Gabbly is a really interesting approach to the issue that you need to discuss designs with clients and peers. It is a chat panel that appears on any page (except for those that redirect the user) when you add the URL as a parameter, for example

http://www.gabbly.com/www.wait-till-i.com

It is a matter of time before there will be some legal issues with that (libel and all that), but is a really nice idea!

You’ve read enough of my stuff, now it is time to see and hear me talk (if you are able to do both). This means not only will you be able to listen to some stuff I have to say, no, you can even ask questions and shout at me without risking comment moderation.

Stuart Colville of Muffinresearch has organised the first Web Standards Group London Meetup and I was asked to give a presentation on “something about modern JavaScript”. He also asked Andy Budd to talk about “something about CSS and web standards”.

Hence I pondered and came up with the idea to hold a concept/idea/tips and tricks session about “Maintainable JavaScript”. This means I’ll talk about how to create JavaScript that will not come back to you for maintenance but make it easy for colleagues, clients and other third parties to change the look and feel and even the content of your scripting solutions.

In any case, it’ll be an interesting evening and there’ll be book giveaways (with mine being released 3 days after the event) and drinks to make you forget what Andy and me talked about. So go to the site, sign up and I’ll see you on the 14th of July in London’s beautiful north (I can take a bus home, or cycle!).

Update: The performance was great and I met Henry outside later on for a quick chat. He really is as down to earth as you’d expect. The venue, however, was a joke: Boiling hot and there was no space for your feet (on the most expensive seats).

I am always amazed how hard some web sites make it for you to order a ticket for a show. This Sunday, Henry Rollins is performing at the Hackney Empire in my neck of the woods (I found out by pure chance, seeing a small flyer on a bus-stop). Now, I go to the Hackney Empire web site and get a splash page with an enter button before reaching a nice looking flash interface (what is the use of the splash page?).

I need to select the genre from the menu on the left which is OK enough – although having the current month as the first option would be a nice touch – what is the point of checking shows in the past?

I select Comedy and sure enough Henry pops up. If he hadn’t been the first to show up I’d have to use a flash scroll bar on the right to scroll down. Below the show’s photo are two links (with pointing hands to the right of them): “More info” and “How to book”. I click “How to book” as I do want to book, and get a panel sliding up from below offering me the obvious choices to book “In person or by phone”, “per post” first. Hello? I am online! The next choice is “online booking” which tells me to “Simply click on the show you wish to buy ticket for and follow the instructions on screen.”
In short, clicking the “how to book” link this was a pointless exercise – unless you don’t want to book offline.

I get rid of the panel via the “close this window” (what window?) link and get back to the show to try to “click on the show you wish to buy a ticket for”, but neither the photo of Henry nor the title of the show is linked. Instead, I have to click the “more info” link, which pops up a panel with exactly the same information as the listing and a massive “book here” button.

Clicking this button opens a new browser window listing all shows playing at the Empire at the moment with only a “buy tickets” link in the last column of the table row to buy them. There I have to find the show again and I can finally purchase tickets – in a pretty straight forward interface though.

Now I wonder if Hackney Empire is being paid by clicks on their web site or why there is no “purchase tickets online” link on the first listing?

Dabbling around with jQuery for the last chapter in my upcoming
book about JavaScript , I realised it is dead easy to do something that really annoyed the hell out of me for a long time:

When you display code examples in online tutorials and you don’t want to use server side includes to show the code (as you want to offer the explanation page as documentation as well) you need to maintain the code in two locations: The code itself and the code examples in the documentation document.

Now, jQuery has these really cool methods to do easy AJAX calls, why not use them to pull in the code when the user clicks the link to the code?

The example page for jqueryCodeView shows the outcome and the script that makes it happen. Quite neat package, that.

Update 25/05/06: DOMinclude now supports only one include window at a time and closing include windows from external files.

Pop-up windows are a pain for both the developer and the users. Often enough a page needs to link to a terms and conditions document and as the client does not want the user to leave the page you are asked to implement them in a pop-up.

The problem with this are technical and psychological:

• years of unsolicited pop-up windows have conditioned users to immediately close windows when they open
• the same reason and security concerns made people install pop-up blocker software and browsers to include pop-up blocking options, and depending on their configuration these may even block your “friendly pop-ups”.

One solution is to use JavaScript to create a new layer with the content of the document when JavaScript is available and simply link to the page when it isn’t.

DOMnclude is a script that does that for you

Following is an example what it does to a normal link when you add a certain CSS class. Enjoy, and kiss those pop-ups good-bye.

Update: Would people who have IFRAMES blocked please test the version that checks for blocked iframes? You should be sent to the page instead of trying to load the page into the layer when you click the “Amber Spyglass” link in the demo page. Please comment below if it works then I will include the fix.