Ramblings from Dartmoor

Illegal Characters in jQuery

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:23:29 GMT

I was caught out the other day by some jQuery form validation not working on one of CMS sites. The reason, I eventually found out was an illegal character in an element ID.

Firefox Tab Groups

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:04:26 GMT

There have been quite a few releases of the Firefox web browser recently - I'm using version 6 now! - and whilst there haven't been many major innovations for a while, I've just got round to using tab groups.

Syntax highlighting on web pages

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:29:22 GMT

I've recently been looking at various solutions for highlighting code snippets as I wanted something to make it easier to publish on this blog. I've settled on highlight.js as it is so simple.

An interesting take on the World Cup

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:37:39 GMT

I may be in the minority but I have had no interest in the football world cup - even for the pitifully few matches that England played. However, I'm glad that Spain won last night and I'll tell you why

Have you actually attached that file

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 06:46:20 GMT

I guess everybody at some time or another has sent an email saying a file is attached but forgotten to attach the file before sending. If you use Google Mail that may be a thing of the past.

Google releases a font directory

Thu, 20 May 2010 13:59:37 GMT

Google has just released their font API which allows anyone to embed a variety of fonts into a webpage without any licensing issues.

Printing forms from Microsoft Access

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:25:00 GMT

I have many clients who occasionally like to print out a form record from their databases. Obviously they have reports for the information they regularly print out but sometimes its useful to take a 'screengrab' of the current record they are viewing.

Microsoft Access Search and Replace

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:49:47 GMT

Although Microsoft Access has a search and replace feature it only works on data within a form or a table. There is also a Find facility within code modules but what if you are looking for something within a form or query design.

PHP and Ajax with special characters

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:35:20 GMT

Here's a quick tip when using Ajax and PHP to output HTML to a browser. If the code contains special characters such as currency symbols you may get unexpected results.

Winter Wonderland

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:44:47 GMT

I thought I'd put up some images of our part of Dartmoor taken during the recent cold weather.

Sorting text fields in numeric order in MySQL

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:20:05 GMT

Here are several ways of sorting text fields in numerical order in a MySQL query.

Another easy way to resize images

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:24:08 GMT

A while back I published an article on how to use the Send To Mail Recipient feature on a Windows computer to resize a batch of images. This is fine if you have an email client set up on your computer but what if you use webmail?

Death of Snail Mail

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:40:16 GMT

Is the two day Postal Strike that began this morning the nail in the coffin for the Royal Mail?

10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:41:28 GMT

I have just read an article on Smashing Magazine website which was fascinating, especially the one about the use of images with faces.

5 books for the price of 1

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:36:49 GMT

Following their free PDF book giveaway last week, Sitepoint are at it again. This time it is five books for the price of one.

Sitepoint book giveaway

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:46:21 GMT

You can get a copy of 'The Principles of Successful Freelancing' for free until 14th September.

Conditional Formatting in Microsoft Access Reports

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 02:19:19 GMT

Whilst working on a Microsoft Access project recently, I needed to produce a report with certain fields highlighted in different colours depending on their values. I new I could do this with conditional formatting so I ploughed on and started building the

Google Calendar API PHP Class

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 04:26:30 GMT

I recently wanted to update a Google calendar via the API using PHP. There are plenty of samples on the Calendar API site but they all use the Zend framework which I didn't want to use.

Using GROUP CONCAT in MySQL

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:13:58 GMT

Yesterday I had the need to get a list of unique values from a MySQL database where the values were stored as a comma delimited set. There were several ways to approach this but I wanted to try to minimise the amount of processing required.

Wild River Cold Stone

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:21:32 GMT

I went to see a screening of this new Chris Chapman film about Dartmoor last night and it just reminded me how lucky I am to live in this part of the world.

Improvements in web typography

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:04:38 GMT

Up until now, if a web designer wanted to use a certain font on a website they either had to play safe and use something like Times New Roman or use JavaScript and Flash to change the fonts when a page is loaded.

Finding the position of a record in MySQL

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:20:07 GMT

Normally when retrieving records from a MySQL database you loop through the results and perform an operation on each in time. The other day, however, I simply wanted to get the position of a certain record in a set - nothing more.

Dont let Outlook mess up your emails

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 01:07:29 GMT

There is a move going on at the moment to try to get Microsoft to remove the Word rendering engine from Outlook 2010. Whats more the campaign is being mounted using Twitter.

Getting news feeds via email

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:50:02 GMT

Although most blogs and larger websites have rss news feeds it is thought that only 3% of computer users are familiar with how they work.

Restricting API usage on websites

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:17:17 GMT

It seems any web application worth its salt nowadays must have an API that developers can use to create mashups or display content within their web pages.

PHP functions and varying numbers of arguments

Fri, 29 May 2009 05:15:04 GMT

There are times when you want to pass an unknown number of arguments to a function. A simple example might be a function to add a list of numbers.

Ordnance survey maps on your website

Thu, 28 May 2009 10:00:00 GMT

I've recently come across an application from the Ordnance Survey that allows you to embed maps on your website much like the very popular Google Maps.

