Category Archives: developer/code/apps

How to use AJAX to improve a users’ shopping experience?

Posted on by Dan Milward
Reply

Tim Haines recently started an online blogversation “How to use AJAX to improve a users’ shopping experience?” on his site and it received all sorts of interesting feedback.

Tim used his handyshop cart demo as the base for this conversation. I would like to ask the same quesiton to my friends in the PHP / WordPress community.

Our software WP e-Commerce lite already uses a little AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to pass items into the shopping cart. In the admin section it is used to enhance the purchase logs.

What else would you like to see? Let us know by…

.NET Links
Tim’s Original Post (what got this ball rolling)
http://steve.emxsoftware.com/
http://blogs.geekdojo.net

PHP DPS & WordPay

Posted on by Dan Milward
Reply

DPS for payments – For anyone using (or planning to use) DPS for payments processing, these guys have published the interface I’ve been working on over the past dozen or so Payment Express implementations.

It makes billing cards as simple as:

$dps->chargeCard($name, $number, $exp_month, $exp_year, $amount);

There’s also methods for loading cards with DPS, and recurring billing. Hopefully it’ll be useful to some of you.

WordPay – Integration with WorldPay is similar to PayPal integration, you can use WorldPay callback feature.

Flash Lite

Posted on by Dan Milward
1

Instinct just received this invitation from Adobe’s Flash Lite product team….

“Nokia Asia has asked me to recommend the top 5 FL developers in Aust/NZ and I consider you one of them…”

I’m quite excited about this because it means all the work Instinct has put over the last few years honing their skills, developing fun, unique mobile gaming experiences is paying off and not going unnoticed.

On another note I saw a documentary on the weekend about the old school game Doom, the game that started it all (well second to castle wolfenstein). Although slightly geeky and pale these guys were totally inspiring…

  1. Did you know that ID software don’t do user testing? They state that they are game players and when it is cool enough for them to want to play then its cool enough for their public!
  2. There were more copies of Doom floating around then Microsoft Windows at one stage
  3. Around 10 million were sold
  4. Around 60 million were freely distributed

goodbye squirrelmail hello roundcube #2

Posted on by Dan Milward
Reply

Hot damn, they’ve have done it. RoundCube have introduced search on their webmail tool. When I get back to work on Monday I’m removing SquirrelMail from the servers and installing RoundCube. SquirrelMail had the chance to get with the times but… well the truth is it still looks and feels as though its been made by ancient fully bearded unix geeks that still think slashdot is a cool site. Hello RoundCube!!!

WP Spell Checkers

Posted on by Dan Milward
Reply

Looks Promising…

http://m0n5t3r.info/work/wordpress-plugins/ajax-spell-checker/

http://www.rajprasad.net/plugins/editormonkey/

http://www.lab4games.net/zz85/blog/wordpress-plugins/live-spell-checker/

http://spell.jacuba.com/addit-website.html

http://www.master-technology.com/demos/spell/index.php

http://www.coldforged.org/spelling-checker-plugin-for-wordpress/

Help! (product naming mission)

Posted on by Dan Milward
Reply

I need to name a product we’re developing at Instinct HQ. The product is a shopping cart system designed to facilitate online credit card purchaes etc. It was initially designed for wordpress blogging sites but can be modifed for any website or blogging tool.

You can see our code at work here: www.edenripley.co.nz

I’m thinking of calling it blog shop but I cant make up my mind as to whether or not I like it. What do you guys think :)

Goodbye SquirrelMail, Hello RoundCube

Posted on by Dan Milward
1

While searching for SquirrelMail themes and plugins I stumbled across RoundCube. RoundCube is essentially a nice looking opensource webmail interface full of AJAX goodness. I probably won’t start using it until there is some decent search functionality – because I have thousands of emails sorting and searching is all that really matter. So this is not for me just yet but promising… and probably inevitable. In the meantime I will just put up with SquirrelMail.

iLike my links

Posted on by Dan Milward
Reply

Blinksale – the easiest way to send invocies online! Heck I don’t want to use these guys, I want to copy what they do and make it a WordPress plugin. Hey relax I’m just kidding okay.
37 Signals – These guys make some cool online software. Oline collaboration tools, chat tools, organising tools, etc. I’m just impressed with their resume. Take a look.

http://typetester.maratz.com/

drop down menu’s

Posted on by Dan Milward
Reply

This was written in a rush! Please ignore any obvious gramatical or speeeeling mistakes. For the sake of authenticity I will not edit this post!!!!! (also i’m way to busy man!!!)
I’ve searched far and wide for the best and easiest to use drop down menu solution.

I did not base my search on what may “look” the best but I have based my search on what is the most usable, what is the easiest to maintain and use solution, and whether it is web standards compliant. Of course what does this mean to you… you can save money and force your paid developers to upskill!!!

First Option – Drop-Down Menus, Horizontal Style

If you are commissioning a job then you and your developers should always check out A List Apart first to see if somebody has already done what you want. This is where I found this article. Let me just say. There is a reason that these guys have clients like blogger.com, google, and yahoo. Its because webstandards and quality matter, these guys walk the walk that you like to talk, they are 100% committed to the humans that use websites. And I think that is cool!

This drop down menu is rather snazzy. I like it, the conversation in the user comments is a good read, and their are instrunctions on how to integrate it into your site.
Read Article

Second Option – Son of the sucker fish

These guys have also made an awesome menu. The second paragraph impressed me “Well now they’re back and they’re more accessible, even lighter in weight (just 12 lines of JavaScript), have greater compatibility (they now work in Opera and Safari without a hack in sight) and can have multiple-levels.”

Ask your programmer to look at the suckerfish dropdown solution for you.
Read Article