As a student in an XML class I am learning a lot of things that the language can do. Something I thought was very interesting and easy to learn is using XSLT to transform an existing XML document into either another XML document, text file, or an html file.

I made a little screen cast to show how its done. There is no audio in this video. It is preferred you view the video in full screen (to see all the text and such).

Just as well, I added a “gallery” of the title screens just in case they went to fast for you, or you just wanted to review them.

View Title Screen Gallery

I have also linked the twitterTransform.xslt file for a reference. I did not add my RSS feed as you should be able to access your own very easily. I also did not link the output file as you will be generating your own with the transformation.

twitterTransform.xslt

In this tutorial I use:

XMLSpy (https://shop.altova.com/category.asp?category_name=XMLSPY)

You can use the trial and purchase if you like it as much as I do.

I went through my vast iTunes library (~4000 songs) and picked 28 of the most stunning album covers to spark your inspiration.

Clean / Simple

Angels & Airwaves – We Don’t Need to Whisper

Avenged Sevenfold – Avenged Sevenfold

The Blaqk Year – After the Storm

Coheed and Cambria – Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. 1: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness

Family Force 5 – Dance or Die(EP)

Good Charlotte – The Chronicles of Life and Death

Hawthorne Heights – Fragile Future

H.I.M. – Dark Light

Meriwether – Meriwether

Papa Roach – The Paramour Sessions

Grunge

Bullet for My Valentine – Scream Aim Fire

Demon Hunter – Storm the Gates of Hell

Evanescence – The Open Door

Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown

Meese – Next in Line

Mendeed – This War Will Last Forever

My Chemical Romance – The Black Parade

Rage Against the Machine – The Battle of Los Angeles

Artistic

3OH!3 – Want

Aiden – Conviction

Blink-182 – Blink-182

Dot Dot Curve – Till the Wheels Fall Off

Eminem – Relapse

Fort Minor – The Rising Tied

Incubus – Make Yourself

Plus 44 – When Your Heart Stops Beating

Single File – Common Struggles

Take the Crown – Relapse React

Introduction

In this tutorial you will learn how to make a basic email form using xhtml, css and php. In this tutorial we will be making a small contact form where the user will fill out a form and using php will email it to your inbox. We will look in to error processing for eliminating some spam in this tutorial as well.

End results:

- Try it -

Step 1 – Basic HTML template

First lets create the basic template for the form to be placed in. This, of course will not be the template you will use, as you will probably implement this into your own design and site. This is the beginning of the template, it contains all the dividing inlays and correct tags to start out the template.

We will need to declare the doctype and create all the necessary header information such as the content-type and title. We also link the style sheet in this section.

In the body section I have placed a number of div tags that will hold the content we will place inside them, using css later we can do some formatting.

Next lets make the the form with all the inputs and labels for the user to fill out that will ultimately be emailed to you when finished.

To correctly flow with the template we have just made place the create the form inside the “container” div.

Final index.html file

Step 2 – Styling the index

For the sake of the tutorial I chose to add a little style to the page. Although the css is very generic, it is not required to use on your own form. It is simply used to give the tutorial a little flair.

To use the two images in the tutorial download them here:

Graphics

Background Image

Container Box

Final style.css file

Step 3 – Declaring Variables

Now that we have the html template and the page styled using css and the graphics. We need to start building the actual php script that will email you when filled out.

First thing I like to do is declare all my variables at the top of the script for easy reference later on.

These variables are pulled from the form in the index.html file. I placed them in variable names that would be easy to remember. Name, Email, Message, and the Subject is a static variable and you set it as you please. It can easily be pulled from an input if added on the form.

Step 4 – Error processing

For the sake of sorting out the false emails at the application level, this step should never be overlooked. As this is a basic tutorial, You only learn how to check if the fields are empty. If I get enough demand I will write more on error handling.

We need to check if there is any value to each field (name, email and message) and have the form die if the fields are empty.

The die() function will stop the form from executing any further. So it will display the first error it catches. If you place an email, but not a name, the name name error will display and stop the script from executing.

If all the fields have input, then we need it to show a message to give the user a peace of mind that their message has been received.

Step 5 – Email formatting

Now that we have all the data we will need to send a message, we need to format the email in a way that is easy to read for you.

Setting up the time stamp. Fairly simple format.

Month text (July) Day, Full Year(2009) Hour:Minutes am/pm.

This block makes up the body section of the email.

This will display the time stamp we just made first. The “\n” is a line break in the text. So the next variable is on its own line. Then it will display the name and email followed by the subject and message.

