Author: Evan Mullins

Circelcube Video Player 3.0 Stock Flash Video Player at ActiveDen

Posted on by Evan Mullins

hero-image

My latest stock flash video player of mine was just added to the database of stock flash items at activeDen. Go check it out and if you like it, download it for use in your projects! I’ve got lots in it for you. I’m using the principles I used as the architect for the video player for stomperNet and then at cornerstone media group in this decked out video player. Go get circlecube’s awesome stock flash video player.

circlecube-video-player-3-preview

An extensively customizable yet simple video player. Integrate the video into your user experience with javascript integration as well as Google Analytics tracking on the video interaction! Control functionality, layout and colors of the player easily! Plus don’t sweat the embed codes – an embed code generator included!

Let your video be the focus!

Features

  • Includes an embed script generator! With options for swfobject implementation or simple valid html object tags (or both)!
  • Embed generator makes setting your settings easy with a Live Preview!circlecube-video-embed-preview
  • Supports flv, f4v and any container format using H.264: mp4, m4a, mov, mp4v, 3GP, 3G2.
  • All images and video loaded externally
  • Run this player without additional files, just pass in the flv path and thumbnail path.
  • Supports most image file types: jpg, gif, png.
  • Google Analytics Integration (event tracking) – Uses on page analytics account or a specified account on a per video setting in flashvars.
    analytics-overview
  • Load any dimension video. Completely resizable
  • Set player width and height
  • Set video width and height
  • Full screen capabilities
  • All colors fully customizable in flashvars
  • Use a preview/thumbnail image.
  • Auto play option
  • Auto load option – in case you had a bunch of video on one page you wouldn’t want them all to auto load.
  • Supports Window Mode options. window, transparent, opaque
  • Video scale/stretching options: none, exact, uniform, fill.
  • Javascript callback functions for loading video and finishing video playback.
  • Show a big play button over the video
  • Show/hide “vcr” video player controls
  • Advanced volume controls, click to mute or drag to desired volume. Volume fades rather than cuts.
  • Support for a logo
  • Controls auto-hide
  • 60k file size
  • Time code display in current time or elapsed time. click to toggle
  • Tooltips for controls
  • Send video files to player dynamically (with an html link on a page send a video to play)
  • Replay video after complete
  • Progressive play and load displays. Watch as the video loads and see the scrub bar update as you watch.
  • Scrub bar is interactive click and drag. Tooltip to display hovered time.
  • Animated play controls.
  • Buttons states & tooltips.
  • All player graphics are vector shapes and very small in size.
  • Fully rearrange player controls
  • Option to disable fullscreen
  • Display video title and description – html content (may contain links)
  • Video controls also in context menu

legend-image

Get file path easier on a mac with applescript | Copy Path script droplet

Posted on by Evan Mullins

An issue I’ve had with managing multiple files and versions of files and different servers and emailing files around to different people throughout a process… you get the idea.

I looked for a way to get the path to a file like a url online. that would be easy for anyone to navigate to, while not having to type it manually. I know it’s a small thing, but these small things add up…

So first I was surprised that mac os x doesn’t do this out of the box. I’m pretty sure it was easy enough to do in windows. Although when you control-click and “Get Info” the location of that file is displayed in the window, you can’t select it. So if you really want to type it this is your solution. I found it really annoying that you couldn’t select the text and copy it.

Then I read somewhere that you could open a terminal window and drop a file into it, then the path to the file would be printed in the terminal. Awesome, but not very useful for me, it is rare that I have a terminal window open and the process is a bit lengthy since my main drive for this is to save time (and typos) from having to type the path myself of take a screen shot of the path in either the finder or the get info window. I thought about venturing into apple script, a realm I’ve heard a bit about but never ventured alone.

After some initial tuts and intros to applescript it seems like a very feasible task. I want to either set up a shortcut so I can select the file and hit a couple keys and have the path copied to my clipboard or have a droplet in my dock to drop a file into which will copy the file’s path to my clipboard and then I can easily paste the file path into an email in a matter of seconds and trust that they will be able to navigate to the correct file.

