J Design In Motion

Today or any other day…

Redesign redesign redesign

I am going for much simpler… besides, I am sick of looking at the post about English to Spanish translation.. that’s not really even what that does. It’s kind of misleading.

English to Spanish…

Just coded a really quick easy way to provide english or spanish text on a simple site.. (this doesn’t actually do the translation – it just is a button to switch the website) didn’t need anything more complicated than this.. as the client already had the translations..

We generally don’t use machine translation because of accuracy problems–is that what the plug-in does? Or does it facilitate other aspects of managing a mirror language site?
Por lo general, no usan la traducción automática, debido a problemas de precisión – es que lo que el plug-in no? ¿O es facilitar otros aspectos de la gestión de un sitio en espejo?

Haga clic para español Click for english

Happy New Year

So everyone is going to be putting up a post today about this being the new year and all of the changes ahead for 2012 and this and that.  I would like to say I am going to be different.. and well.. I really don’t have much to say.  I can tell you what I hope to accomplish.  I hope that I can get my act together and start creating more and better tutorials.  I have learned so much in even the last few months that I would love to share with people.  The problem is always trying to find the time to do all of this.  Pinehead tv has been a huge supporter for me and I need to play catch up with them as they keep spitting out more and more good material.  So how do I accomplish all of this?..  Who knows.. but hopefully I can.  Lots of people do it in much greater capacities so I really have no excuse.  Here is to 2012 and me getting off my ass.. or actually.. sitting on my ass for longer periods of time.. as it were..

Merry Holiday

Just wanted to say Merry Holiday to all you peeps.. have a great day!!

WordPress Scare

So yesterday it was finally time to move over a website from the temp directory to the main directory for a client. Using Filezilla I was dragging and dropping the files before the big database transfer and my finger slipped. Files went everywhere they were not supposed to. This of course was immediately followed by a string of words that no man woman or child should be allowed to hear… ever. So after the minor freak out I got down to the nitty gritty and decided to share my nice little resolution. Of course the first thing I did before anything was to download the whole database so I was safe there. I took the wp-content folder and downloaded it as well as the wp-settings.php file and the wp-config.php file. At this point I just left all of the messy files where they were and proceeded to put the original website into it’s own folder. I called it _OLDSITE_ just so anyone would be able to figure out what was in there. At this point I got up and got a cup of coffee.. This is something to consider, even though the client’s website was down and I needed to get it back up I had to step away from my computer once I was able to save the most important files. It gave me a chance to collect my thoughts and figure out my next steps. After getting back to my desk I took a new installation of WordPress and put it into the main folder of the client site, I then uploaded all the saved files and replaced the defaults. (These were the wp-content folder, settings and config file). So now I had to tackle the database. Using phpmyadmin and a great little snippet I basically did a search and replace and removed the temp folder from the permalinks. Here is the snippet just in case you wanted to see it.

update “table name goes here” set option_value = replace(option_value,’URL I want to replace’,'URL I want to replace it with’);

After diligently making sure I covered all my tables the site was ready. All changes went through and it’s up and running. Phew…. I think the point of all this was to say that as long as you make sure to always back things up you can still recover from what may seem like huge disasters. And WordPress is pretty amazing. I know that when first looking at it and all it’s billions of files it can seem daunting… but hang in there.. I have to be told that myself from time to time..

Wow.. a new tutorial?!! PHP and SQLite

In this quick tut.. I show how to create a SQLite database and put some stuff in it as well as show that stuff.. hang on to your hats and stuff..




Site update… ?

So a good friend of mine has decided to update his site.. it’s long overdue he says.. after taking a good look at mine, I realized that I too need an update. It was the first WordPress theme I built so it still looks very.. well.. WordPressy.. So i think that after when I finally get a break I am going to do major site overhaul. Which based on the way things are going will happen sometime in late 2012.. oh and I have to do more screencasts.. crud..Thanks everyone for visiting.. I really hope I can get some newer better screencasts up soon.

Work is work

Well we got the restaurant opened and now comes the additional advertising… lots of work ahead..

Out of the Loop

I have been a busy little bee the last week or so.. I hope to be able to start in on another Twilio cast soon… things are finally winding down a tiny bit.

Twilio part 1.. Finally

In this screencast we start out with learning the basics of coding for Twilio, an IVR phone API. I don’t go into a lot of detail this time around.. but it’s a good jumping off point.




ScreenCast

So obviously I have not gotten any screencasts done. The rest of this month is pretty much full. With new Clients and the restaurant and bar opening I am pretty swamped. Hopefully I can hit it hard come Oct 1st. Thank you everyone for your patience! Meanwhile Anthony over at Pinehead will be putting up some great tutorials for you. You can link to his site on the right hand side.. right over there –>

Screencast Delay

Bit of a delay on the new screencast for Twilio. I may do a quick tip just to keep you all satisfied. I have been very busy with the move and haven’t had much time to get a recording done. Meanwhile make sure to check out some great tutorials over at PineHead Tuts

HoverFlow

Just got done doing some work with the fantastic Hoverflow plugin. Check it out here

Enjoy!

New Tutorials

So this week and next week are going to be pretty hectic. Not sure that I am going to be able to get any screencasts done. I may do a couple of quick tips but is probably all I will have time for. But don’t go anywhere.. I won’t..

Twilio

Hopefully next week I can get started on my Twilio screencast. Don’t know what Twilio is?..

Well Check it out here

Mobile Form


Wrapping up the Form creation series we take the form that we have already styled and convert it into a JQuery Mobile style. It is easy to do. You will need the form files from the original screencast of creating our form.