We need a from line, so you know who the sender is before you open the email.

Step 6 – Email the form.

The script is now ready to email the content to the email you choose.

You’ll need to place your email in the place of “your-email@doamin.org”. You can add more than just your email address if you are needing to send it to several people or departments. You can add a comma and add more email addresses in that section.

End the script and you are ready to upload and test the script.

Final email.php file

Conclusion

Final EmailForm.zip

You should now have a working email form that will email you if all the fields have been filled out. You can do much more with this application, such as check if the email is a real email address, check for words or links you dont want inside the message, the options are endless. I hope this tutorial has helped you out, and you may have learned something new and useful today.

Hello there!

It’s been a long time coming, but we have finally accomplished the redesign. After six months of designing and coding the site. We have finally produced what we set out to do.

This is the fourth major redesign of Division Overlay since we launched in December 2007. Creating the User Interface was something of a challenge for the first few mockups. We went through dozens of potential candidates for the design, all of them ultimately were rejected in favor of this one. After we had finished the grueling hours of tedious designing and tweaking, we had a tremendous problem. The PSD document with our design became corrupted. Luckily we had saved PNG formatted images of each page on the PSD, so all we had to do was back track and trace our work. From that speed bump, we were able to race toward our mark at full speed, continuing on from slicing the images, to coding the template. On to programing the PHP and jQuery to finishing up with this wordpress theme.

Now on to more business

Along with the redesign launch, we also have a slew of new things for you to download and have fun with.

Including:

• Blue Quartz 3 template
• LaunchFuture template
• Quote Machine
• Kings Crown Set
• and much more..

We will also be writing more posts ranging from full in depth how-to tutorials to updates on what Division Overlay is up to.

After all the work we have put in, it would be nice to leave a comment no how you think the new site looks.

In this tutorial, I will go through the way to make a randomly picked quote generator work on a modular level. This is so it can be added to and updated, ported and reused without having to copy a bunch of files.

This technique is a pretty easy one. Let’s start off by making the “quote.php” file.

This will cycle through 5 quotes that we will input in a minute. If you choose to add more cases, then you will need to change the “4” to the last case number you added. This is so it will cycle through all the quotes, not just the first 5.

Now we need to add the cases.

That is it for the “quote.php” file.

Full script

Now we will make a little page that it will go on. Nothing fancy, you can jazz it up as you see fit. Start off with the doctype, and all the required code to make the page valid.

Now let’s give the page some basic styles, fonts, colors, etc.

Now we can make a little box where the quotes from the “quote.php” file will be inputted in to the main file.

The Full main.php file is as followed.

This is how you would make a simple and nice little quote generator, to go on any site that supports php.

Try the demo.

Any questions, comments or concerns please do not hesitate to leave a note below. Thanks for your time.

Introduction

First off, what is Microsoft surface? Surface is a new and forthcoming desktop computer, but it has so much more to offer than the desktop we know and use on a day to day basis. On first glance, it may look like a simple desk or table, but it is actually a computer, with an enormous touch screen for input. There is still more to it, it syncs with devices and items that are placed on the Surface. This opens up so many possibilities, not only for technology to advance, but for web designers to produce sites in a new and exhilarating way.

Design features

From a web designers stand point, Surface is appealing with a large touch screen to design upon. This opens up a whole new aspect to hand drawn design. Imagine, being able to sketch out a logo and add colors or textures with just a tap and stroke of a pen. Along with having the ability to grab and re-arrange certain aspects of the design, using just the touch capability.

From a developers view, Surface can offer many features that can make life easier. Security is a big issue that developers look at. What if, you could have a customer login using their signature? This also presents problems, forgery is possible. What if, you own a business, and you require employees to use a special card to login to their account on the site?

Client interaction can be addressed with Surface as well. A client walks in and you can throw together a rough sketch or render of what they want. Exchange contact information via placing your phones on the surface. Let’s say another meeting with the client; you are presenting a mock up of their new web site. The client says they don’t like a feature on the site; you can grab that part of the page and remove it. This would make a satisfied client to see what they want before final copy comes around.

Let’s talk e-commerce. You have made a site that has a downloadable software package. It requires you to pay for this package. Place your credit card on the Surface and pay for the software easy. This also presents the same security problems as above. Ways to work around this is to have a PIN number for the card per site. It would act as a unique password for that site and your card.

