Lose the faff, bring back the fun ...

Viewing previous matches, email notification and more ...

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 12:01:06 +0000

You may notice some changes in the website recently. If you haven’t already found the change log, you can find details of all the changes here.

2013-2014-fantasy-league

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 19:47:25 +0100

Was good fun last year, so we’re going it again!

http://fantasy.premierleague.com

Code is
257258-596780

Good luck!

Simple workaround for no Start Menu in Windows 8

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:54:06 +0100

I recently went with Windows 8 and if you’ve gone down this path you’ll no doubt have noticed the absence of a Start Menu in Desktop mode.

A few utilities have cropped up, some free, some paid for which add some variation of this missing feature.

I’m not a huge fan of adding lots of little apps to my system as it leads to needing another rebuild in 6 months time. I’ve only just installed the new OS!

Besides I only want it for a short time until I pin all my regular applications to the taskbar. So here’s a quick tip you may also find useful.

Open up Desktop view if you haven’t already.
Right click on the Taskbar and select Toolbars > New Toolbar
In the resulting dialog, navigate to your Programs folder, which will be something like:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
You should now have a menu Toolbar marked Programs
SImply click the little arrow next to Programs and enjoy a noddy start menu.

If you prefer your menu in a more traditional place, you can unlock the taskbar and drag the Programs toolbar to the left.

Hope this helps.

Emailing event reminders in Outlook

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 13:20:00 +0000

I tend to use [event] reminders in Outlook a lot, as I’m sure lots of us do. However the downside is I end up with a mix of important (meetings) and not-so-important (defrag hard drive) reminders.

There’s a few tools for sending an email reminder as well as having the reminders window pop-up, but they’re mostly paid ones. It can’t be that difficult? And indeed it isn’t :)

Installation

All that’s required is a simple macro:

Firstly enable the Developer Tab in Outlook
Select Macros, then Macros again
Click the Edit button
Double click on ThisOutlookSession
Copy and paste the code below into the code window
Make any required changes to the constants at the top (i.e. your e-mail address)
Restart Outlook for the changes to take effect

The Code

Public WithEvents objReminders As Outlook.Reminders
Const EMAIL_TO = "xyz@example.com"
Const SEND_WHEN_IMPORTANT = True
Const SEND_WHEN_INVITES = True

Private Sub Application_StartUp()
    Set objReminders = Application.Reminders
End Sub

Private Sub objReminders_ReminderFire(ByVal ReminderObject As Reminder)
    Dim sendMsg As Boolean
    Dim app As AppointmentItem
    
    sendMsg = False
    If SEND_WHEN_IMPORTANT And ReminderObject.Item.Importance >= olImportanceHigh Then
        sendMsg = True
    End If
    If SEND_WHEN_INVITES And ReminderObject.Item.Recipients.Count > 1 Then
        ' Note there's always at least one person, i.e. YOU!
        sendMsg = True
    End If
    
    If sendMsg Then
        Dim body As String, subject As String
        
        subject = ReminderObject.Caption & " at " & ReminderObject.Item.Start
        body = "You have a meeting at " & ReminderObject.Item.Start
        
        EmailReminder EMAIL_TO, subject, body
    End If
End Sub

Private Sub EmailReminder(toEmail As String, subject As String, body As String)
    Dim oMail As Outlook.mailItem
    Set oMail = Application.CreateItem(olMailItem)
    oMail.subject = subject
    oMail.body = body
    oMail.Recipients.Add (toEmail)
    oMail.Send
End Sub

Usage

When Outlook fires the reminder for an event in your calendar you will now get an e-mail sent too (which I for one tend to notice more).

It won’t send you an e-mail everytime though, only when:

The event in your calendar has at least 2 people (there’s always 1 in them … you!). I’ve used this to flag this event as a meeting.
The event in your calendar it’s flagged as Important. This is so you can add a normal reminder to do something, but you get an e-mail reminder as well.

