ashley_90

Hi all, Recently I've been designing the interface for a mobile app, and due to it being the first mobile app I've designed for, I found myself wondering what the best way to approach it would be. I started off by downloading the iPhone GUI Kit from Teehan+Lax (http://www.teehanlax.com/downloads/ios-5-gui-psd-iphone-4s/) which proved very useful when getting started, and I pretty much build a template to work with based on this. What I started contemplating, was whether designing an interface based on the iPhone 4, would work well for other devices (Android, Blackberry etc) with different screen resolutions, and also whether it was worth designing a separate view for the landscape iPhone 4. Another confusion - if I design for the iPhone 4's screen resolution in Photoshop, what happens to the quality of my graphic images on a higher resolution device? So, I'd be really interested to hear about your experiences designing mobile interfaces, and how you handle designing an interface for a device which could come in a variety of resolutions...

That's the thing, it's creating that separation between work and life. I had this exact problem, and it was driving me crazy...something about 'dressing' for work helps that in some ways.

I can see where you're coming from - I'm the same to be honest. I think it has something to do with confidence, because when I'm dressed confidently I feel much more confident when planning/designing/developing. This may seem a bit farfetched but the idea of dressing up gives you the sense of preparing for the day ahead, whereas if I chose to work in my boxers everyday you'd probably find me back in bed after a couple of hours.

Hi all, Fairly straight-forward question really. I've outsourced a lot of work to Web Developers recently and it's always gone through my mind "what if I had a disagreement and things got out of hand"? I'm wondering whether there is any advise or good practice when giving freelance Web developers access to your site's FTP and/or Wordpress login details? At the moment I simply create an account for them, and specify the directory for that FTP account, which I assume restricts that FTP user to accessing that folder only? I obviously backup the site before handing it over too, but I just wondered whether this prevents them from attacking my site should there be an argument? Cheers, Ash

[RESOLVED - I was a conflict issue with Wordpress, thanks anyway!] Hi everyone, I have a little problem with my portfolio site at the moment. Since yesterday all of my JQuery scripts seem to have broken. I have quite a few different scripts on my site (which is powered by Wordpress) and I know that Wordpress is known to have some issues with Jquery, but it was working fine yesterday. I made quite a few changes and I suspect that it is something I have changed in one of the scripts. The url is ashleymosuro[dot][com] Any help would be greatly appreciated as I've run out of ideas now... Thanks, Ash

Hi guys, I'm about to take on quite a big project for a client who requires all sorts of Web-related work, but within this he needs an interactive map. The map Basically he is going to obtain the floor plans of a large campus and get a freelancer to design a huge map based on the floor plans. Once I eventually get my hands on the digital version of the map, which will probably come in the form of a PSD/AI or even a jpeg, I will need to incorporate it onto the Web site. The functionality In terms of interactivity, the user needs to be able to zoom in and out of the map. There is no other extra functionality apart from that, so I'm hoping that this is quite straight-forward. However, I will also be building a search engine for the client in which users will be able to search for certain keywords. The search results displayed will be links to different hotspots on the map, which I'm guessing I would create an image map for? The problem Databases and back-end code is not really what I do, however, I have done a lot of back-end coding and like to take on a challenge, as I'm sure I will eventually be able to achieve what I intend. So where I'm stuck is just how exactly I will approach this interactive map. It seems that building the map and its interactivity shouldn't be too difficult, but I'm not entirely sure how I can build it in a way for each of these hotspots to be found using a search-engine. I assume that in the database I will obviously have all of my possible keywords (so the different room numbers/names) and then in each keyword's row there will be a field with a url to the page displaying the map with the relevant hotspot displaying. The question is how I tell it to display specific hotspots depending on the URL, and not just display ALL of the hotspots. An example may make things easier to understand: - User searches utilities room - In the database the search engine searches for keywords matching 'utilities' - In the same row as the keyword 'utilities' there is a URL - So when presented with the search results, the user is shown this URL - User clicks URL and is taken to the page displaying the interactive map - On the interactive map there is one hotspot showing them where the utilities room is The other challenge is making this whole idea usable on the mobile Web, as this is a very important feature. But some advice would be great, as I've not really dived into this area before.. Cheers, Ash

Indeed you were right rallport, adding a few more rows seemed to work perfectly. Thank you again.

Thank you very much for this rallport, I will give it a go tonight when I get back from work. Nice one!

At the moment, only the one row as I'm just testing this right now.

Still no luck, tried changing to ashley but no results...

