Oct200816

Frontpage Slideshow for Drupal

I have begun coding a module to allow the Frontpage Slideshow to be displayed within a block or a panel.

Frontpage slideshow is a script by Joomlaworks.

The module requires that the script is purchased from Joomlaworks as it contains important files for it to work.

The module which is currently in development can be found at http://code.google.com/p/fpss-drupal/.

The code is still in an early stage but is working and usable, but I would recommend not using it on a production site.

There are a few issues with the module at the moment.

  • Module depends on jquery_update
  • Module uses the upload module to upload the image for the slide, but this allows any file to be uploaded, so requires some further work.

How does it work

The module adds in 2 new node types (slide, slideshow). Each slideshow node creates a new block which can be used anywhere in your site.

Slides are then assigned to a slideshow. The slideshow node contains most of the important settings such as dimensions and timings but as well as this there is an admin settings page which controls the default settings across the whole site such as the language of the text and the javascript engine.

I have developed the module purely with jQuery in mind. Mootools may work, but is likely to be unstable and buggy.

Where can I download this module?

Go to http://code.google.com/p/fpss-drupal/ and download it from the right hand side. If you find any issues with the module please do so by leaving an issue on the Google Code site.

Useful Drupal Module Development Book

Pro Drupal Development is a very good book published by Apress. The new second edition covers Drupal 6.

Oct200809

Google Chrome annoyances

It has been over a month now since Google released Chrome to the world and quite a few annoyances have appeared over that time.

Closing multiple tabs

The huge flaw that is extremely irritating is no warning of closing multiple tabs.

If you have 10 tabs open and accidentally close the main window at the top right rather than the tab close button. Goodbye tabs.

You can have the sessions enabled to get it back once you open Chrome again but that isn’t very helpful if you had active downloads going when you accidentally closed the browser.

Earlier today I was download Portal: Prelude, an expansion modification for the game Portal. After download 550MB of the 775MB file, I accidentally closed Chrome forgetting that I had the download going.

IE and FF would of both stopped this from happening as they both open downloads in separate windows rather than the main browser, so if you close the main browser the downloads continue. Chrome does not.

I wasted that time and bandwidth downloading 550MB to be lost in the ether and having to download it again, because something so trivial was missed out of Chrome.

It doesn’t take a lot of common sense to know this is could be a problem, Mozilla, Microsoft and Opera all have implementations in place to stop this happening. The fact that Google took the best parts of all the other browsers in to 1 then deciding that a rather important feature wasn’t in their users best interest is worrying. How many other problems are there going to be under the surface?

Downloads

I have found that on many user initiated downloads that they just fail to start full stop on my Chrome installation at work and some downloads on my Chrome installation at home.

By clicking a download button the file will appear at the bottom of the browser and have ‘starting…’ next to it but never progress past this stage. Right clicking the file and selecting Save as… works for all anchor links, but any downloads that are done through a form button are impossible to download which results in my opening up Firefox to download files.

Dictionary

You don’t seem to have the ability to add new words to the dictionary in Chrome which is rather strange. In Firefox you can and it is helpful when you type in something quite a lot and it isn’t in the dictionary, that little red line becomes annoying.

While writing this post, there are 2 words with red lines underneath them. The first is Firefox. Fair enough, it isn’t an actual word in the dictionary but still, Google do give a lot of money to the Mozilla foundation (which is in the dictionary). But the 2nd underlined word is an odd one indeed. It is Google. The company who have made the browser haven’t even put their name in the dictionary, instead suggesting that I meant to type goggle.

Sep200822

UK Counties & Countries data files (CSV + MySQL)

The following files are data files that can be used in projects that require a list of UK Counties and/or all of the Countries in the world.

The following files are useful for web developers to use for their select drop downs or a lookup table in a database.

Read the rest of this entry »

Aug200825

FILM: Felon (2008)

I have just watch Felon which stars Val Kilmer, Stephen Dorff, Harold Perrineau and the very attractive Marisol Nichols.  IMDB gives the film a 7.9 which I would say is a little low.

The film starts with Wade and Laura Porter with their son Michael.  A noise is heard and Wade investigates to find his house being burgalled.  He follows the burglar out the house and see’s him reach in to his pocket, Wade hits the burglar with a baseball on the head and kills him resulting in him being sent to prison where he must befriend some of societies worst criminals.

Trailer:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr0zDhqfOVo

Aug200807

Zero Punctuation: Ninja Gaiden 2

Escapist Magazine

Yahtzee is a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder. When he isn’t talking very fast into a headset mic he also designs freeware adventure games and writes the back page column for PC Gamer, who are too important to mention us. His personal site is www.fullyramblomatic.com.

Aug200806

Postal The Movie UK DVD Release Date Confirmed

After my initial frustrations with the Postal DVD release.  I got an email from Play about Postal being changed to preorder.  It looks like they finally have a release date of 27th October 2008, a month after the USA release.

Aug200804

Zero Punctuation: The E3 Trailer Park

The Escapist

Yahtzee is a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder. When he isn’t talking very fast into a headset mic he also designs freeware adventure games and writes the back page column for PC Gamer, who are too important to mention us. His personal site is www.fullyramblomatic.com.

Aug200803

Server Migration

Site was down for a couple of days due to a server migration.  There was a problem with importing the database dump on to the new server, but everything should be sorted now.

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