One last thing to note is that you will get an e-mail everytime the event reminder is fired. So each time you Snooze you’ll get another email (when the event wakes up again).

Support for ad-hoc games and loads more ...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Hi,

Wow things have been quiet on toepoke for the last few months. We haven’t pushed a new build out to you guys and gals since last August!

Rest assured that we’ve still been beavering away at our goal to create the best website for organising football with your friends.

So what’s been released this time?

Features

Occasional games

From the outset we’ve always concentrated on regular games. We think this is the biggest challenge and barrier to playing football with your mates. And without wishing to blow our own trumpet, we reckon we’ve got is sussed!

From today you can create an occasional game too. Playing in a tournament? Or maybe just a curry night with your players? When adding a game there’s now an occasional option.

I know what you’re thinking :) …

That’s all well and good, but I’ve got to go through my squad and invite them all! What a faff!

We don’t do faff at toepoke so we’ve made it easier to set-up more games with your squad.

Squad Invite Improvements

On the invitation screen there’s a squad picker button which lets you pick another squad to find players.

In order to protect the privacy of our users, you must be a manager of both squads to use the picker.

You may notice you can also add a note to an invitation, so you can tell the player a little about your game or social event.

Squad Export

You’ve always being able to see who’s in your squad (as a manager at least), but now we’ve added a little more help. On the my squad screen we’ve added an export facility.

So if you decide toepoke isn’t for you - why, we can’t comprehend :) you can export your squad and use another service.

You can also use the export facility to e-mail all your squad members.

Menu Improvements

As we’ve added more features to toepoke more and more icons have appeared on the screens.

To counter this we’ve split the icons between the ones we think you’ll use most often to the left (e.g. setting the sides, inviting players, etc). The less used facilities have been moved to the right (e.g. changing pitch, reminders, etc).

If you don’t think we’ve broken things up correctly, please tell us :).

Fixes

We’ve also fixed a few things in this build:

Players can now see matches that have been cancelled.
Fix for disappearing password textbox when deleting a game.
Some fixes in the teamsheet e-mail
Fix for locked accounts, that were being locked for too long (after failing to login correctly multiple times).
Fixed the menu icons on the squad screens, which had disappeared!!?!?

Until next time,
Team TP!

Fluqi 1.9.0 released

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 18:34:00 +0000

Hi,

A few weeks ago version 1.9.0 of jqueryui was pushed out. This includes some fixes, depreciated methods and some new widgets.

It’s taken a few weeks, but I’m happy to say that my little API, Fluqi has been updated to take these into account.

Full details in the change log.

Until next time,
Team TP.

Fluqi is a bit broken …For those of you who’ve been...

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:44:00 +0100

Fluqi is a bit broken …

For those of you who’ve been using Fluqi, you may have noticed that the Theme Switch tool has been broken for a few days. This is because the underlying script is no longer where it was.

Indeed on some pages the demos aren’t working and this is because the absense of the Theme Switcher script breaks the rest of the page.

The guys over at jQuery UI had a redesign of the website (which is a massive improvement, excellent work guys), but sadly the Theme Switcher Tool is no longer present.

Fortunately the jQuery UI guys are way ahead of us on this one, and they’ve moved the existing site to old.jqueryui.com. So all is well with the world?

Sadly not quite. The Theme Switcher has always been a bit of a bad cousin of the jQuery UI project and kind of hangs off. I think it was always intended just as an aid for development.

Anyway so whilst the old.jqueryui.com website works fine, sadly there are some hard-coded references to jquery.com inside the Theme Switcher Tool JavaScript source file. To cut a long story short I’ve added my own version of the tool into the Fluqi source code which uses the new (or old!) old.jqueryui.com website. Please take your own copy rather than link directly to GitHub.

Finally, for those of you who are using Fluqi - and bless you for doing so :) - you may have noticed that v1.9 of jQuery UI has been released. This release brings the new tooltip and menu widget controls. Just so you know I’ll be looking at the release notes and pushing out a new build of Fluqi in the near future (no confirmed date as yet).

