Using Advanced Segments in Google Analytics to Separate Outgoing Links and Downloads from Pageviews
April 9th, 2009 by Josh | 2 comments
If you’re like me, you installed the Google Analyticator plugin for your blog or added some other javascript so you could track what outgoing links where clicked. You will have extra pageviews showing in your Google Analytics account that are what I call “ghost pages.” These pages don’t really exist–they are just place holders for the clicks to other sites or your downloads. To get a more accurate number of pageviews, you can use Advanced Segments to create a new segment that will remove these ghost pages. So go log into your Google Analytics account and let’s get started.
Using jQuery and XML to Populate a Drop-Down Box
March 9th, 2009 by Josh | 10 comments
Building on the post Reading XML with jQuery, I have modified the success function to parse the XML data and load it into a drop-down box. You can get the demo files from Reading XML with jQuery here. Once you download and unzip the demo files, open the index.html in your favorite editor. Then remove all the HTML between the body tag and also all the jQuery in the success function. I also changed the page title to “Using jQuery and XML to Populate a Drop-Down Box Demo.”
Add Scroll Bars to Full Browser Flash with a Simple jQuery Plugin
September 9th, 2008 by Josh | 31 comments
Got a great Flash site? Can it be used by someone with low resolution? This plugin offers an easy way to keep your full browser Flash from getting too small.
Reading XML with jQuery
September 6th, 2008 by Jared | 28 comments
Welcome to my first of many articles for Think2Loud! Today I thought I’d start with something simple that will lead into several other topics. So here we go, head first into reading XML with jQuery.
The first step is making sure you have jQuery included on your page.
<script src="jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
Second, you should check the XML file you are going to read and make sure it’s free of errors. If you are unfamiliar with XML synatax, check out the W3School’s rules on XML syntax. The file I’m using for this example is just a listing of some Web sites I enjoy.
Finally, you just need to tell jQuery to read the file and print out the contents. Start by adding the document.ready function to the page.
$(document).ready(function(){ });
Build an Unsupported Browser Warning with jQuery
September 3rd, 2008 by Josh | 24 comments
Over at CSS-tricks there’s an article about blocking Internet Explorer 6. If the IE 6 Blocker Script is a little too extreme for you, check out what I use on client web sites.
Trying to get someone to upgrade, without being overly aggravating, can be tough. This script accomplishes this by adding a warning box across the top of the site with an option to hide the message. The script uses cookies, so if someone hides the warning it will not come back until they restart their browser. This way, even with an unsupported browser, they can remove the warning and use your site as they wish.
Use jQuery with Google Analytics to Track Clicks on Outgoing Links From Your Site.
August 26th, 2008 by Josh | 41 comments
So you have a nice site or blog with lots of links to other places. Wouldn’t it be nice to use the power built into Google Analytics to track those links, without having to add the necessary JavaScript to every link? Here is a very easy way: Add outbound link tracking to a new or existing site. Provided that your links to other sites have the REL attribute set, you can track them very easily with some help from jQuery.
Function Override for AS3?
August 21st, 2008 by Josh | 0 comments
Alright, so here is the problem: I work with several designers with varying abilities who all tinker with Flash. With making the switch to AS3, I am trying to package more stuff into classes for them to reuse. One of the classes I just created is a simple image loader that rotates the images using TweenMax.
Where I work it’s hard to get everyone on the same page, so it is nice to have some classes written that they can pull from. It certainly makes my life easier when they ask for help because everything is broken. Now I have this great class that is sometimes pulled into an FLA on the TimeLine. By default, the gallery rotates the image after 4 seconds. What if someone wanted to completely change the rotation or fire other events when the first photo tweens in?
A List of Tweening Classes for Flash
August 16th, 2008 by Josh | 0 comments
There are a lot of great options for tweening in Flash. My current favorite is TweenMax and it’s little brother TweenLite. Since we are getting ready to finally make the switch to ActionScript 3 at work, it is nice to have a version that is written for both AS3 and AS2. This will hopefully allow for fewer issues as we make the transition to AS3.
- TweenLite and TweenMax are written by GreenSock. TweenMax is the one that I have been using lately. I also really like the ease of use and the tiny file size of TweenLite. These are ActionScript 2 & 3 ready. (Just make sure you download the right one.)
- Fuse Kit from mosesssupposes.com is a great setup for tweening. I have used this many times and like working with it. The only issue is that it is ActionScript 2 only.
- Tweener: I have not yet used this. However, some of my friends have used it and love it. I am hoping to test it out very soon. This one is also good for ActionScript 2 & 3.
If you are not already using one of these, I would highly recommend you check them out. If you have something you like better, please drop me a line so I can check it out.
Adding Twitter to Your Web Site with JavaScript
August 15th, 2008 by Josh | 0 comments
Today at work we needed to pull our Twitter feed into our site. Not wanting to have to deal with the Twitter feed in back-end code, we decided to try out some already-written JavaScript setups for doing what we needed. After testing out a few different ones, we finally settled on twitter.js written by Remy Sharp.
Twitter.js seems to have the most flexibility and had the options we were looking for. It also seems to load a lot more consistently than the others (although I think that is more of a network issue at work). Below is a list of all the ones we tried–they were all great. If you are looking to add your Tweets to you web site, below are some great places to start.
- Twitter.js by Remy Sharp. Features a simple, clean setup that is easy to use and has a lot of options that can be set.
- Tweet! by seaofclouds. This is a Jquery plugin and seemed to work very well. It didn’t do exactly what we were looking for, but since this is a Jquery plugin, it was hard to pass up.
- addTweets This is great if you just lwant to add Tweets to you site with no work. You enter your Twitter info and addTweets generates all the code for you. You have up to 10 Tweets on your page with just a copy and a paste.
