Attackr.com » Developer Portal for web designers, developers and programmers http://www.attackr.com Come To Share, Come To Learn Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:09:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 A Great Little Script for Affiliate Marketers http://www.attackr.com/a-great-little-script-for-affiliate-marketers/ http://www.attackr.com/a-great-little-script-for-affiliate-marketers/#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:10:50 +0000 Karen http://www.attackr.com/a-great-little-script-for-affiliate-marketers/ There are, unfortunately, some dishonest people who will either hijack or try to bypass your affiliate links while you work your tail off wondering why you are not getting any sales. I’ve found the best solution to stop that from happening.

There are many services on the net offering shorter links, etc., but to me they don’t seem as professional as this script I found recently called simply Free Link Cloaker. Not only will this script mask your affiliate links, but it uses a friendly keyword format such as http://yourdomain.com/recommends/keyword
Nice!

Another added feature is that the script keeps track of the number of clicks your cloaked link gets, so you will know which affiliate products are converting for you.

It does require a MySQL database and it uses PHP rather than Javascript, making it a much more stable link cloaker than others you may find in your searches. It is easy to set up, taking only minutes, but you can get support if needed and upgrades for life. I find this little script to be an invaluable resource for every affiliate marketer, or for anyone who just wants shorter URLs.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/a-great-little-script-for-affiliate-marketers/feed/ 2 Learning jQuery: A reference guide and examples for the rest of us http://www.attackr.com/learning-jquery-a-reference-guide-and-examples-for-the-rest-of-us/ http://www.attackr.com/learning-jquery-a-reference-guide-and-examples-for-the-rest-of-us/#comments Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:40:59 +0000 sdkester http://www.attackr.com/learning-jquery-a-reference-guide-and-examples-for-the-rest-of-us/ Learning jQueryIntroduction

As a longtime jQuery user I was excited to take some time to read and review two new jQuery books.

Packt Publishing provided me free copies of Learning jQuery and the jQuery Reference Guide.

I spent most of October reading through them and making the most of my first book review experience.

In short, these are both excellent books and getting them together will benefit a developer of any skill level. This review will focus on the books, but is equally a review of the jQuery javascript framework.

As a Visual Foxpro developer using the West Wind Web Connection server framework, I was in need of a client side framework to both reduce my work load and make my applications more browser agnostic.

One of the most important aspects of this was that the client side framework has to be backend agnostic. I tried plain ole’ javascript (POJ), Mootools, prototype, and a few of the ajax only frameworks on Sourceforge at the time. None of them made any sense to me as a windows developer.

I was in need of a tab control one day for a project and it was jQuery and its wealth of plugins to the rescue.

As I started writing my own jQuery code, it just made sense. I couldn’t write in POJ anymore. Not that I’m stubborn, I just can’t remember how, jQuery just makes it so easy.

As time progressed and my love affair with jQuery grew, I was (and continue to be) in need of some more formal education. Both of these books accomplish this in different ways.

jQuery Reference Guide

Sharing a similar first chapter to the “Learning jQuery” about obtaining jQuery, the reference guide the jumps into a “what were going to tell you” mode that is concise and to the point. My military expereince taught me to appreciate their…

  • What we are going to tell you
  • What we came to tell you
  • What we told you

…format throughout the book. The next ten chapters cover the wide range of tasks in jQuery starting with selectors and covering HTML form manipulation. I keep a one page cheat sheet close to my development machine at all times, but this reference guide is going to be just as close to me from now on.

None of this guide would have made any sense were it not for its companion, Learning jQuery.

Learning jQuery

This ten chapter and three appendices book can nearly stand as a reference guide on its own. The authors stick with the same HTML through most of the book to illustrate the progessive enhancement that is so important to the jQuery methodology.

Personally I appreciated this as you could watch a simple css/html page become an enchanced interface with real world implications.

After the excellent examples a chapter is devoted to jQuerys biggest strength, plugins, some of which I’ve listed below.

Appendices “A” and “B” cover the online resources available to a jQuery user and appendix “C” goes into some of the higher level things to do with jQuery and how to avoid memory leaks.

My point is that there is something in this book for every level of javascript developer, from beginner to expert. I highly recommend it!

Wrapping up

jQuery was a big hit at the recent Web Connection conference I attended. I took the books with me, but didn’t get to spend much time with them as they were being borrowed, discussed, and shared among the attendees.

If you are looking to start with jQuery or expand your knowledge base, these two books will suit you well.

$(books).purchase(function(){
$(.JavascriptSkills).increase();
});

Publisher Resources / Purchase

Other Reviews

Personal (short) List of jQuery Resources

Originally posted on SKFox.com. Used with permission.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/learning-jquery-a-reference-guide-and-examples-for-the-rest-of-us/feed/ 1 jQuery: New version and UI package http://www.attackr.com/jquery-new-version-and-ui-package/ http://www.attackr.com/jquery-new-version-and-ui-package/#comments Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:17:32 +0000 sdkester http://www.attackr.com/jquery-new-version-and-ui-package/ John Resig, the creator of jQuery has been going non stop. jQuery 1.2 was released on 10 September to much fanfare by those who follow it, followed by an update to 1.2.1 for bugs and a missing feature.