Addendum

@scott_gonzalez kindly pointed out that @jqueryui no longer supports the Theme Switcher Tool and suggests using the Super Theme Switcher by Dave Hoff instead.

Until next time,
Team TP.

New features and fixes in today's build!

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 13:30:00 +0100

Hi,

It’s new build time. Here’s a rundown of the changes we’ve pushed out this morning.

Features and enhancements

Alerts timetable

Changing when your match reminders are sent used to be a bit of guesswork. 3 days before your match? Not very obvious what’s going on.

From today this is much more understandable, and we’ll explain your reminder will be Thursday before Sunday’s match. Much nicer we’re sure you’ll agree J.

Adding players to a match

.. has just become much easier. You can now select several at a time, rather than just one.

Touch Support

We’ve also added further support for touch devices. You may have noticed on the side picker screen it was quite difficult selecting sides when using a tablet. You should now find this much easier.

Performance

We should see the site loads a bit more quickly now as our images are hosted elsewhere.

Fixes

Duplicate Emails

There was an issue when putting your name down for the match this week, and next week at the same time. This resulted in you receiving multiple copies of the same e-mail. This has now been resolved.

Plus there’s lot of little changes we won’t bore you with J

Until next time, may your boots remain laced up and may the government realise VAT on 5-a-side is a bad idea!

Team TP.

Fantasy League, 2013 !

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 09:50:00 +0100

Hi,

You may recall we ran a Fantasy League last year for a bit of fun.

With the 2012/13 season upon us, we’ve re-enabled the league. If you joined last year you shouldn’t need to do anything. If you’d like to join in, simply follow these steps.

If you’d like to join in, simply:

Sign-up with fantasy.premierleague.com.
Click the LEAGUES tab.
Click Join a league.
Select Private League.
When prompted enter the code 815363-206955
Click JOIN PRIVATE LEAGUE.

Hope to see you there!

Kind regards, Team TP.

Pretty checkbox and rads with jQueryUI

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 08:39:00 +0100

Hi,

One aspect of toepoke (there’s a few!) I’ve been unhappy with is the appearance of checkboxes by default:

Remember me?

Bit basic aren’t they? Had a look around on google and whilst there’s some nice examples and plug-ins, they either don’t quite do what I’m after or involve additional image files.

As I’m already leveraging jQuery UI I really wanted something that took advantage of the built in framework icons as they are already part of the page.

So inspired by Checkbox-d I’ve implemented my own variation (in retrospect should really have forked Checkbox-d …), checkedUI:

Here’s a quick Demo, and the plug-in is up on Github

Hope you find this useful too,
Team TP!

toepoke helps you more ...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 18:41:00 +0100

Hi,

We released a build this week, with just a couple of small changes. If you’ve logged on recently you may have noticed that the main menu has changed, and there’s a new button:

Not sure how a screen works? Click on the new tour button and we’ll walk you through things …

The online demo has had a similar over hall, walking you through some of the ways toepoke makes organising a game of 5-a-side football so much easier!

Until next time!
Team TP!

toepoke.co.uk leaves beta phase!

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:52:00 +0100

Hi,

It’s taken a while, nearly two years, 23 builds, 100+ fixes, tonnes of features and quite a few weekends but we’ve finally decided to move toepoke.co.uk out of beta and into live properly.

It turns out it’s really quite simple and the release this weekend has the least amount of work of any toepoke.co.uk release ever!

Last week

Today!

Whilst we’ve hit this significant milestone ;-) don’t think we’re taking our foot off the gas. We still have loads of ideas for improving the site, and we’d love to hear yours.

Until next time.
Team TP!

toepoke social network integration is finally here!

Tue, 22 May 2012 10:29:00 +0100

Hello internet,

It’s been a while since we last released any changes to our little website as we were diverted to something else for a while. That’s not to say we haven’t also been busying away with your favourite 5-a-side organiser!