Thanks to this great forum post I was able to find what I needed!

droplet in dock
I created a droplet with applescript to copy a files path to my clipboard (code below) and then put it into my dock for easy access! Create your own “Copy Path” droplet with this code or download mine here

[cc lang=”applescript”]
(*
I use this script to show people where to find files on our LAN.
Just drop a few files/folders onto this droplet and their pathes will be copied and put on the clipboard.
–CBT
*)

on open these_items
set myItems to itemSort(these_items) — v1.0.5 ASCIIsort failed on older versions of applescript. — CBT; 10/5/99

set path_str to “” as string

repeat with i from 1 to the count of myItems
set this_item to item i of myItems
set posix_path to POSIX path of this_item

— For now I’m stripping the preceding ‘/Volumes’ string for external
— drives so I don’t clutter my build logs.
set shortened_path to do shell script ”
echo \”” & posix_path & “\” | sed ‘s|/Volumes||’
”
set path_str to path_str & shortened_path & return
–set path_str to path_str & posix_path & return
end repeat

— Copy plain text to the clipboard.
set the clipboard to «class ktxt» of ((the path_str as text) as record)
end open

on itemSort(my_list)
set the index_list to {}
set the sorted_list to {}
repeat (the number of items in my_list) times
set the low_item to “”
repeat with i from 1 to (number of items in my_list)
if i is not in the index_list then
set this_item to item i of my_list
if the low_item as text is “” then
set the low_item to this_item
set the low_item_index to i
else if this_item as text comes before the low_item as text then
set the low_item to this_item
set the low_item_index to i
end if
end if
end repeat
set the end of sorted_list to the low_item
set the end of the index_list to the low_item_index
end repeat
return the sorted_list
end itemSort
[/cc]

context menu ui nightmareAlso I was able to use automator to create a context menu item – although I prefer the droplet since I don’t have to fool with the accuracy required to navigate through nested context menu items. I’m still yet to create a shortcut that will make it the fastest, but this is a big step in the right direction. It’s one thing I love about computers, and I guess life in general, where there’s a will there’s usually a way (especially when forums are involved). Figured I’d post this for posterity and in case any of you are wishing your mac could do this too.

Javascript to show/hide elements update with jQuery

Posted on by Evan Mullins

I never expected it, but one of the most popular (most commented) posts on this blog is a javascript post from about 3 years ago. I was showing how to hide and show elements on a web page with some simple javascript using getElementById and altering the display or visibility attributes of the element. It still works – although I hear every once in a while that certain browsers have issues with is sometimes, but the truth is I haven’t used this code almost since I wrote it. I have converted to jQuery! And it is much easier to code, easier to read and even nicer to browsers. So I’m writing this update post to proclaim the antiquity (3 years on the internet is a long time) of getElementById and the benefits of jQuery!

There isn’t much more to say about it really. I hope you’ve heard of jquery and if not, please go check it out it’s pretty easy to pick up! One thing I will mention is the potential bloat to having to load a javascript library. But most of my projects lately have included jQuery because I’ve been using it much more than just showing and hiding elements. But remember our friend cache? Remember that if you’re using jQuery on a whole site, the user only loads it once, and if you load it from the google hosted version of jQuery they likely will already have the script in their cache. The current version is hosted at http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js, so just link to that script on your page and you’re free to throw in any jquery onto your page.

Well, check out the code; I hope it’s pretty self explanatory and you can see it in action. I always have to see things work to understand them and learn from them.

Javascript

[cc lang=”javascript”]
$(document).ready(function() {

$(‘.hide_it’).click(function(){ $(‘.to_hide’).hide(); });

$(“.show_it”).click(function () { $(“.to_show”).show(“slow”); });

$(“#toggle_it”).click(function () { $(“.to_toggle”).toggle(); });

$(‘.fade_it’).click(function() { $(“.to_fade”).fadeTo(“slow”,0); });

$(‘.fade_out’).click(function() { $(“.to_fade_out”).fadeOut(); });

$(‘.reset_all’).click(function() {
$(‘.to_hide’).show();
$(“.to_show”).hide();
$(“.to_toggle”).show();
$(“.to_fade”).fadeTo(“slow”,100);
$(“.to_fade_out”).fadeIn();
});
});
[/cc]

show-hide-jquery-screenshot

HTML Code

see it in action on the demo page
[cc lang=”html”]

testing hide js div

hide it

Show me slowly.

testing the toggle functionality of jQuery

testing fade out. you’ll notice that this is set to display:none once the fade is complete.

fade out

testing fade to 0. this fades out just as fadeOut, but it does no make the display none, so the page layout isn’t modified, just the visibility of this element.

fade it

[/cc]

Notice that with jQuery we can use a class or an id as a selector. This is great because you can show a whole slew of elements that share the same class at once. Remember that you can only have one id on a page at once since it must be unique.

