Ok, so getting the content type’s comments into a block is pretty easy once you know how.

This method will require you to use PHP code from within the block you will create to show the comments. So the first thing is to make sure that this is possible by going to site building and then modules and turning on the PHP Filter under the category of Core Optional (if it is not already on that is).

NOTE: Check at admin/settings/filters to be sure that only trusted roles can use the PHP filter, otherwise your web site could be vulnerable to attack. By default, only the administrator can use this filter.

Create a new block and select a region for it. Put the following code on the body textarea:

Do not forget to select the PHP filter from the list of the input filters. After entering the rest of the settings for your block click save.

Now your new block should be ready to assign to whatever region you want. If the page you load has comments related to it. They should now appear via the block.

The arg() funtion may seem a bit cryptic if you’re new to Drupal. Here is a quick explanation from George Notaras in his post: Drupal Tip: List a node’s taxonomy terms inside a Block which I found helpful in compiling this information.

“Now to some technical details about arg(0) and arg(1), which probably seem a bit cryptic to a user that is not experienced with Drupal (like me). Assume we have the following URL to a node: www.example.org/node/23, which means that the path to the page is /node/23. Well, arg(0) is the node part and arg(1) is the second part; 23 that is. Read about the arg() function.”

I hope this was helpful.

Too bad, these are not as easy to remember, oh well.

So anyway, if you’re going MAD like me trying to figure out a quick “end of line” key now you know. Hope this helps ! : )

Try taking a look at the CSS on the element following the form. In my last encounter with this problem, it was a <p> that followed a form within a div.

The <p> had  a CSS declaration of float:left and was inside a div that was floated to the right.

I do not often have a use for the select element in front end web design. In this case, however, I was creating a user interface for a back end product control panel. It needed to be very compact with a lot of options packed into a small place. I ran into a problem when I needed to group four select elements together. The select elements all needed to be set to multi. Everything was fine with the exception of Internet Explorer 7 (big surprise!). IE would “leak” the contents of the select element outside of the element spilling into the surrounding div whenever it was floated in a div. I have not yet discover the exact conditions under which this happens as I was in a time crunch.

I spent about 20 minuets searching the Internet for someone who had come across the same problem but found nothing. So I thought I had better post how I decided to deal with this. Before I go on, I would like to mention that I did find a very good post by Nicholas Rougeux, called “Check it. Don’t select it“  . It is worth a look as it may be a better alternative in your case.

Cutting through all the “chase”, it boiled down to a rather simple fix. The only thing I could do was to encase the select multi in a div that had overflow:hidden. Note that this is not the setting of overflow:hidden on the select element set with multi. The overflow:hidden setting is on the div that immediately surrounds the select element set to multi. In this way, the garbage data that ie was leaking out from the element would be hidden away from view.

So, for what it’s worth, I hope this little post will help someone out there who is suffering from the woes of Internet Explore. Oh, and if you have any answers or better solutions, by all means contact me. I’m happy to share and be enlightened.

Typically, you have an element such as an “input”, “a” or “select (options)” that has an attribute of “onClick”, “onMouseOver” or “onChange” with a value of some function that will execute upon the event represented by the attribute.

UPDATE: This has been changed to accommodate ie. The following way will work in both Firefox and Internet Explorer:

button_element.onclick = function() {doSomething();};

Thanks! to this post. (note: the answer is at the bottom of the post after some discussion.) Thanks for sharing

To assign a new value to the attribute, you need to identify the element you want to change like this:

elem =  document.getElementById(”myElementId”)

Then simply assign the new value to the attribute like this:

elem.attributes["onclick"].value = “myUpdatedFunction(’My parameter’)” ;

Now, if someone clicks on the element, the new updated version of myUpdatedFunction() will be called. Notice that you can even pass a parameter to the function this way. Just be sure to nest your quotes properly.

This method will also work for other attribute types such as onMouseOver, onChange an so on.