So what’s changed this time in this version?

Social Networks

It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally added better integration for social networking websites. If you have a twitter, facebook or google account you may find it easier to login using your social account. Simply visit the new Social Network tab in Your Profile and click the Change accounts button at the bottom.

From the resulting dialog you can link your social network account, and change your avatar (or pick one of ours :-).

Invitation Improvements

We’ve overhauled the process for inviting your mates to join your games as there have been problems with this in the past. From now we’re using a simple invitation code. Anyone wishing to join your game will still require authorisation by game managers. You can also post to twitter and facebook through the Squad Invitation screen (click on the “Invite someone to join your squad” from the new Squad dashboard).

Note this works best if you have a public game, as then we can post a direct link for people to join. For private games people will have to ask for an invitation.

Timetable Improvements

We’ve also made the improvements to the game timetable screen.

It’s now much easier to see the relationship between all your reminders, and how they work together. Hopefully this is a little more intuitive.

Diary View

The match dashboard has also had a bit of makeover. We’ve always felt this does a good job at showing quite a lot of information, however it was possible to get a little lost with which match was which. This is particularly true if you play a couple of times a week.

To improve things just a little we’ve added a diary on the dashboard so you can see at a glance all the matches you have coming up.

Navigation Changes

Another in the small but useful changes pot is we’ve added a new menu link to your squads.

This provides a convenient way to invite new players, create advertising posters, etc.

Fixes

Average age of a team now shows to just two decimal places, rather than the massive number is was showing.
As outlined, we’ve changed how the invitation system works as there have been problems with this in the past. From now we’re using a simple invitation code. Anyone wishing to join your game will still require authorisation by game managers.
There was a problem with the Your Profile screen which resulted in changes to the Updates? and Other parties? flags not saving correctly. As a safety precaution we’ve made everyone’s flags to Off as we can’t be certain if anyone has turned these flags On or Off.
A whole bunch of other small stuff we won’t bore you with J.

Do you like the changes we’ve made? Have you got a better way to improve the site? We’d love to hear from you …

Until next time.
Team TP.

Enumerations and extension methods in C# Whilst making some...

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:53:00 +0100

Enumerations and extension methods in C#

Whilst making some modifications to toepoke.co.uk last night I needed to do some work around the membership. Things like “Is this user a member of this squad”, “Have they been verified”, etc.

I started off with a statement with too many logical ORs kicking around and thought there must be a better way of expressing what I wanted to do. My first thought was to look Extension methods which I’ve used extensively for making my queries a little more understandable. Could we use extension methods for the enumerations too?

My first thought was it wouldn’t work as traditionally you couldn’t add additional behaviour to an enum. However having looked at it, it’s quite straightforward.

Full code here if you want to have a quick play.

Until next time.
Team TP.

Yeah, it’s a bank holiday this week!Good Friday, following...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 08:34:00 +0100

Yeah, it’s a bank holiday this week!

Good Friday, following by Easter Monday, yeah!

But if you’re match falls around this time, you might want to think about tweeking when you invites and reminders go out.

http://toepoke.co.uk/permalink.aspx#future-tab

Just click this little icon on your match to change when your reminders go out.

Until next time,
Team TP

Server downtime 5th March 2012

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 09:37:00 +0000

Hi all,

We have been informed by our webhost that they need to apply the latest software updates on their servers.

As a result toepoke will be unavailable between the hours of 10pm and 11pm on Monday, 5^th of March 2012.

Our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

Kind regards,
Team TP!

Enhancing the "non-javascript" user experience with jQuery UI and Fluqi

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:17:00 +0000

As some of you might be aware we recently released the Fluqi library as open source. I won’t repeat the ins-and-outs, but suffice to say Fluqi is a set of helper classes for building websites using the excellent jQuery UI widgets in a fluent manner.