Dartmoor Showcase Day

Thu, 14 May 2009 01:28:29 GMT

I had a great day out yesterday when I was exhibiting at the Dartmoor Partnership Showcase Day.

Short URLs

Sat, 09 May 2009 02:31:30 GMT

URL shortening services such as tinyURL have been around for some time now. Originally developed to overcome the problem of links wrapping over several lines in email clients they are now more prevalent because of social media applications such as Twitter

Google Static Maps

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:26:32 GMT

Google Maps have been around a long time now and have been integrated into numerous websites and applications but in some cases are overkill.

jquery form validation and IE6

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:03:46 GMT

The validation plugin for jquery is a simple way to add sophisticated validation to any forms on your website. However, I recently had a problem with IE6.

Reading Publisher Files without Publisher

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:33:37 GMT

I was recently sent a file containing a poster design to put on a website that I look after. The only problem was that it was a Microsoft Publisher file and I don't have Publisher on my computer.

Flexible working

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:02:05 GMT

An amendment to the Flexible Working Regulations issued by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform comes into effect today.

Famous at last

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:27:55 GMT

A quote I made after a networking event last year has been picked up and used on the advertising material for this years event.

13 Reasons you should Embrace the Web

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:28:15 GMT

A website design company in Australia has created this simple site to show people (or remind those that know) why the Web adds value to any business.

Geotagging website content

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:45:48 GMT

It seems that nowadays every site must have a map to display content. Whether its a business search facility, a store locator or a list of attractions on a tourist trail users expect to be able to find information using maps.

A decent travel search engine

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:55:00 GMT

You've been there before - select your start point and destination, enter the dates you want to travel on and the results page says sorry there are no flights/ferries on that day.

Google Maps

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:38:26 GMT

Since Google released their Google Maps application and the API to allow developers to add maps on their own sites it seems that nowadays a website isn't complete without an interactive map.

The power of jquery

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:57:10 GMT

With the recent rise in popularity of online applications and the subsequent drive to create rich user interfaces comes a host of powerful javascript libraries.

Uploading images to a website

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:50:56 GMT

If you maintain a website using a content management system then uploading photos to the site is one of the trickier tasks to do.

A global telephone directory

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:09:40 GMT

From 24th March everyone will be able to register a .tel domain. This new top level domain is very different to all the others that are currently used though.

Internet Explorer reserved word problem

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:19:43 GMT

I was working on an update to some software the other day and while it worked fine in Firefox and Opera it kept throwing up a javascript error in Internet Explorer.

Your website and the law

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:14:46 GMT

Besides the obvious one of making sure you own the copyright (or are licensing it) on all content on your website there are several other issues you need to be aware of - even on the smallest website.

A hidden gem in PHP

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:06:05 GMT

One of the most common tasks when developing websites or online applications is date manipulation. You might for example need to create a list of memberships due to expire within the next month.

Screen capture of web pages

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:30:05 GMT

Have you ever needed to take a screen grab of a web page you are viewing? You can press the Print Screen button but if you want to edit anything you have to load it into your image editing software.

Database Conversion

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 07:21:56 GMT

If you find yourself frequently moving data between different types of databases then you can either write a script to do it or you can use one of the many utilities available.

Fantastic Book Offer

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:05:57 GMT

If you want a good deal on books about web design and marketing take a look at the fantastic offer on Sitepoint at the moment. But HURRY its only on until this Friday.

Video screen capture

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:19:18 GMT

If you ever need to record a video tutorial of something on your screen then this great online application is the ideal tool

Resizing Photographs for your website

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:44:58 GMT

Most modern digital cameras nowadays have very high resolutions which means that the photos are larger than most computer screens let alone web pages.

Sorting photos by date taken

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:40:55 GMT

I had a bit of a disaster last night whilst trying to get all my digital photos into a web based gallery and needed a quick bit of code to fix it.

Is your software weatherproof

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:55:55 GMT

As some parts of the country experience the worst winter weather for 20 years can your business cope if no one can get into the office?

A font with holes in

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 01:42:53 GMT

A company in Holland have come up with a new font that they say will save on ink costs by cutting down the printable area on each letter.

The all important follow up email

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:10:18 GMT

This week I returned from a weeks skiing holiday in France and yesterday I got an email from the company I purchased my travel insurance from asking if everything went OK.

Page has expired

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:19:28 GMT

On many websites with search forms, if you do a search and then go to another page to view the results, clicking the back button brings up a 'page has expired' message.

RSS Autodiscovery

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:49:05 GMT

RSS autodiscovery is a technique that makes it possible for browsers and other software to automatically find a site's RSS feed.

Using RSS feeds

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:26:44 GMT

How to get information sent to you rather than having to go out and find it.

Spam filtering in online forms

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:34:35 GMT

I have several enquiry forms on some reasonably high traffic web sites and I have been getting a daily bombardment of rubbish from spambots automatically filling in these forms. One of the forms even has CAPTCHA on it but this isn't very effective.