See the demo page for working examples.

And don’t forget to read up on the api for jQuery here jQuery hide, jQuery show, jQuery toggle, jQuery fadeOut, jQuery fadeIn, jQuery fadeTo.

Update a thematic child-theme for wordpress 3.0 menu

Posted on by Evan Mullins


The new menu system in wordpress, while not perfect (yet), is a huge step in the right direction. I have had to update many old themes to support this feature, and as most of my theming is down with thematic, I finally got a standard block of code together to add to a functions.php file of a child theme to add theme support for menus and add them to the theme. Here is the code, all you do is add it to your functions file and then you can manage menus thorugh the new menu page in your pw dashboard! Enjoy!
[cc lang=”php”]
//// Add support for new menu in WP3
// declare that our theme supports wp_nav_menu()
add_theme_support( ‘menus’ );

// Register the a new menu for the theme called “Primary Menu”
function register_primary_menu() {
register_nav_menu( ‘primary-menu’, __( ‘Primary Menu’ ) );
}
add_action( ‘init’, ‘register_primary_menu’ );

// Remove the standard Thematic menu
function remove_menu() {
remove_action(‘thematic_header’,’thematic_access’,9);
}
add_action(‘init’, ‘remove_menu’);

// Create the new wp_nav_menu called “Primary Menu” in theme
function new_access() { ?>

Adding a header widget in your Thematic child-theme

Posted on by Evan Mullins

I’ve been building lots of wordpress sites lately and have been loving the thematic framework. I install the theme and then make my edits in a custom child theme. I’ve begun seeing a few things I end up doing in nearly every site and I wanted to share them because finding out exactly how to do it was a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.

The first one I’ll share is related to creating an extra widget area. I know thematic already has a ton of widget areas. I needed a spot in the header to easily update and add elements. It’s a place that commonly holds links, search boxes, phone numbers etc, and normally it’s ok hard coding that into the theme. But what about when it changes? I always try to empower my clients with the option of making tweaks like this on their own. I have found that it keeps them happy, as they don’t get billed or have to wait for me, and it keeps me happy, since that’s really not what I want to spend my time doing. I try to make my sites the kind that I need to do the heavy lifting and some instruction at launch, but then the client is in control and can maintain the site. Of course I explain that if they break it and I have to come in to fix it, then those are billable hours, anyways… that’s another post for another day. I wanted to give the header area (normally to the right of the logo but above the navigation) a widget area. It turns out that it is really a simple few lines of code put into the child-themes functions.php file to do it!

[cc lang=”php”]
// Add Widget area in header
function add_header_aside($content) {
$content[‘Header Aside’] = array(
‘args’ => array (
‘name’ => ‘Header Aside’,
‘id’ => ‘header-aside’,
‘before_widget’ => thematic_before_widget(),
‘after_widget’ => thematic_after_widget(),
‘before_title’ => thematic_before_title(),
‘after_title’ => thematic_after_title(),
),
‘action_hook’ => ‘thematic_header’,
‘function’ => ‘thematic_header_aside’,
‘priority’ => 0,
);
return $content;
}
add_filter(‘thematic_widgetized_areas’, ‘add_header_aside’);

// And this is our new function that displays the widgetized area
function thematic_header_aside() {
if (is_sidebar_active(‘header-aside’)) {
echo thematic_before_widget_area(‘header-aside’);
dynamic_sidebar(‘header-aside’);
echo thematic_after_widget_area(‘header-aside’);
}
}
[/cc]

I know I got this code from someone in some forum somewhere, but it was a long search, and I couldn’t find it again when I looked, so whoever you are, thanks! I usually end up putting a search widget in the header and a phone number or other contact links or rss links and it’s become pretty standard in my toolkit. Hope it helps!

The Magic Reset Button

Posted on by Evan Mullins

This magic button is almost always forgotten, but 90% of the time when you don’t see what you think you should be seeing on a webpage, the culprit is the same: cache.

