AHAH! It's jQuery!

This was going to be a post about my first stab at AJAX. But, as technically it's AHAH, I thought I'd use the lame title above...

This snippet uses jQuery - an excellent little piece of Javascript that makes this sort of trickery relatively simple.

Firstly, have a look at the basic syntax here: jquery.com/docs/ajax

A couple of things that I stumbled on:

1. Content loaded via the .load call doesn't have any event handlers attached, so in the Callback function you need to use .find() to look for any elements you want to assign events to.


2. Getting the ID of the element clicked ended up being pretty simple: this.id


3. Getting the value of a form field involves a simple walk around the DOM - as the form isn't actually "Submitted" - use document.GetElementById("fieldID").value

Then you should end up with something more-or-less like this:

Don't Be Content Without Content

Excellent post over at Blue Flavour bringing attention to the amount of time we spend on content for websites we're developing.

We've all had trouble getting content from clients, but really, what are we doing to help them prepare it? Do we just say, "It's your problem, sort it out" or do we direct clients to good resources to help them get it together?

Some excellent comments on this post too, including a reference to providing clients with a content brief.

Food for thought...

Password Issues with PHP4 and MySQL

I have struck this a couple of times now so thought I'd put a reference here, if not for anyone else then at least for me!

Recent versions of MySQL 4 use passwords that are not compatible with PHP4. If you have received an error like this, you'll know what I'm talking about...

Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

To fix it, log into MySQL via the command line and use OLD_PASSWORD to change it so that's it's compatible.

• Creating a new user via the command line


• Changing the password so it's compatible with PHP4

How to Write a Blog Post that Gets Lots of Links

White something like this!

But seriously, the tips on headline writing in this article are red hot. Like any good advice, it makes perfect sense after you have read it. It just takes someone to actually point it out!

Now I just need to come up with a good subject for a "How To" article...

A New Basecamp Clone

Just stumbled across this courtesy of one of Sitepoint's newsletters - a Basecamp clone called activeCollab is being developed.

Still in alpha, but at least it's open source and downloadable. For many, that's a far more attractive proposition than paying for Basecamp on a monthly basis.

And if it's anything like Basecamp it's really simple to use.

Might have to check this one out...

Some Priorities Have Changed

Been a couple of weeks since I posted here.

1. Went on holdays to Perisher! Fortunately, I did not break any bones!


2. Jamie (our programmer) packed his bags and moved to Brisbane. I knew that was coming - but was hoping it would be later rather than sooner.

So after being away for a bit over a week and then coming back to be a man down, things have been somewhat busy. And given the serious skills shortage we have here at the moment, it will probably stay that way for the short term at least.

So basically - my plans to work on NetOffice have to be shelved for the time being. Once things settle down I may be able to pick this up again, but I expect that will take some time.

Thanks to all who have commented and offered assistance, and especially to Kemie who emailed me a couple of designs. I hope to get back to this one day, but in the meantime it might be best if you check out the Dwins version which seems to be fairly active.

Things Are Getting Serious

Things must be getting serious - I have just set up a forum! :)

And you thought this was going to be a serious post...

It's at http://forum.rockyshark.com - empty at the moment but if you want to have any say on the direction of "NetOffice Light" then post away. Not totally sold on than name yet mind you, but Kemie has been good enough to start working on the new look, and that's the name used thus far.

[Edit 8 July: Forum has been taken offline for the time being...]