WPtap automatically detects the type of mobile device you’re using and loads the admin’s chosen WordPress theme. This made my job a lot easier! It also has the option of directing the user to a separate URL.

jquery.controls (beta) was written to help expedite the tedious task of validating forms client side. With jquery.controls you can:

• You do not have to tell it which form/s to validate. The plugin will figure it out.
• You can work with either CLASS or ID attributes.
• You can validate emails.
• You can validate numeric input (or non-numeric).
• You can make certain the user does not enter some pre-determined value.
• You can make certain the values of two fields match.
• You can pass in any valid JavaScript regular expression. (Useful for validating dates, credit card numbers, etc.)
• You can apply a maxlength to textareas and specify a “# remaining” status box.
• You can validate a group of radio buttons by CLASS or ID attribute.
• You can make certain the user selects at least one checkbox from any number of checkboxes within a container element.
• You can supply your own error messages or use the defaults.
• You can style the error messages however you like, or hook it into another plugin, for instance a tooltip or alertbox plugin.

All you have to do is place the rules of validation within hidden tags. These rules have been kept simple so you can usually just copy and paste from the demos. The code has been thoroughly commented so that suggested improvements can be made.

zip

at some point in time i had to parse a querystring with js. so i named it after PHP’s parse_url() of course, split it at the &, and returned an array.

here’s how you would call it assuming you had a querystring variable named “id”:

Really Simple Gallery is a really simple gallery which I built using jQuery. Take it, tweak it, whatever. The port from Flash’s hitTest() is the only feature you can’t get elsewhere… basically it detects if the user’s mouse is over the parent div, regardless of how many divs are above it.

link

When you hire young, talented people their skillsets should dictate your business, not the other way around. Countless times I’ve seen digital staff with skills which aren’t being utilized because of archaic focuses among senior management. Learn what your employees have to offer and write a proposal around those skills. Don’t sit around and wait for a client to ask for something and then get yourself into a panic because you cannot immediately offer everything the client is asking for. Be proactive. Allow your tech staff to work on side projects and ask them what they’re working on. Don’t assume that there is even one employee who has nothing to offer. Don’t hold large, think tank type meetings… nothing ever comes out of them. You can say there’s no such thing as a stupid question or that all ideas are welcome but there are all sorts of forces at work which hinder what could come out of meetings. Your project managers should talk with your tech staff one-on-one so as to learn what they’re capable of.

thankfully.

In my years of working in and with advertising agencies I have heard clients on more than one occasion assert that “print is dead.” One copywriter I once worked with realized that the possibilities of interactive were more restrictive than print and suggested that web be the first part of any marketing campaign and not the last. While I don’t think it is necessary to place web projects first (an agency should get the GENERAL creative thinking out of the way before process-heavy projects such as web or mobile are tackled), there is a strong possibility that agencies which continue to leave their web designers and web developers out of the ideation process will produce a predicable anti-climactic ending to every campaign of which digital is a part.

Forget about the old frustration of art staff choosing a non-standard font… When does social media exist outside of a web page? Or an online video? Or SEM? Traditional agencies need to stop treating these projects like the standalone artifacts of old media and accept the fact that they are not only part of the whole, but in fact, the largest part.

A little background is in order here. Just twenty years ago the internet was about liberating people from the confining hours of their local libraries. The internet was one-way… presentational. Business websites amounted to “here’s what we do, and here’s our phone number.” This has been retroactively termed Web 1.0. In 1994 when the first web form was introduced, making it possible for people to submit information to a website, everything changed. Darcy DiNucci, an information architect, coined the term Web 2.0 in an article in which she wrote that the internet would soon become “the ether through which interactivity happens.”

It has been said before that the internet has changed the way people think, and, that includes how people respond to internet advertising. Websites and ads must be interactive (two-way) or they are ignored. People especially under the age of twenty-five, who will soon be decision-makers, make no distinction between their online and offline lives. This age group innately disregards one-way communications on the internet. Those of that age group (and a good number of those older) who think about these things see such presentational information as garbage left over from the early days (even though it may be completely new). But most simply disregard it without any thought whatsoever. For an increasing number of people, one-way communications on the internet amount to nothing more than background noise, no more relevant than the sound of traffic or an air conditioner.

A first step for traditional agencies trying to effectively make their mark in digital should be the creation of a line item at the top of the schedule for digital jobs entitled “technical evaluation.” This is something which no one at your agency should have reason to object to. This will prompt some communication between the web designers and web developers and the traditional art directors and copywriters. In time this communication will create a pattern where the web staff are consulted at the beginning of a project or campaign and not seen as simply the last in a line of production workers.

A second step is to be serious about web management and project management in general. Traditional advertising was a factory… A place where the production staff could escape into their minds, tune out the rest of the world, and go through the motions. There is no place for that conveyor belt mindset in modern advertising. No two digital projects are alike and so the formulaic thinking of the past must be vanquished. Your agency is going to need trained project managers. Mere scheduling is not enough.

Finally, as with many things anywhere and most things in advertising, success depends upon perceptions. Middle management must be on board with the idea of letting go of their control over some of the staff. They certainly cannot be allowed to give the impression that they are holding a grudge over the new restructuring. Web designers and web developers, especially, need to be empowered to take the lead in the projects with which they are the most qualified. This will translate into having to promote some (younger) digital people faster than your traditional staff. Are you ready for the effects that might have on your agency? Is your Human Resources manager empowered to pull aside anyone, including senior management, should they have problems adjusting? Have you considered hiring a Change Manager to help staff adjust to the new conditions and provide counseling to staff with change-related fears?

If you can’t take the heat…

Advertising agencies operating without a project specification risk generating a gap between what a client thinks is going to happen and the reality of what the technology involved can support coupled with the budget at hand. When you begin to use project specifications you will see this gap closing with every web project. With a detailed project specification the client knows exactly what he is going to get ahead of time. (Some agencies actually make clients sign the project specification which serves as a form of binding contract.)

Unfortunately, many trad ad agencies typically still have some poorly-defined line item in their schedules for “client testing,” and it is usually some ridiculously large amount of time such as two to four weeks. If a web project is handled correctly there is no need for this. When a client is made to spend hours, days or perhaps even weeks planning with the agency, then sign off on a project spec, then sign off on a wireframe, then sign off on a design concept, the client knows exactly what they are going to get, down to the pixel. There is no disappointment. There is no need for “testing” on the client’s end. Most importantly this eliminates the opening for non-stakeholders on the client’s end to get involved and sidetrack your agency’s hard work.

Project specifications should be free. Countless times I have seen situations where what the client contact thought he was communicating and what the agency thought they were hearing didn’t match. Technical plannning is the cheapest thing an agency can do with their interactive projects since it generally requires one person. Unless the project, and hence the specification, is gigantic and requires more than a few days of planning, project specs should be free as they save the agency many man-hours and the agency always produces a better project.

Project specifications also bring in more money in that they lay the groundwork for additional work: If it isn’t in the scope document, then it is out of scope, and therefore an add-on. Before the use of a project specification advertising agencies would have been forced to throw in all sorts of work for free until the client was satisfied or motivated by other factors to end the project. Put simply, project specifications provide a definition of success.

Project specifications require training and experience. There is a sort of ability to forecast problems that comes from years of writing code. Writing a technical project specification is not something which can be performed by non-tech staff. This is where even a PMP certified project manager is not sufficient. You need a web manager… someone who comes from a technical background and is deeply interested in project management.