Yep, as you can see in the screenshot attached

Hi everyone, Seem to be having a problem getting this simple search engine to work correctly, because everytime I search for 'ash' it does not find any results, despite the fact that I have created a 'firstname' field of 'ash'. Here's the code, to make things easier to understand: HTML <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso- 8859-1" /> <title>MySQL-based Search Engine</title> <link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" /> </head> <body> <h1>Search Engine</h1> <div class="maincontainer"> <form method="get" action="processform.php"> <input type="text" name="searchterm" title="Enter your search term here" value="Enter your search term here" class="searchbox" /> <input type="submit" name="search" title="Search Now! "value="Search" class="searchbutton" /> </form> </div> </body> </html> PHP file (mysql.php) <?php // define 'MySQL' class class MySQL{ private $conId; private $host; private $user; private $password; private $database; private $result; const OPTIONS=4; public function __construct($options=array()){ if(count($options)!=self::OPTIONS){ throw new Exception('Invalid number of connection parameters'); } foreach($options as $parameter=>$value){ if(!$value){ throw new Exception('Invalid parameter '.$parameter); } $this->{$parameter}=$value; } $this->connectDB(); } // connect to MySQL private function connectDB(){ if(!$this->conId=mysql_connect($this->host,$this->user,$this->password)){ throw new Exception('Error connecting to the server'); } if(!mysql_select_db($this->database,$this->conId)){ throw new Exception('Error selecting database'); } } // run query public function query($query){ if(!$this->result=mysql_query($query,$this->conId)){ throw new Exception('Error performing query ['.$query.'] Error:['.mysql_error().']'); } return new Result($this,$this->result); } public function escapeString($value){ return mysql_escape_string($value); } } // define 'Result' class class Result { private $mysql; private $result; public function __construct(&$mysql,$result){ $this->mysql=&$mysql; $this->result=$result; } // fetch row public function fetchRow(){ return mysql_fetch_assoc($this->result); } // count rows public function countRows(){ if(!$rows=mysql_num_rows($this->result)){ return false; } return $rows; } // count affected rows public function countAffectedRows(){ if(!$rows=mysql_affected_rows($this->mysql->conId)){ throw new Exception('Error counting affected rows'); } return $rows; } // get ID form last-inserted row public function getInsertID(){ if(!$id=mysql_insert_id($this->mysql->conId)){ throw new Exception('Error getting ID'); } return $id; } // seek row public function seekRow($row=0){ if(!is_int($row)||$row<0){ throw new Exception('Invalid result set offset'); } if(!mysql_data_seek($this->result,$row)){ throw new Exception('Error seeking data'); } } } ?> PHP File (processform.php) <?php // include MySQL-processing classes require_once 'mysql.php'; try{ // connect to MySQL $db=new MySQL(array ('host'=>'localhost','user'=>'xxx','password'=>'xxx','database'=>'xxx')); $searchterm=$db->escapeString($_GET['searchterm']); $result=$db->query("SELECT firstname, lastname, comments FROM test WHERE MATCH (firstname, lastname, comments) AGAINST ('$searchterm')"); if(!$result->countRows()){ echo '<div class="maincontainer"><h2>No results were found. Go back and try a new search.</h2></div>'."n"; } else{ // display search results echo '<div class="maincontainer"><h2>Your search criteria returned '.$result->countRows().' results.</h2>'."n"; while($row=$result->fetchRow()){ echo '<div class="rowcontainer"><p><strong>First Name: </strong>'.$row['firstname'].'<p><p><strong>Last Name: </strong>'.$row['lastname'].'</p><p><strong>Comments: </strong>'.$row['comments'].'</p></div>'."n"; } } echo '</div>'; } catch(Exception $e){ echo $e->getMessage(); exit(); } ?> Anyone know why this isn't working? Thanks :-)

Thank you for your comments Zed, very useful. I've adjusted the Five thumbnail too, as I can see how that could confuse some people.

That must be why my site is slow, it all makes sense now!

Hi everyone, Just a simple question really, I have noticed that my site seems to take a very long time to load. I'm not entirely sure what could be the cause, so if anyone has any ideas it would be greatly appreciated. The web site: www. [ashleymosuro] .com Thanks, Ash

Yes its definitely loading too slowly, but it could probably be a number of things since I am using Wordpress. I think it will have something to do with one of the plugins or possibly one of my scripts. I'll post in a more relevant forum section. Having the fixed sidebar menu fill the screen vertically might work better, I will try it out and see. I can't see it being the menu that's causing the slow loading though, its just an un-ordered list! Nothing fancy! Thanks

I agree the photo was quite a lazy effort and I've actually just taken it down until I find time to take a more professional one. I've also noticed that the site seems to load quite slowly, does anyone know why this might be?

Thanks Pendulum and cepa, I was never too sure about the typeface, and its something I might look at changing, but I will ask a few more people what their initial impressions are. Thanks for the comment regarding the slideshow, I think you're absolutely right actually, when you first visit the site I don't think its very clear exactly what I do, unless users read through the site (which we all know doesn't happen, they scan). I'll be making some changes over the weekend, anymore feedback would be great.

Hi all, I've recently put my new portfolio site live and would like some feedback you guys within the Industry. The site was built using Wordpress and I still plan on ironing out some small issues, but I think this is a good time to get some initial feedback. I've read other Web site reviews on here and you all seem like fairly honest people so feel free to tell me what you think about my Portfolio site, more in particular whether it succeeds in terms of usability. View Web site Looking forward to your replies! Thanks, Ash

Ok, but what if I don' actually want them to donate? My worry is that it would cause confusion if I ask them to donate, whereas what they are doing is purchasing a service. Its very important that the amount is not defined until they do so.

Guys, Just a quick one… Is it possible to create a Paypal buy now button without a specified amount? Therefore allowing the user to input what ever price they want? Thanks, Ashley

Thank you so much This is exactly what I was looking for.

Any help with this?

Still haven't managed to figure this one out, can anybody help?

So the only way I can do this is setting each list item its own variable? But what if this list has 40+ list-items, I would have to set 40+ variables for each one? I was hoping that there was a way I give the list-items that I want to grab a class, which automatically puts them into the second html page. Saying that, I'm not completely up to scratch with the backend side of the Web so there might not be an easier way. I think my idea would be possible if the content needed to be placed in the same html file, but because it needs to be grabbed and placed in a different html, its a bit more complicated. Apologies for the double post