In English: feeds.feedburner.com/samisdat/en

In German: feeds.feedburner.com/samisdat/de

Unfortunately this effect can not be done with Javascript, but the developers of Apples website created a similar interface: The productbrowser, just have a look at Apples iTunes page.

For an upcoming relaunch of Jusos Wuppertal I want to implement such an interface and so I rebuild it with Prototype and scriptaculous:

I zipped it al together and you can get it for free licensed as CC-BY-SA: c-slider.zip

Besides the script and the images c-clider.zip contains some examples and a short doc, which you acess online, too: docs/en.

Probably you will notice that Apple’s homepage is also driven by Prototype and scriptaculous, but if you have a look at the source, you will see that my script and the orginal have not much in common.h2. Features

• Standard (X)HTML und CSS
• Javascript comes on top, it can be used without
• Multiple cSliders on same page are possible
• Using css sprites an empty cSlider contains only a single background-image
• Automatic rendering of the navigation shortcuts in scrollbar
• Flexible width and height
• Customizing by CSS
• Themeable with included Photoshop file

BTW: The c came into cSlider, while you can made wine from apples: Cider

I am glad to see you here. Most of the time it’s just me and a guy named GoogleBot.
I’m Bastian Sackermann and while the internet is as big as it is, there was little space left for me and samisdat.

Samisdat is Russian and means as much as self-publishing and that’s nearly exactly what I’m doing here: I’m writing about stuff that I’m interested in; regularly but not very often and mainly about spectacular thing like AJAX, Javascript and Textpattern.

If you like this site or even if you noticed some bugs or errors: I’m looking forward to your feedback or leave a comment at one of the articles.

As you may already have noticed: I’m not a native English Speaker and translating my page to English is just another possibility to wasting my time without doing serious thing. So please feel free to leave a comment, if you found some ridiculous errors.

But i never thought to get mails from strangers whom reading my (javascript) code and want to know how things work…

So i will write more here, but maybe it will be take a month.

THX

From my new sequel complete senseless effects

At Sitepoint i found a little effect, that i didn’t know before.

If you scroll through the page by your mouse wheel, you see a Sitepoint branded icon instead of the normal one:

That works with just a few lines of CSS, but it the custom icon will only bee shown in firefox.

It seems like, that this strange behavior is caused by a bug in firefox.

Some of firefox’s developers might have a long night and just added the icon within the dom…

However i added the stylesheet at this page, but only here.

“This site may harm your computer!”

I searched for w3csites and this was the first time i every notice that warning in Google’s search results.

I send Sean Ho, founder of the site, a short mail asking him about this warning. From his response:

First of all I would like to say that W3C Sites is safe to browse.

When I first got notified about the warning, I have followed Google’s instruction to review my website and found that it has been hacked to distributing badware. The badware was removed in just a few hours. Sean Ho in einer Mail

It seems like that there was badware or links to badware an the site and in that case Google`s warning would make sense.

Which makes me however thinking is that fact that Google is warning:

But that there are Google adds on the page

And the search is powered by google, too:

How does that match together?
Google is say “This page may harm”, but at the very same site you see adds by Google. In my opinion there are three different possibilities:

• The problem was not very seriously.
• The problem was seriously, but adds earn Google’s money, even on pages which may contain badware.
• The problem was seriously, but the database “warnings” is not connected with the “adds” one.

I guest: It´s probably the last option. Google’s department “adds” does not know which pages the other department “warnings” is indicating.

In that case, i can use all these Google services without any concerns about privacy.

If Google can’t connect and compare it’s very own data, how should the connect and compare all these millions of user data.

Some days ago i watched in tv a Dutchwoman which is going to the south pole in a tractor

With google I found here page and sometimes it seems to be true:
Das habe ich gerade mal gegoogelt und manchmal gilt:

The world is a global village!

The website tractortractor.org is powered by Textpattern!

Of course the project itselfe is much more interesting then which CMS the page is driven by:

Manon Ossevoort started in 2005 (!) in the Netherlands and after some thousands kilometers she is somewhere in Kenya. Al least the last post this form there.

While she is blogging in English but the page is mainly in Dutch, i don’t really know why she’s heading to south pole. But i really do like the idea: Netherlands – Through complete Africa – South pole. The whole way on an aged tractor…

I did the whole way from (Unter-)Barmen to Elberfeld on my bicycle. This is nearly an adventure, too! Isn’t it?