Imagine: a few hours after discussing some edits to your site with your trusted designer. Your designer says he just updated the graphics or layout of your website and you’re excited to see it. You go to your favorite browser (which I hope is not IE), and type in your url. “Hm, that’s funny, I thought they said it was updated, do they think every day is April Fools or something?!” Then after an email and a phone call they confirm that they did update the page, you go back to it once again and still don’t see anything different! By this time you are wishing you could reach through the phone and smack somebody. You look on a different computer and see the update, and are beyond confused when you go to your computer and still don’t see the update.

Eventually, the designer tells you to try refreshing or clearing your cache. That sounds like a good plan, but what the heck is he talking about? Cache is one way smart guys have determined the internet can work better and faster. Essentially when your browser (for example Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer) views a webpage it copies it from the internet to your computer. Then if you view that page again your browser remembers that it’s seen it recently, so it displays your local copy rather than connect with the server and download a new copy every single time. Especially with linked images and files such as style sheets and scripts. This helps you see the internet and websites faster. This is a good thing except when you want to see the most updated version in your browser.

refreshThere are however a couple ways you may tell the browser to forget the cached version of the page and load it all fresh from the server. The standard shortcuts are (windows) ‘ctrl + F5’ and (mac) ‘cmd + R’. You can also go to your browser options and delete browser history, but that will clear all your cache and not just the page you are on. This is almost always the case when you’re not seeing what you should be seeing on a site. So next time it happens, take a moment and hit F5 to save a headache.

Design Matters

Posted on by Evan Mullins

People are amazed at how well Apple is doing, they are doing better now than Microsoft! I think Apple understands the power of design and this has helped get them where they are now. Apple hardware/software (since they are almost the same thing) focus very heavily on appearance and design.

Alex of Airtight Interactive points out:

Apple understands that laptops and phones are the new watches and jewelry. We are using them majority of our waking life. They define us to the people around us. They need to be both functional and beautiful. Apple products have plenty of hardware and software issues, but people are willing to forgive them since the products are so nice to look at.

He also points to the design by Andrew Kim that I love. I hope other companies get into their heads the fact that design really IS that important!

Better jquery mega-menu tutorial

Posted on by Evan Mullins

My earlier simple mega menu implementation post displayed some simple css and jquery to explode a standard navigation menu into a mega-menu… I’ve made it even better. My biggest issue with that implementation was that it did not keep the order like you’d expect. It read left to right in columns rather than down each column. In the example you can see the first column of three would read from the top: a, d, g, j… this could potentially be confusing. So I wanted to update it to keep the order better and just stack the columns of elements rather than the elements themselves.

I used some different jquery to execute this. First we walk through the menu elements and calculate which column they should be in. We basically map that element’s (li)index to the column it should be, some big math. Luckily I had some experience from actionscript in my arsenal doing just that, so porting the function to javascript I was ready to go. If your number X falls between A and B, and you would like to convert it to Y which falls between C and D follow this formula: Y = (X-A)/(B-A) * (D-C) + C. Plugging this function in and cancelling out the zeros and adding some rounding to get integers I got: Math.floor((liindex / $total * $cols)+1). Using this I added a class to each ‘li’ designating which column it should be in, and then used wrapAll to wrap them into column divs. Very simple and a much better implementation overall anyways. Better code, better user experience… what more can you ask… so here’s the example and jquery code. I’m thinking I should make this into a jquery plugin or something, any thoughts?

better-mega-menu-screenshot

See the mega menu in action

Javascript code

[cc lang=”javascript”]
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
//clean up the row of the mega menu. add css class to each element on bottom row.
//only if more than 7 elements. if more than 16, mm-3
jQuery(‘#nav li ul’).each(function(ulindex, ulele){
$total = jQuery(this).children(‘li’).size();
if ($total <= 7) { jQuery(this).addClass('mm-1'); } else { $cols = Math.floor(($total) / 8) + 1; $remainder = $total % $cols; $rows = Math.ceil($total / $cols); jQuery(this).addClass('mm-' + $cols + ' total-' + $total + ' rem-'+$remainder );jQuery(this).children().each(function(liindex, liele){ //alert("total: "+$total+", remainder: "+ $mod+", ulindex: "+ulindex+", liindex: "+liindex); //If your number X falls between A and B, and you would like to convert it to Y which falls between C and D follow this formula: Y = (X-A)/(B-A) * (D-C) + C. jQuery(this).addClass('col-' + Math.floor((liindex / $total * $cols)+1) ); if( (liindex+1) % $rows == 0) { jQuery(this).addClass('last'); } });for (var colcount = 1; colcount<= $cols; colcount++){ jQuery(this).children('.col-'+colcount).wrapAll('

