jQuery is awesome. The jQuery Alerts plugin is also awesome. One of the most immediate and obvious uses of the pair is presenting a spiffy confirmation box before submitting a form. For example, I recently implemented this setup on a form that ultimately deletes data. I couldn’t find a detailed example for this setup, leading to much trial and error. Here’s what worked for me. First the form…
Option 1 Option 2 ``` Take note that we are dealing with a normal form, nothing fancy about the form action, the inputs, etc.
While my MS complaints are (rightly) focused on their desktop apps, I knew Microsoft would end up in this series at some point. However, even I was surprised at how quickly it happened. These guys can’t help but do stupid things in pursuit of copycatting their competitors. Here’s a screenshot several steps deep into the Windows Live registration…
Yes, that page is requesting a credit card number. No, Live does not have a monthly subscription fee.
“Should I use TEXT or VARCHAR field here?”
I’ve lost count of the number of times that I asked myself this question when putting together database structures. Since the maximum a VARCHAR can hold is 255, it becomes a question of whether or not the data you’re saving will be any longer than that. Sometimes that’s an easy call (phone number = VARCHAR; email body = TEXT), other times its blurry (verbose error logs, foreign-language data sets, user-submitted comments, etc).
My brother, Patrick, plays lacrosse for Gettysburg College. Last weekend they beat Stevenson University — an upset by the stats, but they owned the game — which advanced them to the NCAA Division III Championship. They’ll be playing Cortland at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, on Sunday for the title. The game will be televised on CBS College Sports Network. So yeah, my brother? Kind of a big deal.
While working on the file manager section of the Fwd:Vault website, I decided to do a quick check on cross-browser compatibility. The following screenshots are of the same page using the same HTML layout, CSS definitions, etc… [gallery=1] At this point in my career, I don’t think words can express how much I utterly loathe Microsoft’s IE team (and Microsoft in general) for their completely overt dismissal of browser standards. But that won’t stop me from trying, so listen up, you morons.
I wanted to log all the errors thrown out by Fwd:Vault processes to ensure that any bugs I don’t catch myself bubble to the top very quickly. To get started, I replaced PHP’s default error handling with a custom error handler function, which simply logs the error in a MySQL table before passing it along to the normal internal error handler. Later, I’m going to add non-error notices to the mix, and set up an RSS feed to output these errors, allowing me real-time updates on overall system health.
Factoid about me: PlanetSide ranks in the top 5 for my all-time favorite gaming experiences. A persistent MMO world that was essentially a massive FPS match, there was nothing like it. You’d be part of an army of literally hundreds, all working together to attack an outpost tower, a large base, a continent. Grounds troops rushing in, with actual artillery, tanks, and air support, and all human players. Mind-blowingly awesome.
Maybe I’m just getting more cynical, but I’ve been finding a lot more sites doing really stupid things that serve only to piss off their users. As a result I’ve decided to start a new series of posts titled “Usability Fail” which will discuss just that: sites that make dumb decisions that utterly fail in the “user-friendly” and “usability” categories.
The Site
Today’s site is one that I’ve actually lauded in the past.
Let’s start the weekend on a really high note. A family member forwarded this video over to me the other day:
Love what you saw? Then check out the Playing for Change website to see more videos, show support, and/or get involved.
Still not feeling up? This should finish off your blues.
Happy Friday everyone!
