2BlueSolutions Developer Blog

I'm not sure why I only just stumbled across this now, but I used to create triangles in Gimp by creating a square, rotating it, and cutting away half of it, then importing it into Adobe Fireworks. I have no idea why I made life so difficult for myself when there is a brutally easy way to accomplish the exact same task within Fireworks itself. Draw a square (yah, I know how to do that) Select the Skew Tool (hotkey Q) Grab one corner of the square that you want to be the arrow point and pull it towards the middle.  The opposite corner will automatically pull into the middle at the same time. Done. Stupid easy and I feel just a tad smarter.

As a follow up to my previous post about installing the DIBS module in Virtuemart , there is a poorly documented error you will run into when trying to use the payment module on a live site. Basically, it will complain about a missing "paytype" which is actually not what is missing.  What is missing is the "test parameter" as the error will tell you.  After spending too much time trying to fix the "missing" paytype, I tried a different method and deduced that it really was missing a test parameter. With the default setup, the DIBS payment processor will only send a "test" variable to DIBS when it is actually in testing mode.  Makes sense, right? if(DIBS_TESTMODE == "YES") { $oid = 'test-' . $db->f("order_id") . '-' . time(); $post_variables["test"] = "YES"; $post_variables["orderid"] = $oid; } else { $oid = $db->f("order_id") . '-' . time(); ...

I recently was contacted to install the DIBS payment module in Joomla's Virtuemart . It is actually a very straightforward procedure that the DIBS developers lay out nicely in their help file. First step is to download the files you need from the DIBS site: http://tech.dibs.dk/toolbox/dibs_standard_shopmodules/ ( direct download ) Scroll down to the VirtueMart plugin or choose the above direct download link. Unzip the files. Inside, you will find the "docs" folder which contains a readme file which is very well laid out. Quickly, the steps are: Upload the contents of the module folder to the root of your Joomla installation. Log in and navigate to your Virtuemart administrative page. Select List Payment Modules (under Store) and choose DIBS Credit Card from the list of available payment modules. Tick the box for " Active " to make it active. Change the payment method name to whatever you want the customer to see when they checkout. Code =...

If you want your checkout page to look like this: First, you can edit the text for you button in: /administrator/components/com_virtuemart/languages/common/english.php Search for: BUTTON_SEND_REG Whatever you put in for that value, will change the value of the button. For example, put in "Next" instead of "Send Registration" (the default value): Now, to remove the empty "Next" box as seen in the above example, it will just require a simple edit from within your Virtuemart administration page. Log into your Joomla administration page. Enter your Virtuemart administration page. Under Admin, select Manage User Fields . Find delimiter_sendregistration : Then click on the green check mark in the Published field to unpublish the field Finally, for a little bit of housekeeping, edit the following file and add some blank space before the BUTTON_SEND_REG button. /admin/components/com_virtuemart/checkout_register_form.php

This is my solution for using Flash, SWFAddress , and HTML fall-back pages. It is more quick and dirty than “the right” solution, but it falls firmly into the “works for me” category. I use SWFObject (link) to detect and execute a Flash site and to fall back to a non-Flash site when the browser cannot handle Flash Typically, the code will look like the following: <script type="text/javascript" src="./js/swfobject.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var flashvars = {}; var params = {}; params.menu = "false"; params.quality = "best"; params.allowfullscreen = "false"; params.wmode ="transparent"; var attributes = {}; attributes.align = "TL"; swfobject.embedSWF("website.swf", "nonflash_content", "100%", "100%", "9.0.0", "expressInstall.swf", flashvars, params, attributes); </script> Extrem...

Just a quick post listing some of the social media colours for use in your icons Facebook Blue:  #3B5998; White:  #FFFFFF; Font:   Klavika  Twitter Blue: #4099FF; White:  #FFFFFF; Font:   Pico - Alphabet LinkedIn Blue:  #0082B0; White:  #FFFFFF; Font:   Myriad Pro Bold Blogspot Orange:  #FF7419; White: #FFFFFF; Font:  Custom font (you will have to make one yourself) Tumblr Blue:  #243C54; White:  #FFFFFF; Font:   Bookman Old Style Bold Sample Icons:

We all know that there are many robots out there crawling our sites look for email addresses to send spam to. We also know that we need to try and hide our email addresses to make it harder on the crawling robots. This usually involves referencing an ASCII chart to get the correct hexadecimal codes for each letter and symbol in the email address and then manually typing them into your code. So, I figured someone out there must have automated the process at least and a little bit and I was pleasantly surprised to find this site: http://www.fingerlakesbmw.org/main/flobfuscate.php They offer a nice simple script where you put in your email address and they convert it for you. Cut and paste to your code and you're done.

Thanks to the crafty work of Jacob Bijani over at www.border-radius.com , a lot of us web developers can breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to sorting out css curved borders across all supported browsers.  Let's face it, anything to make our lives easier is a good thing. Quickly enter your desired corner dimensions and watch the code get generated on the fly.