. This is exactly the worst way to utilize Javascript. You have a mix of inline code and inline event handlers *and* some external stuff. Not only does this potentially create problems and confusion, but it makes the code extremely difficult to read.

Of course, the code for these forums also uses a lot of tables for layout, so perhaps this all of this mess was inherited.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Coming in third against retards looks good?


He's saying businesses traditionally have their own domains rather than using gmail.com addresses, so he thinks it looks unprofessional. (Personally, I think gmail.com is marginally acceptable for business. Your own domain is better, but Gmail is the next closest thing to it.)

GMail to me suggests that the business is too small-timey to have any correspondence of value. A serious company does not allow sensitive information to be data mined.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by starman 

Are there any benchmarks for that? It seems reasonable but for today's fast connections, can a little whitespace make that big of a difference?

It all adds up... Have you ever played around with file based compression? You'll notice that text files compress a whole lot more than images and video files. A lot of this space savings is gained by removing white space, which requires a byte for each space.

If you want your site to perform well across the entire spectrum - people in other countries who may have slower connections, mobile devices, etc. *and* your site gets a lot of traffic, all of this wasteful stuff adds up in a hurry when you start multiplying the wasteful bandwidth by the number of downloaders.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

GMail to me suggests that the business is too small-timey to have any correspondence of value. A serious company does not allow sensitive information to be data mined.

Eh, you're drawing a false relationship between a gmail.com address and datamining. Just because you don't see a gmail.com address doesn't mean they aren't using Gmail. Lots of "serious" companies use Gmail when you wouldn't suspect.

[besson3c]

Just to be clear though, I'm not advocating removing white space from your code, this is a PITA to do. I'm advocating proper compression on the server via something like mod_gzip or ZFS with compression enabled and whatever sort of equivalents exist.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Eh, you're drawing a false relationship between a gmail.com address and datamining. Just because you don't see a gmail.com address doesn't mean they aren't using Gmail. Lots of "serious" companies use Gmail when you wouldn't suspect.

Good point... I would not want any sensitive information of mine being in the hands of anybody who uses a free email service like this. Advertising this just makes matters worse.

[downinflames68]

Yeah, you guys are misunderstanding something. I'm a freelancer. Trying to get more business for myself, and other freelancers. When my friends run into work they can't do and I can, I get work. When I run into work I can't do very well, I send it to them. Hence, gmail suits my needs very well is it is accessible almost anywhere, anytime, has large storage potential, searches easy, and works well.

[Laminar]

And all of that is available with Gmail behind your own domain. It's pretty suite, really.

[mdc]

Like Laminar said, Google Apps Standard Edition is the free version for your domain.

[shifuimam]

Count me in as a +1 for Google for domains. I just got it set up on my server after I was blacklisted by gmail for not having a reverse DNS entry and SPH something or other on the emails the server was sending (it happened the very first time the server sent a message to a gmail address - they are damn quick about that stuff). Now I have all the benefits of gmail and none of the hassle of running a mail server.

Also, Google Apps lets you set your own domains for everything - your Google docs and calendar sites, and your Google sites stuff. It's pretty slick for being free.

[downinflames68]

Okay, really guys. I don't give a shit. I wasn't asking for a review, or for your opinion of email clients. I want to get that carousel working... any ideas? I added the code and it still isn't working, but then again, I'm not sure what I am doing. I am looking for a forum that can help me get this working.

[Chuckit]

JavaScript Tutorial

[downinflames68]

I thought Jquery wasn't the same as Javascript?

[Chuckit]

jQuery is a Javascript library. It's different from Javascript is the same way that a book is different from the English language.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by downinflames68 

I thought Jquery wasn't the same as Javascript?

jQuery is a Javascript toolkit that supplements pure Javascript.

Why don't you tell us what part of the documentation you are getting stuck on, or where your understanding falls apart? I don't know where to start in helping you, and I would suspect I'm not the only one.

[dedalus]

Screw JCarousel, why don’t you have a look at BananAlbum? Looks better to me, and it’s easier to set up.