Query7 - PHP jQuery Linux

Fedora 9 , First thoughts

Panzer — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:28:24 +0000

I was getting some problems with the latest Ubuntu release (ext3 didn’t agree with ubuntu) so i decided to try another distro. Ive always been an apt-get man so i wanted to try something different. I downoloaded the Fedora 9 DVD and popped it in the drive.

I couldn’t use the GUI installer as there was some conflict with my monitor, so i need to use the text based installer. Its no big hassle for me, ive used the text base installer on slackware and other distros. The anaconda installer is great, i selected the programs i wanted to install and install. All up the install only took around 20-25 minutes - very speedy considering i installed gnome, xfce, servers, dev tools and a number of other things. Once the installation had finished i rebooted.

Straight away i noticed that i didn’t have an X server. When you run Fedora for the first time, im pretty sure theres a little dialog that lets you make accounts etc.. unfortunately there was no text option for me and i got left with a command prompt. I was forced to login as root. I tried startx and it worked! I was in the GNOME desktop, i quickly made myself a normal user account and restarted the computer. Unfortunately the Desktop Manager/GUI Login screen didn’t start so i was at the command prompt again, however i could still startx .

UPDATE: I decided to reinstall Fedora (2 Hours after i initially installed it. I got Anaconda to run graphically, i added the boot parameter resolution=1024×768 and it worked! The installation went smoothly, the boot screen was working and i added my user the proper way. X works straight off now, im very pleased

jQuery UI 1.5

Panzer — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:03:48 +0000

The jQuery team are approaching the UI 1.5 release, the library of demos is steadily building up and i personally cannot wait until its fully released . One of the “weaker” points of other Javascript User Interfaces and previous releases were the themes for the window borders etc. This has been solved in jQuery UI 1.5 with the theme roller. Its a well polished theme roller with features like the jQuery colour picker in it, you set the necessary classes and you can see a live demo of what it will look like on dialogs, sliders and tabs below, very nice.

Heres a video by the Filament group, who made the theme roller.

ThemeRoller for jQuery UI Screencast v4 from filamentgroup on Vimeo.

Feed Fixed

Panzer — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 04:25:34 +0000

The RSS feed has been fixed and the theme is just about done! Its a very simple theme (as CSS/graphics have never been my strong point) but it will look good. More jQuery, PHP and Linux content coming soon!

Whats Happening?

Panzer — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:49:08 +0000

Im in the process of making/designing a custom wordpress theme for the site. Alot of things went wrong in the upgrade from 2.5 to 2.5.1 so once the new theme is finished, im doing a fresh install of wordpress so it (hopefully) irons out the RSS and posting bugs. Im backing up the database (and ill restore it) so all of the posts will still be where they were.

More posts are coming, ive been working on a couple of video tutorials lately so i can post them with the launch of the new site/theme.

Just letting everyone know.

~Panzer

jQuery AJAX Tutorial Pt2

Panzer — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:35:47 +0000

Heres Part 2 of the jQuery AJAX login tutorial. If you haven’t already, i suggest you read part 1 located here.

We are going to start writing the PHP code to process the form. This is fairly basic stuff, using $_POST to get the values from the form, then checking them against pre-assigned values, if they match, then echo approved, if they don’t then echo denied.

if($_POST[’submit’]){
$username = $_POST[‘username’];
$password = $_POST[‘password’];
// Here you would put your validation, checking existing database records.
if($username == panzer && $password == query7){
echo ‘Logged in’;
//Insert your cookie setting code here
} else {
echo ‘Denied’;
}
} else {
echo "Form not submitted";
}
?>

So at the end of this stage, you will have an HTML form set up and this PHP file. You can enter the username Panzer and the password of query7 into the form and it will return Logged in.

Next tutorial, the fun part, the AJAX!

jQuery AJAX Login Series Pt1

Panzer — Sat, 10 May 2008 18:10:27 +0000

Heyo. This is going to be the first of 4 tutorials on making a jQuery powered AJAX login system with a PHP backend. The series of tutorials will go like so.

Plan, code the form (This tutorial)
Code the PHP backend, make it work
Code the AJAX, implement it.
Tidy it up, make it look snazzy

Ok then. So we will have a forum with 2 inputs; username and password. The user will enter the details and we’ll use PHP to authenticate them. If its true, we can set a cookie or echo some text. We will then implement jQuery’s AJAX and make the whole thing seemless. Some nice little fades will be added at the end.

So, the form. Its a plain and simple HTML form. Nothing special about it.

Username:
Password:

Thats all for now. Next lesson we will code the PHP and “make it work“.

AJAX Series Coming Soon!

Panzer — Fri, 09 May 2008 07:50:29 +0000

Hey guys, just thought i’d post a little interim post (as such). Im in the process of making a 4 part tutorial series on using jQuery’s AJAX. Its a “case study” where i/we will make a basic login form with a PHP backend and then use jQuery to make the login seemless. Eg. you put your username/password in the form and click the login button the page doesn’t reload but it will tell you whether its the correct user/pass , in which case a cookie is set, or if its bad info.

It might take a little while to finish up so i might not be posting much over the next week (sorry) but it will be worth it in the end.

Revising the jQuery Drop Down

Panzer — Sat, 03 May 2008 04:19:39 +0000

This post is in reference to the jquery drop down menu tutorial .

Someone emailed me asking if the menu could truely slide in , vertically, not how it is now with the slide on a slight angle ( using jquery’s show / hide ). Its very easy to alter the existing code to make it truely slide.

Instead of using jQuery’s show and hide functions, we just use slideDown and slideUp in replace of them. So the jQuery looks like this..

$(document).ready(function(){
$("#drop_down").hide();
$("#drop_down").animate({
opacity:0.5
});
$("a:contains(’Google’)").click(function() {
$("#drop_down").slideDown("slow");
});
$("#drop_down").mouseout(function(){
$(this).slideUp("slow");
});
});

Demo file

Making a Slide in Menu using jQuery (Video tutorial)

Panzer — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:12:09 +0000

This video tutorial shows how to make a basic slide in/drop down menu using jQuery. The menu itself stylishly slides in and has transparencies so you can view data behind it.

Sorry for the low sound, i was trying something different with my microphone.

Demo File

Invision Power Board 3.0 Announced

Panzer — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:58:27 +0000

Invision Power Services have announced the development of Invision Power Board 3.0. They promise a new

Features Include

Template engine
Search engine friendly URLS (I presume /forumname/topicname rather than ?fid=493&tid=98 )
New BB Code system
More Administrator controls (Picky options i’d image - turning signatures off in specific forums etc..)
Reputation System (Finally catching up with vBulletin )
Enhanced permission and moderator systems.

They say they are adding more integration tools, so you can integrate it with your existing website, or adleast provide some easier integration tools; it will also have tighter integration with other IPS products such as the blog, gallery.

Its interesting to see that they are dropping support for Oracle. They boast about having so many big business clients, i’d presume they all run Oracle, and yet are dropping support for it. Mayby they are turning back into a community board rather than a business board?

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that.