Conclusion

As technology is ever advancing, web design and how we design sites changes too. Though Surface isn’t ready for the main-stream public, the exciting possibility that we may be able to do to design is something to hope for. Progressing how we build the web will shape the web for a brighter and more flexible future. What do you think about Surface, how can you think of using it?

Through the 4 years I have been coding in HTML/XHTML and CSS I have picked up several techniques to make developing faster and more efficient. This post is to give you tips and tricks to develop more websites more efficiently and faster.

The very first and probably most important thing to do is separate the content from presentation. That is, XHTML from CSS. This not only makes the site load faster, it also makes it much easier to update the styles for every page linked to the style sheet, instead of having to through every page to update the same style.

A close second to the separating content and presentation is keeping your file structure organized. Having a directory specified for CSS that will contain all the CSS files you will use and the same for JavaScripts and images as well. This makes it easier to find things when you are looking for a certain file.

Naming IDs and classes with names that identify the content that will be in that element is a very good practice. This will help you when you go back through the code to change something or to modify the style of that element. Setting an images alt tag with a suitable and short, yet to the point message that will allow screen readers tell the user what the image is, and if the image file is improperly linked it will show as a place holder (in certain browsers).

I find a very important tool for long term code, is to use comments for everything. Comment a piece of CSS if it all refers to the entire page, or a certain section of the web site. Comment a portion of XHTML if there are several pieces like it in the document, to guarantee you know which piece you are dealing with.

If you should have an element inside of another element it is best to indent the next row down, such as
<div id=”first_box”>

<ul>This is second

<li>this is the third in the line</li>

</ul>

</div>

This shows the best way to deal with organizing the way things are nested. Open the next nested element tabbed over once, and close it out in the same manner.

In conclusion it is a good idea to make the most of the techniques I have offered. From commenting and naming every section of code, to organizing files and structure. I have found that over the years, this has been a very effective way to operate. Though this may not be the right way for you, I hope you can take from this post and apply it to your practice.

Hello,

I am proud to announce SiteGadget, a project by Division Overlay. SiteGadget was started for the reason of distributing little gadgets or widgets that can be placed on any website. There will be all kinds of gadgets on there, and it will even be open to developers to submit your own for review, and maybe be placed on the site.

At this point in development a lot of things are changing, so i cant give you a real good idea of what it will look like or how it will work, but I can show you the logo (subjective to change)

Also to come soon my business cards, here is a sneek peek of that

Today we are building a “plug-in” mainly for WordPress, but you we will show you how to use it on a regular site as well.

You will need to know a certain degree of how to make a website from scratch. It would be to your best advantage to know PHP, jQuery, CSS and XHTML to fully understand what is actually happening.

Things you will need to complete this plug-in:

The latest version of jQuery

You will need this file block.php (right-click / save-as)

The top graphic that.png

The content background this.png

Adding the scripts

First we must add the jquery script to the page

Now we must add the jquery that will take the elements and hide them, and give the function to show, hide and toggle

Adding the links to show the content

This step is fairly simple, all we need to do is make a simple link, but give it a couple of unique attributes. Let’s also place the links inside a div so it can be easily styled.

We added the id=”" which has the name of the link and the onclick=”" will hide the the div opposite of the one clicked.

Now lets add the block

The block, as i refer to it as, is the content that will be displayed when you click on one of the two links above. By now I hope you have downloaded block.php

Further details on the Block

In the block file, I have it coded to Work on WordPress. This will not work on anything else but wordpress. So to change that, we need to open up the block.php file and edit a few parts.

Inside the div “archiv”

Inside the div “recent”

Change that, which get your recent posts in WordPress, to whatever text/code you want.

Now to style it

Add this either to your stylesheet (.css), or to the local file between the <style> tags.

This will put the two links at the top of the page on top of the black button. And it will create the padding and margins for the rest of your content that you can add.

Wrapping up

So, this will create dynamic content on any site, and is a great little plug-in for WordPress. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comment field below. I hope you enjoyed it.

Hello there! I’m glad to announce the re-launch of the blog section of Division Overlay. After discovering the first theme I made didn’t quite stretch like i wanted it to, I had to go back in the lab and whip up this one.

Features

Features I have implimented into this design:

• Current date and time
• RSS subscribe
• Style switcher
• Pagination

Coming soon

Features I plan on rolling out within the days and weeks to come.

• Dynamic archive
• Dynamic recent posts
• More full tutorials
• More in-depth articles

In conclusion, this theme is done but, i will be adding a lot more to it to make it better. On a side note, the previous theme that was up here will be converted into a free web template. You can expect that in within the week.