I hope this helps.

Setting the PHP Execution Time Limit

What tipped me off to the problem was the fact that, every once in a while the file would upload with no error. That is when I realized it was not only a “memory limit” issue but also a timing issue.
Settings we do not often deal with are easy to forget about and that was the case this time. Once I remembered to reset the max_execution_time to the appropriate amount of seconds, the files uploaded just fine.

As mentioned above, the maximum execution time limit is set in the php.ini file. The line of code in the php.ini file is:

max_execution_time = 30 ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds

It is generally not wise to make this change in the php.ini file itself unless you have a very good reason. The preferred way would be to make the required change in execution time for the particular script you happen to be running only. This gives you better control over site operations and security.

Simply place an ini file setting within the file that executes the script which is causing a delay ( in my case the file upload ). The line code looks like this:

set_time_limit ( 60 ) ;

With this little line of code in you PHP script, you are now afforded 60 seconds of time to run your program. You can adjust the seconds as you wish by simply changing the number. I hope this helps!

Since web pages are, for the most part, about the users getting information, how the information is presented is of great importance. There are several ways to do this, namely, position, contrast & color, size and design elements.

Position

It is a known fact that the upper left corner of the page is the most frequently viewed. Our attention generally radiates off from there in horizontal and vertical scans. The average of these, as shown on a graph, forms a fuzzy triangle with the most active area in the upper left. Where we put our elements of information on the page clearly make a difference on the attention they get.

Contrast  & Color

When planning your color scheme, be sure to include colors for getting attention as well colors of a subtle nature. Using these properly you can influence which information is highlighted or treated as supplementary. Foreground and background can make a huge difference in how much attention an element gets. Be sure to create high contrast for items of importance and low contrast for information that you do not place as much importance on.

Size

It’s pretty simple, really. Bigger gets more attention.

Design Elements

Graphics can really play an effective role in directing attention where it belongs. Do not get overly complicated about this, though. For example, if there is a huge red arrow pointing at an element on the page, that is where the user will look!

As simple as all this sounds. Learning to use it wisely is an art. Harmonizing these principles with the theme of the site design may often prove challenging. So, from time to time it is good to review the basics and make sure we always improving and learning best practices of web site design.

Keep a mirror handy.
When your creative vision begins to be overpowered by the images you have been looking at for so long. Look at you project in the mirror. By doing this, you are presenting a completely fresh and different image to your mind and retina, one that isn’t “burnt” into it. In that moment of a fresh look, try to find what is “off” about your design. It usually “smacks” me in the face when I use this method.

Do not use the mirror regularly. Save it for when you need this extra fresh view. If you keep using the mirror then the effect will not be as strong since your mind will be accustomed to the reverse image as well as the actual image.

Try this out and let me know if has been helpful for you as well.

RIA (Rich Internet Application) Andy Gutmans says RIA is “…how we bring the experience from the desktop into the browser.” What this means is this. You may have noticed that programs that run on your Mac or PC run faster and smoother, providing what is often called a better “user experience”. It used to be that anything on the Internet was generally accepted to be slower and “choppier”. That is because not only did data need to be transmitted at much slower rates, but also entire pages needed to be re-loaded for each and every change that would occur. So RIA, or “Rich Internet Application” refers to improving the experience in your Internet browser to be smoother and faster like your current desktop application.

SOA (Service Oriented Applications)
“What SOA is all about is how the WEB 2.0 applications expose their functionality so that other applications can leverage and integrate the functionality providing a much richer set of applications?” –Andy Guttman

As companies develop new and cool things on the web, they provide a way for other programmers and web developers to use them and make these part of some new design that otherwise would not exist. An example of this would be Google Maps. Google has what is called an API (Application Program Interface) for Google Maps. The API is kind of like a window that lets a web developer use the Google Map technology in their own inventive ways. There are examples of web sites that have tapped into the national database of sex offenders for a given area and create a map displaying their locations. This was made possible because of Google’s API for Google Maps. We can definitely refer to this as an SOA or Service Oriented Application.

