T e c h n o b a b b l e

It's been a busy busy time for me just lately, updating Exmoor Park with a few more listings and a funky new exmoor accommodation search map.

There are also stand alone maps for exmoor self catering cottages and exmoor bed and breakfast

Just finished working on the new D K Precision website for Wire and Spark Erosion as well. Really nice people to work with on their simple html site.
Very basic with 4 pages but includes a flash image cycler, lightbox image effects and a nice little google map!

Loads more to say, but no so much time. Will get another posting in later this week with some further updates.

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I had an interesting little problem the other day whilst messing around with Amazon's little widgets! They are fun little boxes you can stick in your blog or on any web page really.

I had a page that validated as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and wanted to maintain my code compliance as per the W3 validator whilst including a widget.

Amazon gave me the following nasty bit of code:

<OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/swflash.cab" id="Player_094fec33-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062" WIDTH="430px" HEIGHT="324px"> <PARAM NAME="movie" VALUE="http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&
MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Ftwighlightzon-21%2F8003%2F094fec33
-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062&Operation=GetDisplayTemplate"><PARAM NAME="quality" VALUE="high"><PARAM NAME="bgcolor" VALUE="#FFFFFF"><PARAM NAME="allowscriptaccess" VALUE="always"><embed src="http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&
MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Ftwighlightzon-21%2F8003%2F094fec33
-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062&Operation=GetDisplayTemplate" id="Player_094fec33-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" name="Player_094fec33-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" align="middle" height="324px" width="430px"/> </OBJECT> <NOSCRIPT><A HREF="http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&
MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Ftwighlightzon-21%2F8003%2F094fec33
-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.co.uk Widgets</A></NOSCRIPT>

Which in it's own right threw up 60 errors!

Breaking this down to it's core components we have:

1: The widget flash file - "http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&
MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Ftwighlightzon-21%2F8003%2F094fec33
-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062&Operation=GetDisplayTemplate"

2: The flash movie name - Player_094fec33-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062

3: The width - 430

4: The height - 324

5: The background colour - #FFFFFF ( white )

6: The noscript link - "http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&
MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Ftwighlightzon-21%2F8003%2F094fec33
-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062&Operation=NoScript"

I've bolded them in the code above and below to help.

Now, we put that together as follows using Geoff Stearns SWFObject script:

<div id="flashcontent"><p>If you don't see the slideshow, <a href="http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&
MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Ftwighlightzon-21%2F8003%2F094fec33
-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062&Operation=NoScript">click here.</a>.</p></div> <script type="text/javascript"> var so = new SWFObject("http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&
MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Ftwighlightzon-21%2F8003%2F094fec33
-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062&Operation=GetDisplayTemplate", "Player_094fec33-3c6e-40fb-989a-051d05a8d062", "430", "324", "6", "#ffffff"); so.write("flashcontent"); </script>

Plus making sure we have the all important flashdetect.js file uploaded and the following tag inserted into the head of our file:

<script type="text/javascript" src="flashdetect.js"></script>

Voila! . . . . . now we have a validating Amazon widget

A working version can be seen here Amazon Widget Validation, just click the button.

I'm sure someone else has posted the solution for Amazon widget validation, but I just couldn't find it myself and thought it might help posting the solution that I used.

It passes XHTML 1.0 Strict as well by the looks of it.

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One of the things that I try to do when I get images from clients, is to make sure they are named correctly. By that I mean that instead of sending your web designer images straight from your digital camera named " DSC145.jpg " or anything similar; name them specific to the item/product.
If you've got a large silver necklace, call it "large_silver_necklace.jpg " or "large-silver-necklace.jpg". Don't leave gaps between the name as some web server operating systems do not like that
Use either hyphens or underscores to fill the gaps in any name.

This is very good practice for both your website/designer and for your images being picked up on image searches by Google and other search engines.

Using a sensible naming convention for all your images will increase the chance of inclusion when someone carries out a Google image search.

If designing your own site, you will want to include relevant alt and title text for your images.
The alt attribute is designed to be an alternative text description for images. The alt text is often displayed before the image is fully loaded in your web browser and is used instead of the image in text-based browsers. The alt attribute is a required element for images only and is a needed to meet with current HTML and XHTML web standards when validating as per W3C.

Alternatively, the title attribute can be used for any page element, but is not actually a requirement . You can use it to describe links, images, and other page elements.

Don't forget to include the title attribute in your image element.

e.g.

<img src="diamond_silver_watch.jpg" alt="diamond silver watch" title="silver watch encrusted with diamonds">

<a href="index.html" title="Technobabble - the home of the Twighlightzone blog">Blog</a>

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Well . . . . I have been looking for a decent social networking script for a while, and eventually came across Elgg.

I downloaded it after reading some good stuff about it, but alas, the post install setup has not quite gone to plan! I am having a collection of interesting problems, some of which I've solved, some of which may be a bit more awkward! Anyway, I'm hoping to get this up and running within the next month, as a trial for a new pet site project which is happening later this year.

PS.
If anyone knows of a decent open source social networking script, then please let me know

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