It’s a project that I’ve been working on for a while and it’s finally starting to show some information that is hopefully of some use for people.
If you head over to StatShare you can see the first of a monthly round up of analytics from August.
The idea of the project is to allow people to anonymously share their web stats to give us a picture of an “average” website.
If you would be so kind then why not share your web stats with the project? Every site added helps to improve the quality of the final stats we collate.

I’ve had a good solid day of coding, probably my first in quite a while. Whilst I was playing round some JQuery I came across a quirk I’ve never noticed before. I call it a quick because it’s certainly not behaviour I’d expect.

When working with some HTML form elements I used the JQuery method val() to set the value of a select box. So as an example here’s a select box and the JQuery to set it.


<select name="DavesSelectBox" id="DavesSelectBox">
<option value="0">Zero</option>
<option value="1">One</option>
</select<


$(DavesSelectBox).val(1);


Now the problem arises when the form is submitted using a normal submit button and post method. I noticed whilst it visually seemed the select box was being set to the value, the posted value didn’t reflect this and posted the original value.

So after some looking around it turns out that if the element has the same name and id then .val() can sometimes be a little problematic. So the quick fix to change the name and id to different values. Strange!

I nearly forgot about linking to this, my first article for a while.

For those who may have noticed I’ve been doing a few Google Analytics articles for Six Revisions and the latest published a few weeks ago looks at the basics of tracking searches on your site and what you can start to glean from the information available in Google Analytics. Click on the image to go and read the article.

For those unaware I am no longer working full time in web development and instead I’m flying planes around Europe for easyJet. That does not however mean I’m not doing web stuff anymore, I am! I’m pleased to still be involved at Armitage Online and they recently launched two sites that I’d been working on. The first is Leonardsfield House, a website for a Keswick guest house which is based on the nifty little CMS Perch, which is brilliant for straight forward no nonsense CMS needs.

The second site is VMC Developments, a Lancaster based building contractors. Based on WordPress I started the design and build on the site and it was finished off by the fantastic Ryan Downie who made it look a damn site better than I had with some great work and finishing touches.

In other bits and pieces I’ve been slowly piecing together the stuff for my analytics project StatShare.net which is now massively behind the timescale I had been working to but will hopefully start to show something useful in the next few weeks. I’ve also been working with Rugby League website Last Tackle on adding new functionality to their fantasy league system and also a few other projects with them.

Which I think about covers the update, there’s some writing being thrown in for good measure, another long overdue article for Six Revisions should be on it’s way soon as well. So with any luck you’ll have some more stuff to read about on here in the not too distant future.

Well I’ve not posted on here for a while but it doesn’t mean I’m not busy. In fact it means I am very busy.
For those who don’t pop onto Smashing Magazine too often you may not have noticed but I wrote an article for them a while back which has just been published. It’s about using decision making models and applying them to web design scenarios, so why not go and check it out.
Decision-Making Models In Web Development

This was requested on the original CSS hover tabs post and as usual it has taken me ages to get around to doing it.

Anyway it is just the previous version realigned and also with an added tab to show you how easy it is to customise and add extra tabs.

You can view the demo here, it’s pretty straight forward and I won’t go into detail as it is all worked using the same principles as the original post so read that first and then take a look at the source of this one. It’ll do you good to do some thinking and look at what’s changed!

Lake Windermere, see it’s really nice up here. (image Flickr)

Well do you? Are you a great web designer or developer looking to work for an upcoming web agency? You get encouraged to use new web technologies like HTML5 and CSS3 and get to work in an area with some great scenery to boot?

Do you want my job!? – quite literally. I’m leaving as a nice man with an orange airline has offered me a job flying his planes. However I’m still sad as Armitage has been a great place to work and Andrew is a brilliant boss.

So if you feel you’d like to work in the Lake District and spend your weekdays building great websites for some great clients and then have the weekends to freely explore the Lakes then head over and read the full job spec on the Armitage http://www.armitageonline.co.uk/about/jobs/ and retweet this and pass it on to anyone you think might be interested.

This doesn’t mean this site will go to rack and ruin, I’ll still be blogging and still doing some web stuff it just won’t be full time so expect the same little tips and tricks and musing from me.

One of the nifty new features of HTML5 is the placeholder for forms which is added by putting in a placeholder value.

<input type="email" placeholder="example@kamikazemusic.com" />

So I can use this everywhere I’ve just written a quick bit of jQuery to replicate the placeholder functionality in browser that don’t support. It also uses Modernizr to check if the browser already supports the placeholder technique.

