This is my first “tutorial”, so bear with me, or even send me comments, if it totally sucks. I was playing around, and needed an inline editor, just for fun, not really because I needed it. I looked for an existing script, but didn’t see any I liked. So I made one with JavaScript/Ajax, PHP, and HTML. The short description of it: show the items in plain HTML text, but when clicked, turn the text into an editable text box, and save changes to it when the user clicks or tabs out of the box (yes, onBlur.) THIS IS NOT A PHP TUTORIAL, it’s focus is on JavaScript/Ajax, I’m trusting the PHP to you! Read the rest of this entry »

OK, cool might be a stretch, but I think it’s cool, and I’m in charge here. Admittedly it’s sorta random, like the lime at the top right of my blog here, but I went ahead and added a lizard to my personal site. I was cruising stock exchange, looking for cliffs for some reason, I forget why now, and I came across this dude. I said “Self, wtf is a lizard doing showing up in my results for ‘cliff’? No matter, that is too cool not to put into play somewhere.” Of course I couldn’t think of a ‘professional’ need for a money-metal blue and orange lizard chilling on the rocks, so he landed on my site.

Here’s how I incorporated him:

• Trimmed out the background in Photoshop
• Gave the image a nice shadow in Photoshop
• Made a new div in the bottom include .php file on my web pages, set the CSS so it was right-aligned, gave it a high z-index so it would be always on top no matter what size the screen/browser is
• Dropped the image into said div
• Hacked around accordingly so it works in FireFox and IE7
• Punted for IE 6 (the image is a .png, and I need it’s transparency); I wrote some javascript to hide the div in this crap-tastic browser -  so IE6 users, you lose! But you probably hate this site already anyway since I use transparent png’s here, too, so you lose twice. Get a better browser!

Here is my final CSS code that worked in FF and IE7:

div#lizard{
position: fixed;
bottom: -20px;
right: 0;
width: 100%;
text-align: right;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
clear: both;
display: none;
z-index: 10;
}
div#lizard img{
position: absolute;
bottom: 0;
right: 0;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
 

The main div for the image has “display: none” and then I switch it to be visible in my javascript browser detection.

OK, hopefully this helps some one with something some time. If not, my server enjoyed the exercise of this post. I was playing around making a php app, and got a heinous error:

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]:
Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent...

The best part, the line of the error was the last line of my script connecting to the db, the line with ‘?>’. WTF, right? It turns out, I had an empty space after my php closing tag. Deleting that fixed the problem. YIKES!

After hours of considering, discussing, and rethinking, I have accepted a new position. My current employer, Veris Consulting, has been great to me, but I got another opportunity that was too good to pass up. I will still be working as a web developer, and at a Microsoft .NET shop, but I will get to focus on a primarily front-end development. The new employer is Tiber Creek Consulting, but I am working on-site with their client (AT&T) for at least a few months. The contract with AT&T will last at least the next 3 months, but will likely get extended based on their upcoming projects.

I am excited about the new opportunity, but will miss the folks at Veris, too, I wish them all the best!

Haven’t posted in a few “minutes”, I’ve just been busy with the daily grind. That project I mentioned is coming to fruition soon, so I’m excited. We’ll be going with a .NET platform (going to use gate.com for the hosting) and the CMS will be DotNetNuke. It’ll be good fun, I’m stoked to get started! I’ll definitely post as I make progress on the project, showing how I go about the entire project, that’ll be great to look back on as I near completion, and also in the future when taking on new projects. I can see what worked well and what needs to be adjusted. Here is the current site that will be redesigned and relaunched, I have high expectations.