Our Blog and Thoughts
Iv come across this problem a few times now and this should be of help to a few people.
When placing an absolute div within a relative positioned div, in IE6 and IE7 that div disappeared. The content within the div and the div just would not show. An immediate response would be to think of the stack and z-Index but after a few tests it wasnt that.
The Fix: Simply surround the absolute div with another empty div.
Did it work? Another similar problem? Leave a comment.
A very quick post today but hopefully this will help a few people.
Wordpress is a great tool for a small website requiring regular editing. While using the loop i wanted to find a way to exclude the current pages url from a list of links. There is no point in a page linking to itself!
By using the the post__not_in function its easy to do.
<?php query_posts(array('showposts'=> 6,'post__not_in' => array($post->ID)));
while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile;?>
Did it work? Any problems? Post a comment below.
After finding the Coda Bubble article i was keen to implement it on my site. Its a really cool effect that can add a lot to the web page with limited room to add in all the desired content. Its also a really attractive bit of candy that gives that little extra wow factor.
There are a few problems to the solution however:
I thought that it would be a shame to waste the original authors time and my own after taking a few hours to get it working. Is there a solution to get round these three problems?
Yes there certainly is: Very simple just use a gif image with transparency. View the demo.
While this solution isnt ideal* it works in all browsers, and the code is so much cleaner. To make the method accessible either add an “alt” or “longdesc” tag with a description of what’s in your pop up box.
*You are of course limited to colours with gif images but in most cases its generally text thats going to go in the pop up box anyway.
Did it work for you? Leave a comment…
Recently we developed a site in Wordpress that went well. Just before the intended launch the client asked for a shopping facility to be added in to the site. Off course Wordpress doesn’t have any built in e-commerce facility. The choice was either to make a sub section of the site using any one of a number of independent e-commerce systems or to find some kind of add on that we could build into the already deployed Wordpress system.
We only looking to sell 2/3 products at one time so we didnt need the power or functionality of a full e-commerce system. A plugin we thought should be sufficient for our needs.
After many hours of searching and reading reviews it came down to two choices. Wp-Commerce or Shopp.
It seemed that lot of the reviews found bugs in Wp Commerce and we found no different. While it claims to be a cutting edge e-commerce system, it seemed to have some glaring glitches with the inventory and site structure. It seemed to be a system that needs more development time, but certainly has potential. Just not for us.
Paying $55 for the standard install of Shopp we were quite hopeful this would work. It installed ok with no problems. In Wordpress its controlled by its own section within the admin section. After looking through all the options we were a little stumped where the prices for the products were set up. After a few G searches it was no surprise that they were supposed to be in the product section. Since the admin is powered by some well thought Javascript and Ajax we thought there must be a conflict with a plugin. (Probably the biggest and most found error when it comes to functionality of Wordpress or any other Website coding platform.)
Going through the tedious procedure of uninstalling one plugin at a time then testing the cart options we found it. Wp Lightform Since the validation of that form is controlled by only Javascript it isnt the best of contact forms to use anyway. Spam can get through it quite easily!
To accept payments online, the easiest is Paypal Express. This method sends customers to the Paypal site to make payment either through their own Paypal account or through a credit card. The customer is then returned to your own site to confirm transaction. After inserting the details for Paypal API for the their Express shopping facility it was time to test the site out.
For some reason we were getting page not founds on the products. There seemed to be a problem with the permalink structure of the products. After searching through the Shopp Forum it was suggested that we resave the cart page. That worked and seemed to reset the permalink structure to what it was meant to be.
Styling and setting up the layout is controlled by an over riding template system. It seemed to work well enough. Since we only had two products we simply set up featured products on the default shopping page. There were numerous options that could display categories and other options but we didn’t explore those areas.
There are options in the system that include taxes and delivery but we also didnt have the need to explore full functionality. It would be in these areas that the site could fail, as that’s where really complex coding is required to satisfy the functionality required. If it worked like the rest of the plugin however it should all work as its meant.
After thoroughly testing the cart in numerous browsers and platforms the shopping cart system was ready to use.
Quick Summary:
If you are looking for light e-commerce system that can take payments through the web using Paypal then give Shopp a try. There are enough options to sell successfully online just don’t expect it to have the full customisation options of a stand alone shopping cart such as Zen Cart, Magento or Cube Cart.
4/5 losing a point due to the small problems we had with other plugins ( not Shopp’s fault) and the small problem with wrongly pointed links
A quick post today with 3 bugs and the solutions iv found to fix them.
1.) I wanted to get rid of the border on the input fields within a form. You would naturally try input: border:none; However and strangely that didnt work.
The Fix:
input: border-width:0;
2.) IE7 and below were showing the scrollbar within a textarea even with the textarea having a absolute height
The Fix:
overflow:auto;
3.) The strangest one of the 3. I wanted to get rid of the default text in a submit button. ( There has to be text for accessibility). I tried text-indent:-9999px which worked perfectly in Safari and Firefox.
The Fix:
text-indent:-9999px; color: transparent; text-transform: capitalize;
I hope that helps anyone coming across any of these bugs in Internet Explorer. Did it work? Leave a comment.
After updating to Wordress 2.7.1, on one of our sites i couldnt seem to log in. The page seemed to refresh and not do anything. Here are three things to try to solve the problem.
Hopefully that will help a few people out. Did it work? Leave a comment!
Google’s email service also known as gmail has now been down for over an hour. Its 11:49 UK time here. Here is a quick review of whats good and bad about it.
Good:
Bad
12:13p: You can get your gmails through your mobile such as iPhone. It seems only the web interface is down for now.
What do you love about gmail? Is it worth it even with todays downtime?
Here we are in the year 2008 and some design agencies seemingly don’t know the answer to the question!
http://shouldiusetablesforlayout.com/
Benefits of CSS::
Cowboy builders use tables for building websites.
Quick post today but may help save someone a bit of time debugging and back tracking with code.
When using a combination of Sifr ( replacing fonts with a Flash and Javascript combination ) and jQuery ( Javascript codebase which can be built upon for numerous web coding uses ) there was a problem. The code animations and display worked fine but Internet Explorer was throwing up an error. Firefox and other browser were fine. All very easily sorted by simply linking to the Sifr code, after linking to the jQuery code.
The best web browser in the world is about to get even better. Help Mozilla break the record