‘);
}
}
});
});
[/cc]

css

[cc lang=”css”]
ul { list-style:none; }

/********** < Navigation */ .nav-container { float:left; background: #398301; margin: 10em 0; width: 960px; } #nav { border: 0px none; padding:3px 0 2px 44px; margin:0; font-size:13px; }/* All Levels */ #nav li { text-align:left; position:relative; } #nav li.over { z-index:999; } #nav li.parent {} #nav li a { display:block; text-decoration:none; } #nav li a:hover { text-decoration:none; } #nav li a span { display:block; white-space:nowrap; cursor:pointer; } #nav li ul a span { white-space:normal; }/* 1st Level */ #nav li { float:left; } #nav li a { float:left; padding:5px 10px; font-weight:normal; color: #fff; text-shadow: 1px 1px #1b3f00; } #nav li a:hover { color: #fff; text-shadow: 1px 1px 3px #ccc; } #nav li.over a, #nav li.active a { color:#fff; }/* 2nd Level */ #nav ul { position:absolute; width:15em; top:26px; left:-10000px; border:1px solid #1b3f00; border-width: 0 1px 2px 1px; background:#398301; padding: 6px 0 6px; } #nav ul div.col { float:left; width: 15em; } #nav ul li { float:left; padding: 0; width: 15em; } #nav ul li a { float:none; padding:6px 9px; font-weight:normal; color:#FFF !important; text-shadow: 1px 1px #1b3f00; border-bottom:1px solid #1b3f00; background:#398301; } #nav ul li a:hover { color:#fff !important; text-shadow: 1px 1px 3px #ccc; background: #2b6301; } #nav ul li.last > a { border-bottom:0; }
#nav ul li.last.parent > a { border-bottom:0; }

#nav ul li.over > a { font-weight:normal; color:#fff !important; background: #1b3f00; }
#nav ul.mm-1 { width: 15em; }
#nav ul.mm-2 { width: 30em; }
#nav ul.mm-3 { width: 45em; }
#nav ul.mm-4 { width: 60em; }
/* 3rd+ leven */
#nav ul ul { top:-6px; background: #1b3f00; }

/* Show Menu – uses built-in magento menu hovering */
#nav li.over > ul { left:0; }
#nav li.over > ul li.over > ul { left:14em; }
#nav li.over ul ul { left:-10000px; }

/* Show Menu – uses css only, not fully across all browsers but, for the purpose of the demo is fine by me */
#nav li:hover > ul { left:0; z-index: 100; }
#nav li:hover > ul li:hover > ul { left:14em; z-index: 200; }
#nav li:hover ul ul { left:-10000px; }
[/cc]

Download

Visit this demo page and view source or save as…

A simple mega menu implementation with CSS and jquery

Posted on by Evan Mullins

I’ve been skinning quite a few ecommerce sites with the magento platform and wanted a simple way to explode the navigation menus. Some sites end up getting a long list of categories and sub-categories, so I wanted to do a mega-menu style navigation. One way to do it was to rewrite the html code for the navigation and pop each column into another nested unordered list. I’m not a fan of doing this because one – I didn’t want to manipulate the html. I like the simplicity of ul navigation with a clear flat list of li elements. Of course for nested sub-navigation any li can contain another ul. I wanted to just use some css and maybe javascript to visually accomplish the same thing. I also wanted it to be portable, so I could take it and use it on a wordpress install or even a plain html site. I went to my favorite: jquery. I knew there was a likely plugin out there already that would do something similar, but nothing after my initial search, but I realized that it was a simple procedure and mostly accomplished with some css.
mega menu screenshot
I’ll walk you through the process here and let you inspect the code yourself and see it in action on the demo page. Assign each ul to be a default width of 15em, then each li element we float:left and also give it a width of 15em. This way we can change the ul width to 30em and automatically I have 2 columns! Assigning the nested ul a specific width according to it’s class is done through css, mm-0 will be 15em and incrementally each next one will be 15em more. mm-1 is 30 and mm-2 is 45. Then we use jquery to determine the number of elements in the list and assign it a class accordingly. This involves some math and some preferences. Using the magic ui number 7, I determined that a menu with more than 7 elements should explode into multiple columns. So anything less than or equal to 7 I assign the class ‘mm-1’ which in the css sets the width to the standard 15em (ie 1 mega menu column). More than 7 should pop into columns no more than 8 tall. So dividing the total by 8 will give us the number of columns we want. We’ll add a class of mm-x, where x would be the number of columns. And the li elements will float to the left and fill in the space in columns.
One specific issue is the last element in the menu, sometimes we need to style that element differently. I’ll loop through each child of the nested ul element and if it is on the bottom row apply a class of ‘last’. But this was a little tricky in calculating which would be last because were never sure how many elements there will be or how many columns. I just used the remainder after dividing the total by the number of columns, then if the remainder could be used to know which elements are on the bottom row.

