Celebrating Freedom

By Nathan Parikh | July 4, 2008 delicious digg stumble upon technorati reddit


I don’t have anything too special to write today. Hoping everyone has a great 4th of July. Take time to thank God for your freedom and celebrate America. Found this cool picture on Flickr and thought I’d share it here. Thanks auer1816 for the great photo.

Topics: Holidays | 3 Comments »

Make a Featured Content Slider for Your Site

By Nathan Parikh | June 20, 2008 delicious digg stumble upon technorati reddit


Featured ContentIf you surf the web for any length of time, you’ll eventually notice that a very popular and very useful tool that many websites use is a featured content slider. This is useful in a variety of ways. Churches like to use it to attractively display their upcoming events, businesses like to use it to showcase their latest products, bloggers can highlight their latest or most popular posts, and artists can showcase their latest work. There are just a lot of useful applications for this. Two “real-world” examples I quickly found were Gateway’s website and AMD’s website.

Can’t wait? Here’s a preview of what we’ll be making.

This tutorial is thorough, so it might seem long at first, but once you get it, you’ll see how easy it is. Don’t be scared of the code either, it’s mostly copy and paste.

For this example, we’ll be using the popular JW Image Rotator which uses Flash. The player comes with built in controls, but they don’t look very good and if you have the controls turned on, then you also have to have the caption beneath the image…just not the best aesthetically.

Once you download the player, you’ll have to embed it in your page with some code. The easiest way to do this is to use the Setup Wizard. Make sure that you have the value “shownavigation” (found under Control Bar Appearance in the Setup Wizard) set to False. Under “External Communication”, set “enablejs” to True. Also, make sure that you use the swfobject code, not the embed code! Just click “get the swfobject code” at the bottom of the Setup Wizard Page.

Here’s a quick example of what your code should look like:

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<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.jeroenwijering.com/embed/swfobject.js"></script>
 
<div id="player">This text will be replaced</div>
 
<script type="text/javascript">
var so = new SWFObject('http://www.jeroenwijering.com/embed/imagerotator.swf','mpl','400','240','8');
so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always');
so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true');
so.addVariable('height','240');
so.addVariable('width','400');
so.addVariable('file','/upload/imagelist.xml');
so.addVariable('transition','fade');
so.addVariable('shownavigation','false');
so.addVariable('enablejs','true');
so.write('player');
</script>

Now that you have your slideshow finished, it’s time to give it some controls for your visitors.
First, copy this code into your header before the ending head tag:

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<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
	var currentItem;
 
function sendEvent(swf,typ,prm) { 
  thisMovie(swf).sendEvent(typ,prm); 
};
 
 
function loadFile(swf,obj) { 
  thisMovie(swf).loadFile(obj); 
 
};
 
	function getUpdate(typ,pr1,pr2,pid) {
		if(typ == "item") { currentItem = pr1; setTimeout("getItemData(currentItem)",100); }
	};
 
	function thisMovie(movieName) {
	    if(navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft") != -1) {
			return window[movieName];
		} else {
			return document[movieName];
		}
	};	
</script>

Next, we have to set up the HTML for the controls. Copy and paste this code beneath the code you used to embed your image rotator:

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<div id="flash_nav">
   <ul>
	<li><a href="javascript:sendEvent('mpl','playitem','0')">1</a></li>
	<li><a href="javascript:sendEvent('mpl','playitem','1')">2</a></li>
	<li><a href="javascript:sendEvent('mpl','playitem','2')">3</a></li>
   </ul>
</div>

Here’s what some of that code means:
‘mpl’ is the ID of the flash player which MUST match the ID of the embed code (line 6 in the first example). You can change this to anything you want, just remember to change the ID in both the Image Rotator code AND in the navigation code.
In my example I had 3 links. However, you can have as many as your playlist has. Just update the numbers accordingly.

With some CSS styling you can get your featured content slider looking just the way you want.

My final result
Download my example: Featured Content Slider Demo (613)

This is not the only way to create this feature on your website, but I hope this method will be a help to you!

Topics: flash, javascript, tutorials | 17 Comments »

Get Firefox 3…Set a Record

By Nathan Parikh | June 17, 2008 delicious digg stumble upon technorati reddit


Download Day 2008
In case you haven’t heard, Firefox 3 is being released today. First of all, if you are still using Internet Explorer, stop! Firefox is safer, faster, and much more flexible. There are PLENTY of other reasons why Firefox is better than IE, but that’s not the point of this post. Because today is the release date for Firefox 3, the folks over at spreadfirefox.com are trying to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads in 24 hours. Set a record, get a  better browser. Downloads begin at 1:00 P.M. EST.

Happy surfing!

Edit: I’ve been using Firefox 3 for a couple days now, and I must say I really like it! It also looks like Firefox made some kind of record with over 8 million downloads!

Topics: Browsers, Firefox | 5 Comments »

Memorial Day

By Nathan Parikh | May 26, 2008 delicious digg stumble upon technorati reddit


Memorial Day
It’s Memorial Day here in the United States. A time when friends and family come together around the traditional barbecue and thank God for our freedom. I just want to say thank you to all of our men and women at home and abroad who sacrifice so much for this nation. We are forever grateful. Happy Memorial Day!

Topics: Holidays | No Comments »

Midnite

By Nathan Parikh | May 15, 2008 delicious digg stumble upon technorati reddit


I am pleased to announce my latest free theme, Midnite. The color scheme is somewhat reminiscent of Ambient Glo, but this theme has a better design (I think).

This theme is compatible with WordPress 2.5.1, is widget-ready, is cross-browser compatible (yes, even Internet Explorer 6), follows W3C standards, and is CSS/XHTML valid.

As you will see, I used images for the headings in the two sidebars. To give you ultimate flexibility with that, I have included the font I used in the “fonts” folder.
You can use that to create your own unique heading images in the site.

This is the support page for this theme, so if you have any questions, or have a bug to report, post it here in the comments.

You can demo it here or Download Midnite (325)

Appreciate the work put into this free theme? Donate and show your support! Thank you!

Topics: Free Themes | 28 Comments »

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