Playing with Javascript; JQuery.
What do all these languages have in common? Yep, thats right, they all make things shiny, and increase the usability of the simple, boring, webpage. The question is, what is too much?
A simple Google Search for the popular buzzword of the day, jQuery, brings a TON of sites offering free ways to implement several new shiny features into your bland everyday website, however not many of these jQuery tricks are actually USEFUL to your members. Sure, they look nice, and are funky, but do they DO anything which isn’t already being done? The chances are, probably not.
My delving into the world of what makes webpages shiny and ‘cool’ was all started when I was trying to make a wallpapers site, for personal use mainly, me and a few friends. As you can imagine, displaying 20 2000×2000 HD wallpapers one after another is neither practical, nor efficient, and in truth, it is likely to crash the users browser, so I needed a way to resize them, and make them pop up, like lightbox does (it’s installed on this blog).
The first plugin, and one which was quite promising was Facebox – however it was not customisable enough, so I started looking for better options, more customisable, better browser compatibility, less code. I then thought about using jCarousel however this isn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted lightbox, I just didn’t know it, nor did I remember about it. Eventually I came upon this version of lightbox – not sure if it’s the original one, but I like it nonetheless.
Upon my travels in the jQuery world, I came across several interesting tidbits, such as jTip – which I can use on OnlyImages (the wallpaper site mentioned earlier) to put underneath the images, with a little tooltip, informing the user how to save the image.. Sure, I can use text to accomplish this, so it’s a little on my grey area of “need for usability vs want cos it looks nice” scale but still, it can improve the browsing experience of the user, I can add it.
Next, upon the consistent nagging of Chroder that CSS resizing the images on each page load simply isn’t good enough, I headed out in search of a jQuery plugin which would resize the images for me, as I really didn’t want to have to code a PHP thumbnailer! Well, guess what, turns out that jQuery has an answer to that, the aptly named “jQuery Image Resize Plugin“
So the basic rules, or scale I followed was a need for usability vs want cos it looks nice – if it looked nice but didn’t add to usability, like this expanding and collapsing div – while nice, I wouldn’t add it. I feel that this tactic works well and leads to an elegant site.
Choosing a domain is really hard!
So, this week I have been trying to choose a domain name, for an upcoming forum project, and boy oh boy, all the good ones were taken! 
You think of a semi decent one, BAM it’s taken. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that it is frustrating.
I use Namecheap as a domain registration company, and so I tried thier keyword domain tool, and still nothing, virtually every good domain is registered, so I started thinking of names which actually spelled out words, you know, like this blogs name, Mikeylicious.. – even then, the domains were either taken, or $100+, which is absurd imo.
The weird thing about domains is that just last week I managed to bag ipb3style.com and ipb3styles.com, which, imo are pretty good domains (specially when you consider that there are already successful businesses on domains such as vbstyles.com and vb4style.com etc) .. so I guess it just depends on your niche, for how easy or hard it is? I could’ve probably gone for a domain with a dash in it, like Brandon Sheley did with his general-forums.com domain, however I wasn’t prepared to put up with the hyphen, I like relatively short, and to the point domains, and that is what I think I got 
After about an hour of searching I started looking for obvious domains and they were also taken, so I googled my subject matter, tried some more, try, try, and try again is the moral of this story I think. Anyway I eventually got a semi decent one for my upcoming forum project It’s kinda abstract, but I like it, it kinda means a community, so hopefully it’s easy to remember. :p
vBulletin Add Spinx Search…
…and yet refuse to support it. What gives? They give some pretty detailed instructions , and even say that they’ll add a forum to vBulletin.org – the third party vBulletin site which supports unofficial modifications to the default vBulletin code.
What also irked me is that Internet Brands have used the vBulletin.com Announcements forum, basically, as a release thread for this unsupported product, why didn’t they just release it on vBulletin.org in the relevant section, like they have done in the past?
I don’t want to make this seem like a vBulletin hate post, they have been doing a lot right lately, I just dont like how they’ve done this. vBulletin.org has always been the place to release mods, vBulletin.com has always been the place to receive official support.
The views and opinions expressed in this post are mine alone, and do not reflect those of any organisation or entity whom I am associated with.
On track for the new PC
My paypal balance is looking nice enough at the moment, I actually have enough saved to get a somewhat decent rig together…
Anyone got any processor reccommendations?
The plan is that I’m gonna buy a base unit with the mobo, processor and RAM in, and stick my current (not in use) GPU into it. I just want a desktop again, my lappy cannot handle all the hammering I give it 
Anyway, if anyone has any reccommendations, would be awesome, kthx