Geo Location



In this screencast I show how to use the HTML5 and GeoLocation features with Google Maps API. And we even have a little drop marker animation.




Quick update

Hey there. Just wanted you all to know that the GeoLocation tutorial was done today on my Mac.. and I could not for the life of me get it to work in the iOS simulator so I am going to re-record it on my PC. It was 45 minutes long anyway.. so I apologize for the delay but just know that it is coming.

Thanks!

Javascript Annoying Box



In this tut I show how to animate that annoying little box or banner that pops up on some websites. This tutorial uses just plain old Javascript and gives a good look at how to use Javascript to manipulate objects.




Form OnBlur


Continuing on with my Form series I decided to add some Javascript to the code that allows values in the name and email fields when they are not active. I remember looking all over the place to find out how to do this so I hope this helps someone.





Need the source files?.. you can get em here

Google Static Map

*UPDATE* You can use Geolocation to find your own location and I will have a tutorial about this coming out soon *

In this screencast I am going to show how to place a Google static map on your JQuery Mobile page. This video is very short and not too detailed.



Here is the code I use in the screencast to find the latitude and longitude on Google maps.


javascript:void(prompt(”,gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

Another DatePicker

This one is provided by JQuery Mobile themselves… it works great as well!


Here is the link


Enjoy!

Using google maps

Coming up next week… A new tutorial on using google maps static API with JQuery mobile! Stay tuned!

Datepicker for Jquery Mobile

I found this great datepicker for Jquery Mobile.

It’s called Mobiscroll

They have a great wiki and easy to style!

PHP Form Part 2

Part 2 of PHP Form scripting


PHP Form Part 1

In this video we start scripting our Form with PHP to make it functional. I don’t go into great detail as what a much of the scripting actually does and tried to keep my descriptions as basic as possible to avoid any confusion as I just wanted to focus on making a functional email form




PHP Screencast

I just finished the PHP screencast.. it’s about 40 minutes long so I am going to try and edit it down a bit. It should be up in the next day or so.

PHP Screencast

This portion of the cast is coming soon I promise.. I just found a bunch of water damage in my kitchen so that is gotta be taken care of first…

Basic Contact Form

In this video I show how to create a simple Contact Form in HTML and CSS. We will be moving on to scripting this Form and making it functional. This tutorial is a basic recreation of the one provided by Nathan at Tutvid.com




It’s July 5th

So the more I think about the more I think I am going to show you how to build a PHP contact form as part of the next screen cast. I know that I stated we are going to turn this into a WP theme and that is coming but it might be good to show how a simple contact form is built from the ground up. There are a lot of tutorials that show how to build the form itself but not a lot of information on putting the script in there to make it work.

It’s July 4th

I feel I am quite far behind on my screen cast series. I am pretty busy and that is a great thing, so I don’t feel too bad about it. Moving to WP I believe is the next step in the series. It’s coming up.

Screencast Part 3 CSS

Finally, in this screen cast we style or home page. I move pretty quickly through this process but I think you will get what is going on. Like the other videos please feel free to ask me a question if there is something that you don’t understand. Or if you have a better way of doing this. I always love to learn new things. Enjoy!

Screencasts

Sorry that I have not put up the third part of my screencast series. I have been pretty busy this week. I have most of the recording edited and hope to have it up next week. I am splitting the CSS series into two videos since it is pretty long. Thanks again!

Screencast Part 2 HTML

In part 2 of my series I am going to show you how to code the basic HTML of the website. I show a top-down approach to coding the HTML and it should be fairly easy to follow. I won’t be doing anything crazy or difficult, so no need to hook up the seat belt.



Screencast Part 1 Photoshop

This is first of a series of screen casts devoted to the reworking of one of my first websites. Part 1 will go over what we are doing as well as using Photoshop and some Firefox add-ons to get the images we are going to need.




View the full size video HERE

Screencast series coming up

So after doing my first screen cast a couple of days ago I decided that

  1. I can do it better
  2. We completely changed the website around so any new screen cast would be wrong and
  3. I have a project that would fit perfect with this.



With that being said I am going to start a new screen cast that will be taking an existing website (that I did a while back) and completely re write the code as well as adding more functionality. The website in question is just about to make changes to their information and I never made this page dynamic so I am going to do that. I am going to put the screen casts into bite size chunks so you won’t have to sit through 50 minutes of me talking. I will start recording in the next day or so and should have the first cast up soon. I hope that you will enjoy!

Plugins

Learning about creating custom plugins today.. have a new client that might need something I haven’t been able to find. This is gonna be fun..

From PhotoShop to HTML and CSS


*UPDATE* I have removed this video as it was waaaaaay to long and since I am doing the new series I cover all the same stuff anyway.
*UPDATE* We have actually changed the look of the website in this video. In the next installment of the video I will show those changes.

In this video I am going to show you how I take a Photoshop image and transition it into HTML and CSS. This is a beginner tutorial and if you have any questions feel free to ask. Hopefully you will get the idea of how to take your Photoshop design and turn it into a basic Webpage. I hope to expand on this tutorial in the future including more advanced CSS and scripting. I may even go as far as adding some PHP elements or even turning this into a WordPress Theme…

Busy busy busy

I know I keep promising some videos but I have been swamped.. you would think I would be smart enough to hit record on my screen when I am working through some of my most recent issues but no.. I don’t… well maybe I will today…

In the works

I do have some quick tips in the works.. I just had finals this weeks so things got a bit hectic…