To use this make sure you’ve included the jQuery and Modernizr files and then pop in the bit of code below or download and include the file.
(This is only tested so far with Modernizr v1.1 and jQuery v1.4.2)


$(document).ready(function() {

if(!Modernizr.input.placeholder){

$("input").each(
function(){
if($(this).val()=="" && $(this).attr("placeholder")!=""){
$(this).val($(this).attr("placeholder"));
$(this).focus(function(){
if($(this).val()==$(this).attr("placeholder")) $(this).val("");
});
$(this).blur(function(){
if($(this).val()=="") $(this).val($(this).attr("placeholder"));
});
}
});

}

});


This weeks interviewee for the randomiser is the designer behind the great blog Web Designer Notebook, Inayaili De León.

Random email interview number 8 – Inayaili De Leó
With lucky numbers
13, 6, 26, 18, 5, 22, 1, 17, 11 and 25
Lets get started!
First things first describe yourself in a tweet – 140 characters – Go!
I’m a web designer. I’m from Portugal. I live in London. I like chocolate, pizza and cats, and I order too much delivery food.

1.(Question 13) – What are the best presents you’ve given and received?

I remember receiving a guitar when I was like 11. I was totally overwhelmed when I got it — I loved it! I like to think every present that I give is good — I’ve given a few trips to London to my sister recently and concert tickets, I think that’s a cool present to give, right? Oh, and spa days, people like that because they often forget to treat themselves.

2.(Question 6) – What’s your favourite TV series?

Ooh, wrong question, my friend. The best TV show of all times is the Sopranos. My top 5 would also include Arrested Development (very close first, and I’ve watched it like 3 times already), Lost, Curb Your Enthusiasm and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

3.(Question 26) – You know how sometimes you get a tune you don’t really care for stuck in your head and you can’t get rid of it and it drives you nuts – what tune is it?

(Added by Sneh Roy)

It depends, I usually have very depressing, sad songs stuck in my head, but I have none today.

4.(Question 18) – What is your favourite book?

Every book by José Saramago. He’s a Portuguese writer, won the Nobel Prize, etc. I love him because he’s so subversive, you have to adapt to his way of writing — he uses almost no punctuation, you have to guess what’s a question, what’s an exclamation — it’s not easy at first, but after one or two books you just realise what a genius he is. Every time he has a new book I run to the closest bookstore to buy it and read it, he’s that good.

5.(Question 5) – Are you a sports fan and who do follow/support?

Yes, I like football (soccer?…). My team is Sporting Clube de Portugal (or Sporting Lisbon, for people outside Portugal).

6.(Question 22) – If you had to ‘become’ an application for the day on your Mac or PC, which would you be and why? And what would you spend the day doing?

(Added by Grace Smith)

This is a very strange question! I’d be Firefox, of course. I would want to see what you’re seeing and doing on the web.

7.(Question 1) – What’s your favourite movie?

Se7en. It’s dark, it’s clever, it’s timeless, and for me it’s a classic. I’ve watched it too many times — it’s sad actually.

8.(Question 17) – Can you play any musical instruments? If you can’t what would you like to play?

I started playing the violin when I was very young, but I couldn’t properly hold it, and I quit. Then I tried the guitar for a few years, but I got bored of it. I guess I prefer to listen to music than to actually make it. If I could play anything, I’d probably pick the guitar.

9.(Question 11) – What’s the longest you’ve been without a shower?

Assuming my parents bathed me everyday when I was a kid, probably a whole weekend, just staying at home being lazy…

10.(Question 25) – Who was your first kiss, in what circumstances?

(Added by Bruce Lawson)

Can I have another question? Or is it really depressing if I confess I don’t remember?

And the all important final question – what question do you want to add to thequestion bank?

If you could have a super-power, what would it be?

A big thanks to Yaili for taking part, you can of course visit the Web Designer Notebook or head over to her site http://yaili.com/ if you don’t think you’ve read enough about her!

There are some very interesting things going on recently in terms of how we put together our sites and it’s leading to quite a few interesting discussions, mostly between those who aren’t ready to even consider using new web technologies until IE offer support for them and those who have whole heartedly embraced the ideas of progressive enhancement and graceful degradation. Personally I fall into the latter category, using HTML5 to code up sites and using CSS3 all over the place.

I’ve been using CSS3 in plenty of places (yes even client projects!) and trying to code in HTML5 where possible, but it occurred to me when putting together some stuff with CSS3 animations for my new project StatShare (open up something webkit and have a little look round for it), especially after making a mess of various things and trying out new ideas, it isn’t about getting it right. In the end I did get what I wanted done, and I’m pleased with that, but even if I hadn’t I would have learned plenty more about CSS3 anyway, things that I can take on with me future projects.

As CSS3 isn’t a finished draft either if in my experiments I find that things don’t work as I expect, well then I can write about it, see if other people have similar problems even submit a bug report to the W3 if I want to go that far. Essentially we are the test bed for this new stuff and it’s only by trying new things that we’ll learn how it works and what the limits are.

It’s about learning and testing and helping to move the web forward to better and easier coding methods and techniques, so what if what you try doesn’t work, at least you’ll learn something and you’ll be a few steps ahead of those who aren’t using new coding methods.