Galen Grover – Connecticut Web DeveloperSometimes I write things

I’m developing a new site that has a navigation that is built dynamically via wordpress’ wp_list_pages function

<?php  wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&exclude=6'); ?>

Navigation items that have submenus (css dropdowns) are still clickable, but for this website they have no content. I wanted a way to make those items unclickable. I was unable to find any way with wordpress’ api, but I did find a way with jquery.

$('#navigation_ul > li > a').filter(function() { return $(this).siblings().length == 1 }).attr( 'href', '#' ).attr( 'onClick', 'return false' );

This sets the href to ‘#’, and onClick to ‘return false’ of all navigation links that have submenus

In your settings file add

PREPEND_WWW = True

Then run syncdb

python manage.py syncdb

Click here to skip the story and straight to the code

Today while working on the new SVO i ran into an issue with the coding of breadcrumbs. I wanted to pull the breadcrumb code out of each page template and put it into the header template.

This is what i had originally in each template:

<p id="breadcrumbs">
    <a href="/">Home</a><span class="bc_sep">></span>
    <a href="{% url videos %}">Videos</a><span class="bc_sep">></span>
    <a href="{% url company video.company.id video.company.name|slugify %}">{{ video.company.name }}</a><span class="bc_sep">></span>
    <strong>{{ video.name }}</strong>
</p>

This quickly became annoying, repeating this code in every pag’es template. I decided to create a list of dictionaries inside each view to represent the breadcrumbs:

breadcrumbs = []
breadcrumbs.append( { 'home':reverse( 'home' ) } )
breadcrumbs.append( { 'skaters':reverse( 'skaters' ) } )
breadcrumbs.append( { index:'' } )
return render_to_response('index.html', {...'breadcrumbs':breadcrumbs})

Then in my template i loop the list and extract the dictionary:

<p id="breadcrumbs">
{% for breadcrumb in breadcrumbs %} #this loops the list
	{% for text, link in breadcrumb.items %} #this extracts the dictionary inside each list
		{% if link %}
			<a href="{{ link }}">{{ text|capfirst }}</a><span class="bc_sep">></span>
		{% else %}
			<strong>{{ text|capfirst }}</strong>
		{% endif %}
	{% endfor %}
{% endfor %}
</p>

The for loop seems like an “ugly” way to access the inner dictionary but i was unable to find a better method.

While building a photo gallery for a client I ran into an issue where the photos took too long to load and clicking thumbnails before all the photos loaded resulted in ugly transitions.

My solution was to put a semi-transparent “shield” (containing a loading animation) over the gallery. The user will be able to see the images loading, but will be unable to click anything until all images are loaded and the shield is hidden. Here’s the finished product.

Explanation follows the code.

Here’s the html. This goes inside the div that contains your gallery.

<div id="gallery_loader"> <!-- wrapper for shield -->
    <div></div> <!-- this is the actual shield -->
    <img src="animated_loader.gif"><!-- image preloader -->
</div>

…and the CSS:

#gallery_loader {
    position:absolute; /* Position the wrapper at the top left corner */
    top:0;
    left: 0;
    width:100%; /* cover the entire width of your gallery */
    height:100%; /* cover the entire height of your gallery */
    overflow:hidden; /* hide anything that might overflow */
    z-index:999; /* make sure the shield is on top over everything */
}
#gallery_loader div { /* the actual shield */
    position:absolute; /* Position the shield at the top left corner of the wrapper */
    top:0;
    left:0;
    width:100%; /* Take up the entire wrapper */
    height:100%; /* Take up the entire wrapper */
    background: #fff;
    opacity: .8; /* .8 = 80% opacity for all non-ie browsers*/
    -ms-filter:"progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=80)"; /* This and the next style are for IE */
    filter: alpha(opacity=80);
}
#gallery_loader img {
    position:relative;
    display:block; /* Need this so we can center the image */
    margin: 150px auto 0 auto; /* Set this to whatever looks good */
    padding: 30px; /* Adjust to your needs */
    background: #fff;
    border: 1px solid #333;
    -moz-border-radius:5px; /* Round corners in mozilla browsers */
    -webkit-border-radius: 5px; /* Round corners for webkit browsers */
}

Put this inside an included javascript file. This will wait until the page is loaded entirely (images and all) and then fade the loader out. Requires jquery.