OK, now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at the code.

HTML

This I won’t show, you can inspect the source of the demo if you wish to see it, it a basic nested collection of unordered lists. It’s the standard that is created by magento, wordpress and most other CMS platforms.

CSS

[cc lang=”css”]
html, body { margin:0; padding:0; }
ul { list-style:none; }

/********** < Navigation */ .nav-container { float:left; background: #186C94; margin: 10em 0; width: 960px; } #nav { border: 0px none; padding:3px 0 2px 44px; margin:0; font-size:13px; }/* All Levels */ #nav li { text-align:left; position:relative; } #nav li.over { z-index:999; } #nav li.parent {} #nav li a { display:block; text-decoration:none; } #nav li a:hover { text-decoration:none; } #nav li a span { display:block; white-space:nowrap; cursor:pointer; } #nav li ul a span { white-space:normal; }/* 1st Level */ #nav li { float:left; } #nav li a { float:left; padding:5px 10px; font-weight:normal; color: #fff; text-shadow: 1px 1px #111; } #nav li a:hover { color: #fff; text-shadow: 1px 1px 3px #ccc; } #nav li.over a, #nav li.active a { color:#fff; }/* 2nd Level */ #nav ul { position:absolute; width:15em; top:26px; left:-10000px; border:1px solid #104A65; border-width: 0 1px 2px 1px; background:#186C94; padding: 6px 0 6px; } #nav ul div.col { float:left; width: 15em; } #nav ul li { float:left; padding: 0; width: 15em; } #nav ul li a { float:none; padding:6px 9px; font-weight:normal; color:#FFF !important; text-shadow: 1px 1px #111; border-bottom:1px solid #104A65; background:#186C94; } #nav ul li a:hover { color:#fff !important; text-shadow: 1px 1px 3px #ccc; background: #135575; } #nav ul li.last > a { border-bottom:0; }
#nav ul li.last.parent > a { border-bottom:0; }

#nav ul li.over > a { font-weight:normal; color:#fff !important; background: #104A65; }
#nav ul.mm-1 { width: 15em; }
#nav ul.mm-2 { width: 30em; }
#nav ul.mm-3 { width: 45em; }
#nav ul.mm-4 { width: 60em; }
/* 3rd+ leven */
#nav ul ul { top:-6px; background: #104A65; }

/* Show Menu – uses built-in magento menu hovering */
#nav li.over > ul { left:0; }
#nav li.over > ul li.over > ul { left:14em; }
#nav li.over ul ul { left:-10000px; }

/* Show Menu – uses css only, not fully across all browsers but, for the purpose of the demo is fine by me */
#nav li:hover > ul { left:0; z-index: 100; }
#nav li:hover > ul li:hover > ul { left:14em; z-index: 200; }
#nav li:hover ul ul { left:-10000px; }
[/cc]

Javascript

Don’t forget to include jQuery (I prefer using the google hosted version at http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js)
[cc lang=”javascript”]
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
//clean up the row of the mega menu. add css class to each element on bottom row.
//only if more than 7 elements. if more than 16, mm-3
jQuery(‘#nav li ul’).each(function(ulindex, ulele){
$total = jQuery(this).children(‘li’).size();
if ($total <= 7) { jQuery(this).addClass('mm-1'); } else { $cols = Math.floor(($total) / 8) + 1; $remainder = $total % $cols; jQuery(this).addClass('mm-' + $cols + ' total-' + $total + ' rem-'+$remainder );jQuery(this).children().each(function(liindex, liele){ //alert("total: "+$total+", remainder: "+ $mod+", ulindex: "+ulindex+", liindex: "+liindex); if( liindex + $remainder >= $total || $remainder == 0 && liindex + $cols >= $total ){
//alert(“total: “+$total+”, remainder: “+ $remainder+”, index: “+liindex);
jQuery(this).addClass(‘last’);
}
});
}
});

});
[/cc]

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Web Design and Carpenters

Posted on by Evan Mullins

Does your website pass the big bad wolf test?