The Social Web
Web 2.0 Applications tend to interact much more with the end user. Weather it is by tagging content or subscribing to an RSS feed, doing or watching a Podcast, contributing to a Wiki, and of couse Blogging.

“As part of the social nature of these applications the end user is an integral part of the data is therefore much more a contributor to the content of the application by providing feed back, allowing that application to leverage the users that are using it.”- Andy Gutmans

Understanding Web 2.0 will help you create a web site that offers the kind of experience that people will come back to repeatedly, bragging to thier friends and family about the web site they found.

Along with site design that is lean and beautiful come a few frustrations, however. Many designers find that after publishing an elegant user interface, they return to their client’s site a few months later only to find it cluttered up with gaudy graphics and inappropriate colors.

One of the ways to keep this phenomenon under control is by providing good documentation. User interface documentation provides guidance on how to maintain the design and update the user interface while keeping it clean and beautiful.

Create a User Interface Style Guide to Set Up Standards

Design and Brand Standards in a “Style Guide”

A “style guide” is a document used to communicate standards for branding, color, typography, and the arrangement of white space. The User Interface Style Guide can be the developer’s way of helping to keep the user interface consistent as it updated over time.

Good design is always straightforward, intuitive and informative. While giving detailed information, it also needs to be clearly understood and no more verbose than necessary. When formulating a “style guide” document, consider the following.

Composition and Layout
Your site is likely to have pages that are a variation on a theme. Define what these variations are and how they are to be used throughout the web site. Show wireframes to illustrate these variations.

Typography
The User Interface Style Guide is a good place to spell out the typeface standards for the site design. Generous use of illustrations would be appropriate to help everyone involved understand the use of placement of text, fonts, font sizes ad colors. Be sure to include the standards to be applied to promotional graphics. It is always good site design to spell out alternate typefaces for users that may not have the font that has been declared in your design.

Images
Generally speaking, good web site design portrays a consistent flow for the users to experience. This includes  image sizes. Therefore, it is important to define the standard image sizes to be used throughout the web site. It is very important to the aesthetics of a pleasant web experience to keep a reign on promotional banner graphics. Spell out what images are appropriate, how they should be aligned and how captions should appear. This is an area that effects the “mood” of you web pages so be sure to indicate what type of images may be used and who approves them. Icons, although small, play an important roll in your sites branding and navigation. Be sure to make all the needed specifications for these as well.

Color Palette
After spending hours designing a good color palette for your site, it is important that everyone who affects the site’s content respect it. Illustrate the color pallet of your web design so there is no doubt how you want it applied thought the user interface. Using exact color codes along with swatches of the colors and their appropriate locations will help avoid confusion. Screen shots are a great way to get the idea across.

Guidelines for the Brand
Aside from color, images and typography, other factors affect the brand (and other branding elements). Did you specify the appropriate white space surrounding the logo? What about what happens when the background color changes? Specifications for these elements of the user interface design should really not be left to chance. Be sure to spell out guidelines on where on the page the logo should consistently appear.

Keeping Track of Development Standards
Working as a team can be a great experience. Personally I love to be influenced by the best practices of expert site designers and specialists. The unique qualities that each of us have, make collaborating on a project synergistic. With individuality comes differences in style. A style sheet is an excellent way to coordinate the efforts of the development team. Clarify how (X)HTML, CSS and Javascript should be used as the user interface is developed. Help each team member appreciate which standards should be used, what DOCTYPE to use. Very important, often overlooked issues include naming conventions and file directory structure. Well thought out naming conventions can prevent a lot of confusion and save a lot of time if adhered to.

With a clearly documented user interface design, the look and feel you worked so hard to design has a much better chance of surviving. So try using a User Interface Style Guide for a consistent long lasting design.