I started previous versions of this site and other projects always by thinking about it’s structure: What should be placed at the left, what on right hand and what should be on top.
Using AJAX there is another dimension: I had to think about what happens before, while and after. Beginning this relaunch this was more complicate then i thought it will be.

But after more then 8 month this is the first beta version of samisdat 2.0.

I hope that you like it and that it will work for you. But i know that it will not work in every browser. (Here are some more informations about supported browsers.)

XHTML

samisdat is made of valid und semantic XHTML or how it is now pronounced: POSH.
That a website consists of XHTML is not worth to mention, but i want to write about POSH, too.

Besides the semantics i tried to bring the page elements into a logical sequence: Source code starts with the navigation, then the main content and last but not least the sidebar.

A little bit of divitis: was not to be avoided, because of the AJAX FX. But all pages should be accessibly without Javascript.
I tried to realize both: Nice Javascript FXs but keeping the whole page accessible without them.

JavaScript

In the core the Javascript things here are complete unnecessarily and senseless:
I used over 2000 lines of Javascript to make some browsers do what the are are able to do without Javascript:
Transferring data. Instead of HTTP i used AJAX.

So there is no deeper sense within samisdat besides that i had a lot of fun and i learned tons.

Without using prototype and script.aculo.us i wouldn’t finished yet.

AJAX

If you want to be correct, i’m not using AJAX here. It is more like AJAJ.
I noticed, that its quite easy to generate XML though PHP, but JSON is much easier to process.

Textpattern

basis, foundation and base OF samisdat is Textpattern.

With something around 3000 lines i extendet Textpattern:

• To Delivering JSON
• To patter Bilangalt texts
• To spupport tags
• To paginate articles
• To generate table of content for large articles

This should be all for a shot overview. To be continued…

Just to mention it first: samisdat is my hobby and I’m working on it in my spare time. My main motivation is: I want to it some fun.

While this is my private homepage, i don’t care in older browsers.
I code valid and semantic code and i have a look how it renders in Firefox 2.0, Opera 9.2 und IE 7.0. And that’s it.

Of course i’m pleased when others visit my site and i hope thats it works for you.

But

If samisdat validates and runs in browsers above, that’s all i can take care of while running a private homepage.

If you are using IE 6.0, you have my compassion and you will see a lot of grey thing here.
But my compassion is not big enough to point my interest to thing like Conditional comments and filter:Alpha().

Browser Detection

Sniffing for browsers is really 1997, i know.
But while i`m testing all that AJAX Stuff only i a few browsers, i try to make sure that you see as much less Javascript errors as possible and i don`t want you to load all that scripts without any use for you.

If you visit samisdat with a browser in wich i didn’t tested the AJAX stuff, you just get a full functional page made with XHTML and CSS.

But i really like to get some Feedback if you are some time and run these AJAX stuff with a different browser.

That particularly if you use:

Safari

Because i have no access to a mac, i would be appreciate to hear about samisdat on a mac.

bas Image Selector is a plugin for Textpattern that allows you to add images to an article by selecting from an drop down list.

While using AJAX to load the image list, it is quite fast even for large image collections.

You can select images as article image or use the included tag builder to add images into body or excerpt.

For article images already saved there is also a preview function.

Demo

I recorded a little flash video to demonstrate how bas_img_sel works.

Javascript

Since version 0.8 i use the iQuery framework.
Textpattern includes it since 4.0.5 and for TXP 4.0.4 the plugin includes iQuery.

Without Javascript enable the plugin won’t run!

I tested bas_ Image Selector with Firefox 2, Opera 9 und IE 7.
These should not cause problems and i hope that the compatibility with different browsers is increased since using jQuery instead of my old handmade code.

Installation

Just open the plugin file, copy it’s content to clipboard, go to admin -> plugins and paste it into the the textarea.
Hit the upload button and confirm.

Don`t forget do aktivate the plugin.

Done!

Erweiterte Installation

There is an advanced install at extensions -> bas_img_sel.
Use that to add some plugin preferences to txp’s prefs table.

For example you can choose a default categorie or open the selector by default.

You can change these preferences at TXP’s advanced preferences tab and of course there is an remove script included.

If you want to delete bas_img_sel for some reason, yous got to its extension and run the uninstall script. Delete the plugin after you did that.

Changelog

0.8

• jQuery
• Preview for article image
• Tagbuilder

0.7

• Ready for 4.0.4
• Debugging

0.6

• Using the php output buffer
• AJAX
• Getting thumbnails dimensions with javascript.