$(window).bind("load", function() {
	$('#gallery_loader').fadeOut();
});

#gallery_loader is positioned absolutely and placed on top of everything else (z-index:999). It’s set to take up the entire width/height of its parent. Next comes the shield that will actually do the “blocking” of everything in the gallery. The shield is opacited and set to take up the entire width/height of the wrapper. Finally the animated loading image is loaded and centered.

As you can tell from the HTML, the actual shield is not the container of the loading animation gif. This is because the children of transparent elements can’t be more opaque than their parents. In other words if we put the loading image inside the transparent “shield” (which has an opacity of 80%) it would have a max opacity of 80%. To fix this we put the “shield” underneath the loading image and opacitate it. Here’s a good page on opacity.

Note: If you’re having issues where the loading gif isn’t loading immediately add this right after the opening of your body element

<body>
<img src="animated_loader.gif" style="display:none">
...

This will cause the loading gif to load first.

Here is where i obtained my loading gif

1. In the admin menu navigate to CMS -> Manage pages.
2. Click Home page to edit it.
3. Enter this code substituting The category id of the category you want to show for CATEGORY_ID

{{block type="catalog/product_list" category_id="CATEGORY_ID" template="catalog/product/list.phtml"}}

To get the category id go to Catalog -> Manage Categories and click the category you wish to add to your homepage. The category id will be in parenthesis at the top (ID: XX)

When styling a button using the sliding doors technique i found that firefox shifted the span down 1px, thus foiling the entire idea of sliding doors.

To fix it use this:

button::-moz-focus-inner { border: none;}

Today while setting up an ssl certificate i obtained for my new installation of activecollab i ran into this error:

VirtualHost *:80 -- mixing * ports and non-* ports with a NameVirtualHost address is not supported, proceeding with undefined results

To fix this add this to the beginning of your virtual host

NameVirtualHost *:443

Also change

<VirtualHost *>

to

<VirtualHost *:443>

Then restart apache

This tutorial is aimed at developers who just want wordpress to function as a lightweight CMS, that is wordpress will only be used for editing page content.

First install wordpress in whatever directory you want the admin to live. I chose /admin.

Any page that needs to use wordpress functionality you must add this:

require('/path/to/wp-blog-header.php');

This gives you access to wordpress functions that we need:

• get_page – Get the page data from the database
• wpautop – Automatically add paragraph tags to page content

To get page content:

$page_data = get_page( 4 ); // Where 4 is the page ID in wordpress

There is a bug in certain versions of php, if you get the error:

Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference…

Then use this format instead:

$page_id = 4;
$page_data = get_page( $page_id );

$page_data now contains all of the info for that page, and is ready for use in your templates/views. Check the function reference to see the data you have available to you.

To display post_content use the wp function wpautop.

<?= wpautop($page_data->post_content) ?>

It’s simple!

I recently bought a Mac Mini in hopes of learning to develop for the iphone. I decided to do all my web development work on my new mac for a while, to try and get used to the new OS. On my PC i use notepad++. It has everything I need: built-in ftp, tabbed files, save all open documents, search/replace in all open documents…and it’s free!!! Fine, I can do without built-in ftp, but even after removing that from my required list I still can’t find a decent Mac text editor.

Here’s my rundown:

Coda ($99)

• No save all open documents
• No search/replace in all documents

Textmate ($60)

• no tabs?
• no tabs? really? No I’m not starting a project!

SubEthaEdit ($43)

• No search/replace in all documents
• No save all open documents

BBEdit ($125)

• Drawer is annoying, tabs are much better
• No save all open documents
• No search/replace in all documents

I miss notepad++.

Here is a way to return results from a table in a custom order

select id from products where id in (4,5,6,7,8,9) order by field(id,4,7,6,5,9,8)