I’ve been building websites for years and always enjoy the immediacy of designing and coding a site and having it live relatively quickly. Compare web production to the construction industry where projects span out years and even decades in some cases. Even though the web does foster a faster deliverable, there are many lessons from the physical world that help us better understand and manage web projects.

What is the point of a building? It’s a roof over your head, but more importantly it’s a location. People visit and expect it to be there next week. A website is a location as well in fact url even stands for Uniform Resource Locator and a domain name is your address. There are whole sciences about how to attract people to a certain location online and keep them coming back for more. For those with a brick-and-mortar business a website is a portal or even a drive-thru window to permit easy shopping access and a gallery to showcase your products. It allows your visitors to browse and interact with your products or content from their own home. A physical store that is confusing and messy won’t sell much, but clean it up and get some Feng Shui master in there and the same space can be transformed into a pleasant, functional and usable location. So from the tangible world we can learn that we want a location that is memorable, a layout that is intuitive and agreeable and a presence that is easy and pleasing to our visitors.

Building a website also follows the same process as building a house?

good cheap fast
First a house takes planning and preparation. It’s best to make sure you understand what it is you want in your house, what materials will be used and how much it will cost. Long ago, construction crews figured out it cost way to much time and money to change projects on the fly and now require them to be nailed down even before groundbreaking. Web designers have not all learned this lesson yet and have been lenient with demanding a spec. Some clients think they can say “I want a website for x” and then expect the designers and developers to telepathically know all the elements of the site and build it correctly the first time. I’ve worked for so-called visionary gurus and they wanted a new website and didn’t take the time upfront to plan the site and subsequently I redesigned their website daily! Trust me, that kept the site from being functional or usable.

Building a house takes a construction crew, with a website it may be considerably less people, but it does help to have a few people each with their expertise. The main goal here is to make sure you’ve got someone who can handle each piece of the project. An architect will draw up the plans for your house after the requirements are discussed. So these blueprints or wireframes as we call them in web design contain the details needed for the project to be completed. They are written with all the policies and codes in mind so that in the end the structure can be valid, functional and above all- usable.

The website, like a house, sometimes isn’t even recognizable until the very final stages of the project. We don’t complain to the foreman that the walls aren’t the right color when the windows aren’t yet hung and the drywall mud is still wet. When constructing a house first the foundation is set and everyone knows that a weak foundations will ruin the whole project from the get go. Once the foundation is solid the framing begins, and although while the house is being framed there are holes in the house all will turn out fine in the end. Looking at a website before it’s actually complete when even possible can be a very scary thing: things don’t fully connect, layouts are screwy, links may be broken and graphics are totally wrong or missing, but all will turn out in the end as long as the construction crew know what they are doing and the client let’s them focus on doing it.

Once the house is up and walls are in and there’s a roof overhead is when things actually start to look right. Now is the time to be focused on the content of the site and putting everything in the right place. Get the walls the right colors and eventually even hanging pictures and accents in each room. Final tweaks to the place or feel of the place, but now is not the best time to start thinking – ‘What if we moved the kitchen to the basement!’ or ‘Oh, We forgot the elevator/fireplace!’. While these drastic changes are likely possible, they will have more of an after-thought and will be either very difficult or very expensive to correctly put into play, or both.

html-css-lego

Once last thing to say in this endless analogy comparing a brick and mortar construction to a website project, what about when it’s “done”. When the house is done and the dust has settled and you’ve moved in. There are always things that still need doing: tweaks, fixes, customizations, just plain maintenance, appliances break and plumbing clogs. Not to scare anyone from the american dream, but it happens, even online. Plugins need updating, security holes are found, bugs come up, things need updated. It happens. The trick is to expect things to happen. For a house you can find any number of Home Warranties that protect you from the sudden costs of repairs. Most web design shops will have a similar maintenance plan that warrants a certain amount of work in a certain amount of time to account for such surprises.

And finally the big bad wolf test. Would your website survive a big bad wolf coming to blow your site down? Make sure that whoever is building your website knows enough to not build your house out of straw or sticks. They need to be up on current technologies and you need to be confident in their ability to give you a valid site that can withstand any visitors at your very own online location.