We’ve been wanting to pick up development on Certs, our newest social project, for some time now. Looks like we might be starting as early as next week! More to come…

Our user base for Filed! (our public/private online file management solution) is starting to grow. It might be time for a public face for that soon as well..

Both Zack and I are both setting out full time to develop software for the community.  Its our primary focus to make the web a better place to be a part of.  We are currently  teaming up with some investment partners to start channeling our efforts towards this endeavor.  We look forward to the challenges we are sure to face and hope that everyone benefits for what we’re storming up. 

So integrating javascript into .Net server controls is a little more involved than doing some simple php stuff… 

I did find some resources to help make this happen though:

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread95824.html

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479390.aspx

http://www.15seconds.com/issue/030303.htm

And probably the most helpful - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa478975.aspx

JavaScript links:

addloadevent -http://snipplr.com/view/2166/addloadevent-function/

FastInit - faster than window.onload: http://www.tetlaw.id.au/view/javascript/fastinit

I started working on gammachipikes.com this past week and have updated the site with a new header and navigation.  The site is based in the oh-so-popular blogging CMS (content management system for the uninitiated).  Everything seems to look great in firefox, but there are some issues with the opacity of the navigation in all versions of IE.  I’ll be looking into the issue further towards the end of the week.  I found a css tutorial on opacity at http://www.mandarindesign.com/opacity.html.  The examples on their site seem to be running fine in IE, but the css I’m trying to apply the styling rules to doesn’t seem to like it.  I’m guessing it has to do with the blocking I’m setting up for the li’s to not run into eachother.

 I’ll be changing their navigation to dynamic drop down lists by customizing one of the many plugins available to do this.  One plugin, elegantly named "wp_jquery_dropdownmenu_plugin", uses an ajax library for the visual drop effect, and is based on the existing page hierarchy of the site.  My main concern is limiting how many "top-level parent" pages are displayed on the main nav area in the header.  If too many elements are displayed it could make for a design issue.

The demo seems promising though: http://throwingshapes.net/hp_wordpress/

The .Net framework provides security permission settings in the web.config file.  The default settings is:

<trust level="Medium" originUrl=""/>

For development purposes, to resolve the odbc permission errors while trying to debug I changed it to:

<trust level="Full" originUrl=""/>

This cleared up the error but has probably opened the security of the site wide open.

Here’s a link to reference for further information:

msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302425.aspx#c09618429_016

We’ve finally got RW Supply up and running with an eCommerce site.  The site is powered by the Zen Cart engine, which was chosen because it’s relatively easy to modify since it’s all in php and well documented.  Their are a few things that I’m still working out though, like the forcing users to register with the site to buy anything.  I think we have a potential to get more sales if we allow the user to buy without registering, but we’ll have to test some more to see just what kind of problems that may cause.

Also, now that the site is up and running with over 400 products, it’s time to start trying to draw people in.  Coming from a technical background, advertising is pretty new to use.  We opened an account with Google Adwords as well as registering the site to several directories.  I’m not sure how this will work out, but I’m going to keep trying to play with the Adwords wording and keyword selection and see what kind of results we can get.  In the meantime, I’ll still be looking at other options to get the word out.

Organizing CSS in CakePHP is going to be a little different.  We want to keep things as organized as possible.  I found some tips on the organization of css styling sheets using hierarchical structure within the application itself.

http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/some-ideas-to-organize-your-css-files-and-autoload-them-in-cakephp

To further explain how css works in CakePHP I found this link: http://letthemcodecake.com/learning-cakephp/4/

Adding CSS for specific pages I found this link: http://cakebaker.42dh.com/2007/03/14/referencing-css-files/

We are doing some custom software for one of our clients.  One feature requires the upload of a document by a user.  To accomplish this we will be using swfUpload so users will know how much longer it will take to upload the document.  Ultimately this decision will allow us to give our customers users a better experience during their visit.

http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/swfupload-and-multipurpose-uploader

http://www.invokemedia.com/css-dropdown-menu-with-wordpress.html

Now just for the styling….

I’m working on a gallery integration with wordpress.  There are many candidates out there.  One of the most attractive is ZenPhoto.  It takes a very minimalistic approach towards custom photo galleries.

Now just to find the right plugin to integrate it with a wordpress installation…

• http://www.zenphoto.org/support/topic.php?id=1038
• http://www.chilifrei.net/?p=47
  • looks like this is the one we’re looking for…