We built Fluqi because we were tired of typing out the same HTML mark-up on lots of pages to achieve a similar objective. We’ve been making changes to toepoke throughout the development of Fluqi as a dogfooding exercise and thought we’d share some of that experience.

For instance we have a screen showing matches that are coming in the future, and whether the user has said they’re playing or not. With JavaScript active the user sees this:

As you can see, the screenshot shows a tab widget with an accordion widget inside each tab. toepoke was built from the ground up to be progressive so the site is still usable to people with JavaScript disabled. So without JavaScript, the same screen looks like this:

It’s not very pretty, but it is still useable.

When developing Fluqi one thing we wanted to do was to be able to still have the look and feel of the jQuery UI widgets, even if JavaScript is disabled. After implementing Fluqi on our own website we now use the following code to create the tab widget above (the accordion part is omitted for brevity):

var tabs = Html.CreateTabs(“tabs”)
.Rendering
.SetRenderCSS(true)
.Finish()
;

The important part here is SetRenderCSS(true). This tells Fluqi to draw the CSS classes jQuery UI uses under the hood, which normally are added through JavaScript (but obviously don’t when JavaScript is disabled). The result now looks like this:

As we can see, there’s quite an improvement. The tab widget still looks like a tab, as do the accordion. Naturally the tabs and accordion widgets won’t behave as such as JavaScript is off, but it’s a lot clearer to the user visually what’s going on.

Please note however that there are some areas of the jQuery UI website that advise not adding the CSS classes to your mark-up (which is what the SetRenderCSS(true) method does), however I haven’t found any problems in doing this so far. So as always, test it before going into production J.

Good luck,
Team TP!

It's nearly Valentines day !

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:43:40 +0000

Hi,

Just a reminder that a week on Tuesday is Valentine’s day everyone.

If you play on a Tuesday night …. you might want to keep this in mind ;-)

Kind regards,

Team TP.

Website downtime

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:35:34 +0000

Hi all,

We’ve been informed by our hosting supplier that our site may be down between 10pm and 11pm on Tuesday 7^th February 2012 to apply software updates.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards,

Team TP.

It's [nearly] Christmas !!!!

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:59:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

It’s that time of year again. The countdown to finishing work and having a few days (or weeks if you’re lucky) off before the new year. The work Christmas parties are starting and the numbers for football are getting low.

In our ongoing goal to remove the faff you should always have 2 weeks of games ongoing at at one time. You will also have a little cancel game button on each match.

So if your pitch is shutting down for Christmas, just cancel your games and have a couple of weeks off. Put your feet up, eat too much and watch too much telly.

Lose the faff, bring back the fun ...

Viewing previous matches, email notification and more ...

2013-2014-fantasy-league

Simple workaround for no Start Menu in Windows 8

Emailing event reminders in Outlook

Installation

The Code

Usage

Support for ad-hoc games and loads more ...

Features

Occasional games

Squad Invite Improvements

Squad Export

Menu Improvements

Fixes

Fluqi 1.9.0 released

Fluqi is a bit broken …For those of you who’ve been...

Fluqi is a bit broken …

New features and fixes in today's build!

Features and enhancements

Alerts timetable

Adding players to a match

Touch Support

Performance

Fixes

Duplicate Emails

Fantasy League, 2013 !

Pretty checkbox and rads with jQueryUI

toepoke helps you more ...

toepoke.co.uk leaves beta phase!

Last week

Today!

toepoke social network integration is finally here!

Social Networks

Invitation Improvements

Timetable Improvements

Diary View

Navigation Changes

Fixes

Enumerations and extension methods in C# Whilst making some...

Enumerations and extension methods in C#

Yeah, it’s a bank holiday this week!Good Friday, following...

Yeah, it’s a bank holiday this week!

Server downtime 5th March 2012

Enhancing the "non-javascript" user experience with jQuery UI and Fluqi

It's nearly Valentines day !

Website downtime

It's [nearly] Christmas !!!!

Have a good Christmas and New Year everyone!