Upcoming Grand Haven Ski/Snowboard Event
Element Design is proudly hosting the “Exposed to the Elements Rail Jam” at Mulligans Hollow, in Grand Haven, MI. All proceeds of the event will be donated to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
The event sponsors include: Buffalo Bob’s Skate Shop, Kowalski Granite Center, Skull Candy, Marhar Snowboards, and HR Block.
Single Joomla Page SSL (https)
Joomla offers only several options for SSL usage in the Global Configuration of the site. Under the “System” tab, you can set it to force SSL on all of the site, only the administrator portion, or none of the site. With a SSL certificate installed, I recommend having the administrator portion of the site selected.
In most cases, having the entire site using the SSL certificate is overkill. To force the SSL certificate on a certain page (i.e., a form submission page), go to the Menu Manager and find the menu item of the page you want to force SSL.
When editing the menu item, click “Parameters (System)” on the right, then switch “SSL Enabled” to “On”.
s[0] is undefined with CKEditor & MediaEmbed
While working on a client’s website, I ran into a issue with CKEditor and the plugin MediaEmbed. MediaEmbed is a plugin that allows embed code for videos. You can use this for Youtube, Video, or even your own local video files (as long as you wrap them with a video player, like Longtail).
I was able to successfully install and activate the plugin, and was even able to launch the dialog box to insert the embed code. The error happened once I clicked “Ok” on the dialog, which while running Firebug, gave the error “s[0] is undefined, in ckeditor.js line 119″
The solution to this problem is simple, download and install this version of MediaEmbed instead!
jQuery Performance and Coding Tips
This is a great article that showcases 50 jQuery Snippets to help you program scripts for your website. It covers basic jQuery functionality and methods, all the way to how to fine-tune your code for increasing website performance.
50 jQuery Snippets That Will Help You Become A Better JavaScript Developer
Convert a PNG to ICO (favicon)
A great tool for easily creating high quality favicon’s is ConvertICO.com. All you have to do is create a transparent PNG of your favicon (which is always 16 pixels by 16 pixels), then run it through the ConvertICO tool. Once you have the .ico version of your PNG, upload it to your website.
On your website, add the following code within the head tag:
<link href="/path/to/favicon.ico" rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" />
For the change to take effect, you may need to hard-refresh your browser (Ctrl+F5 on PC’s). This clears the cache, then the new favicon should display!
Note: The “favicon” (or shortcut icon) is a small, 16×16 graphic that displays on the top of all modern browsers.
New Grand Haven Website
Element Design is proud to announce the launch of the Buffalo Bob’s website.
From the “Snow” section of their website:
We carry all major snowboarding brands such as Burton, Union, Oakley, Analog, Special Blend, SkullCandy, Anon, Spy, and much more. With new hardgoods and softgoods arriving constantly, Buffalo Bob’s is committed to carrying all of the latest tech and trends.
Buffalo Bob’s is a skate and snowboard shop located in Grand Haven, MI. This is their first website, and the design goal was to make the user experience simple, but modern feeling. To achieve this, the entire front page of the website operates as one smoothly scrolling screen. To see this in action, visit the website and click “Snow”, “Skate”, or “Contact”. On the homepage, a 3D Flash image slideshow was put into place, which showcases different sections of the store.
The owners can now edit all sections of the website easily, including the image gallery and blog. There has already been a huge surge of traffic to the website, and soon their online presence will multiply with event sponsoring in Grand Haven.
If you are curious on the advantages a website can have for your business, please feel free to contact Element Design, and we’d be happy to provide you with free consultation.
Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 7
When it comes to testing websites in newer versions of Windows, the current solutions are very cumbersome. My previous setup involved launching 2 virtual machines running Windows XP to test in Internet Explorer 6 & 7. This process was slow, memory intensive, and had to be redone semi-annually due to expiring licenses. Another problem with that setup was getting the virtual machines to talk to Apache running on Windows 7, so I was left with uploading sites and testing them on the actual server.
This setup was used up until I discovered Spoon.net. The idea behind this site is to stream applications, in the same way you stream videos on Youtube. All it takes is going to their site, registering for a free account, then installing a browser extension.
They have a listing of all the browsers you would ever need to test your sites. Simply “launch” Internet Explorer 6 or 7 on their site, wait a couple of seconds, then IE6 will launch on your screen, looking and acting like a completely native application.
Update 12/30/11: With Internet Explorer browsers they now have you go through an initial install process. It only takes several minutes and has to be done once. After that, you can stream Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, and 9!
My free account runs IE for only several minutes before shutting down and asking me to upgrade my account. $60 a year to easily run all previous versions of IE is a easy decision to make, as I’m tired of the Windows provided virtual machines expiring every couple months (and the amount of memory they consume, when all I’m trying to do is test sites in Internet Explorer).
They list various other applications and games on the site that you can stream as well. Check it out, I highly recommend it!
Facebook Page Requires Login
If your company’s Facebook page is requiring users to login when viewing it, the issue is with the “Age Restriction” setting. To prevent kids from viewing age inappropriate content in groups, Facebook checks their profile whenever the “Age Restriction” setting is anything other than “Anyone”.
To fix this, go into the “Edit” area of your Facebook page. In there, click “Edit” underneath “Settings”, then look for the “Age Restriction” drop down. Set it to “Anyone”, and press Save!
Update 7/11/11: User “Chris” posted another solution in the comments:
My facebook page was requiring a login as well. The issue with my page was it had a county restriction of “United States” , look just above the age restriction box and see if any countries are listed. If so, remove them and save. You should be good to go!
Browsing Testing: Making sure your website works for everyone
While doing research for a client I ran into a rather large website (Weight Watchers, ranked 3,000th in the world) that does not work with the Google Chrome internet browser. What was surprising was that the website worked with Safari, which has a smaller browser market share than Chrome.
Here is a visual break down of the world’s most popular browsers (as of September 2010)
Element Design performs a full suite of browser tests before releasing a clients website. We make sure your website works with Internet Explorer 7 & 8, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.
BuddyPress Sidebar Links Widget Plugin (v0.92)
While developing a new WordPress site for a client I noticed a need for the ability to easily move around the links bar for BuddyPress. One of the easiest ways to do this was by the creation of a simple widget, that can be moved around to different widget positions in the admin panel.
The current version of this plugin supports the latest version of BuddyPress (1.2.6), and contains the following links:
- Activity
- Profile
- Inbox (#) <– counts unread messages
- Friends
- Groups
- Settings
- Log Out
The widget’s mark-up is a simple list that can be easily modified by your stylesheet.
Installation
- Download the zip archive containing the required files
- Extract the “bp-sidebar” folder from the zip archive
- Upload the “bp-sidebar” folder to your “wp-content/plugins/” folder
- Activate the plugin in the WordPress admin panel
- You will now see “BP Sidebar Links” in the widgets area of the admin panel
Change Log
- Version 0.92
- Added: Login/Sign Up links when user is not logged in
Download
BP Sidebar Links (v0.92) – 1/04/11