They didn’t stop there though. Immediately afterwards, jQuery UI was released. jQuery UI is a package of user interface widgets that can be combined to create a powerful user interface for the web.

The list of themeable widgets include:

  • Accordian
  • Calendar
  • Dialog
  • Magnifier
  • Shadows
  • Slider
  • Sortable Tables
  • …and Tabs

As well as mouse interactions such as:

  • Draggables
  • Droppables
  • Sortables
  • …and resizables

Just as I was thinking that the jQuery UI page could use some work, a post came up in my RSS reader from Glen Lipka. He opined that the demo page made it hard to see what was going on in the background with the UI framework.

Like him, I’m sure many of us came to learn HTML/JS/CSS from a quick ‘view source’ of the page. In time, I’m sure they will get around to fleshing out the documentation and examples.

As a regular user of jQuery, I can’t imagine writing plain ole javascript anymore.

In fact, when it came time to take a look at something I wrote a few years ago in POJ, I could barely follow it. jQuery helps me write less code faster that is easier to read in the future.

A good example how jQuery can reduce your code came by accident today on Ajaxian. Jon Davis wrote a script that would pull static content into a div. Think server side includes (SSI), but client side instead.

This 300+ line script could have easily have been written in jQuery in just 3 lines, as demonstrated by a member of the jQuery team, Yehuda Katz:

$(“textarea[src], div[src], span[src]“).each(function() {
$(this).load(this.src);
});

A overly simple example perhaps, but important none the less. Don’t forget to get the latest jQuery info from their website, blog, or discussion groups.

As this framework evolves, so to may the way you write javascript.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/jquery-new-version-and-ui-package/feed/ 0 SRG Clean Archives 4.1 Released http://www.attackr.com/srg-clean-archives-41-released/ http://www.attackr.com/srg-clean-archives-41-released/#comments Fri, 22 Jun 2007 07:13:52 +0000 Sean http://www.attackr.com/srg-clean-archives-41-released/ I’m happy to announce the release of SRG Clean Archives 4.1 for WordPress.

Per a few user requests, the plugin is now completely localized using language files created with poEdit.

Current available language packs:

  • English (default – built into plugin)
  • French – Français
  • German – Deutsch

If you’d like to help by contributing additional language translations, let me know. This would be a great help.

To find out more about this release, take a look at the following article.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/srg-clean-archives-41-released/feed/ 0 Plugin Compatibility for WordPress 2.2 http://www.attackr.com/plugin-compatibility-for-wordpress-22/ http://www.attackr.com/plugin-compatibility-for-wordpress-22/#comments Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:12:53 +0000 Karen http://www.attackr.com/plugin-compatibility-for-wordpress-22/ I recently upgraded a client’s WordPress blog to version 2.2. She had a slew of plugins which were corrupt and had to be re-installed and re-activated.

It was then I discovered that quite a few were not compatible with the latest version of WordPress. So then I consulted the list of compatible plugins at:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Plugin_Compatibility/2.2

and sure enough, the list is small compared to the plugin page at the WordPress Plugin Database.

I have yet to upgrade my WordPress blog as I have been busy and now in a way I’m glad I’ve stalled. Several plugins that I use will not work including the “Font-Resizer” I have implemented on my sidebar.

I haven’t checked all of them as I too have many plugins installed, and I don’t see some of them on the Codex list. Maybe the plugin authors are too busy to go and submit their updated plugin to the Codex. That seems quite odd, since it would be great exposure for the programmer, I would think.

I would also hope that the folks running the Plugins Database would update listings to include an indication that plugins are compatible with version 2.2.

That would save hours and hours of research for those of us who need and use various plugins to extend the functionality of their WordPress blog. Then we would not hesitate to upgrade to the latest and greatest stable release of a fantastic blogging tool. At least I wouldn’t.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/plugin-compatibility-for-wordpress-22/feed/ 2 File uploads with Ajax http://www.attackr.com/file-uploads-with-ajax/ http://www.attackr.com/file-uploads-with-ajax/#comments Thu, 31 May 2007 18:59:31 +0000 sdkester http://www.attackr.com/file-uploads-with-ajax/ I get asked a lot, especially on the Web Connect forum and jQuery mailing list, about Ajax (not AJAX, thank you) file uploads.

The XHR object in javascript cannot access file uploads, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t give your users an Ajax-like experience. Here are some options and their corresponding back end languages.

My personal favorite, jQuery form plugin which handles all of your ajax and file uploads at once. Very nice, highly recommended as is jQuery.

Using Ajax in your website makes you buzzword compliant these days, but once the hype passes I think everyone will agree then when used properly, it can greatly enhance the user experience.

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