General

  • New posts on the way!

    Wow, it's been ages since my last post here. I've been super busy with some new exciting work over at Dragnet Systems lately which is coming to an end shortly giving me more time to post some new articles.

    Over the coming weeks I'll post some articles explaining how to get the most from MVC3 for real world scenarios. A lot of my work at the moment focuses on MVC3 with Entity Framework Code First, Twitter's BootStrap and jQuery to build amazing web apps for businesses.

    I've also been taking the time to learn how to setup my MVC projects to use dependency injection so that my code is much neater and tidier. It took ages to get my head around it initially but it's starting to pay off now which is great.

    So there you have it. I'm still here and there will be more new posts very soon :)

  • How to stop the nslivemarkservice.js Firebug error messages appearing

    Since I've been running Firebug 1.5.x I've noticed these weird error messages from a javascript file called nslivemarkservice.js. I did a bit of digging around and it looks like this is a leak is happening for some other people as well.

    The solution to this issue is quite simple and requires you to download the latest (not fully released) version of Firebug. I'm sure once version 1.6 is given an official release this will fix the issue for all users but for those of us who would like to debug our code now without seeing these annoying error messages you can download an alpha version of 1.6 of Firebug over at the Firebug website - http://getfirebug.com/downloads

  • Estuary Wholesale Suppliers goes lives on ews.ie

    Estuary Wholesale Suppliers electrical equipment suppliers for trade and industry

    Dragnet Systems has launched a new website for Estuary Wholesale Suppliers who are an electrical equipment supplier based in Limerick, Ireland.

    The site itself is a very simple design with the focus very much on getting the information across in an easy, uncluttered way. The site was built by our designer Raul and the tech was handled by Sinead. I think they both did a fantastic job getting this site out the door considering that they have other projects on the go as well.

    My next project should be launching around April 20th if everything goes to plan. It's a brand new concept for booking a taxi for businesses and I can't wait until the site goes live when I can talk more about it.

  • Dragnet Systems launches Hertz4Ryanair.com a brand new micro site for Hertz Europe and Ryanair

    Dragnet Systems launches Hertz4Ryanair.com a brand new partner site for Hertz Europe and Ryanair

    It's been a long time coming but today is the day that Dragnet Systems finally launches its newest micro site for Hertz Europe: Hertz4Ryanair.com. As you can tell from the screenshot above this new site was designed very much with Ryanair and Hertz in mind. The style and approach to the design also follows on from our Hertz Aerlingus project we released 6 months ago - HertzFlyDrive.com. There is a nice clean interface for selecting your cars and accessories that we think really add to the overall user experience. It is also a much faster booking process for booking your car compared to the micro site that this replaces.

  • Use jquery to scroll to a specific section on your page from a link or a button.

    This little feature can be very handy if you want to auto scroll the page to a particular section. I have used this previously on sites where I want the user to be shown error messages that are on top of a large form. So instead of the user clicking submit and nothing happening the user would click submit and if there were any errors the page would scroll to the error messages on the top of the form.

    To achieve this effect create a javascript function like this:
    (Thanks to David King from OneDayLater.com for the Opera fix for the button click event!)

    function goToByScroll(element) {

    var el = $.browser.opera ? $("html") : $("html, body");

    el.animate({ scrollTop: $(element).offset().top }, 'slow');

    }

    Now call the above function whenever you want the screen to move to a point. For our example we will scroll on a button click or from a link click using the code below:

    $(document).ready(function () {

    //scroll if link click to section2

    $('#Section1 a').click(function (evt) {

    evt.preventDefault();

    goToByScroll('#Section2');

    });

    //scroll if button click to section 1

    $('#SubmitForm').click(function (evt) {

    evt.preventDefault();

    goToByScroll('#Section1');

    });

    });

  • Comments system is down at the moment

    [Feb 24 Update] Looks like we're back in business. Needed to re-install BlogEngine before I could get it to work and then I had to remove the old theme my site had as it was not compatible, which is a shame. Looks like the theme situation for BlogEngine hasn't improved much since my post 6 months ago on where to get good blog engine themes.

    Just a quick mention to let you know that the comments system is down on my site at the moment. I'm not sure what happened but I think it has something to do with my failed attempt at upgrading to blog engine 1.6 last weekend. I will take a look into upgrading to BlogEngine 1.6 again over the next few days if I have time. I will also upgrade my server to IIS 7 with my provider...which should be fun if any past upgrades are anything to go by :D

    At the moment I am currently very busy finishing up a big new project for Hertz. It should be going live in around 2 weeks. Once it's up I should have more time to blog about all the new jquery techniques I've learned during developement.

  • How to know if a checkbox has been selected when submitting a form using jquery

    If you have a checkbox on your form that has to be selected before you want the user to continue you can use jquery to check if it has been selected by doing something like the following:

    $(document).ready(function () {

    $('#SubmitForm').click(function () {

    if ($('#Terms').attr('checked') == false) {

    alert('please select the terms and conditions before continuing.')

    return false;

    }

    });

    });

    Your html form must have a checkbox with an id value of Terms to match the javascript above.

        

    If it is crucial to have a checkbox ticked before continuing in your website or app you should validate on the server side as well but the above script should help to get you started.

    Click here for a simple demo of this in action.

  • RichardReddy.ie goes live showcasing the lastest work by Richard Reddy

    Richard Reddy Cork Web Developer

    <shamelessPlug>I've been meaning to setup my own domain name for a while now. During December last year Blacknight.com were offering .ie domain names for only €2.99 so I couldn't resist and bought richardreddy.ie.

    The site design is using BCProducties' vCard template which was given away for free for January to members of ThemeForest. If you're quick you might still be able to download the file for free here.

    Over the coming days I will update the work section of the site so that it contains details of my latest work. It's nice to finally have something a bit more professional to use rather then reddybrek ;)</shamelessPlug>

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