Tag Archives: Interface Development

jQuery Form Validation as Smarty Plugins

Posted on by
3

When we redesigned two of our sites we put a lot of effort into making the signup process better and focused on making a lot of input validation before posting the page. We also knew that there is a lot of business data that we need to validate before posting the whole signup form, this was achieved with ajax calls to an api. Now we use a jquery validator, implemented as a smarty-plugin, all over the site whenever we have a form with user input. We have found that despite the focus on DOM-manipulation and a lot of graphical plugins, jquery form validation is very powerful combined with the graphical effects you can easily achieve with the library.

See our longer article on Form Validation in general and 10 tips making it work better for you.

Smarty and jQuery should make the perfect couple done right in your front end architecture.

Article about Event-Driven Web Application Design at YUI

Posted on by
1

Christian Heilmann writes an interesting article about Event Driven Web Application Design over Yahoo UI. Christian starts the article with something I totally agree with:

Frontend engineering rocks right now. The era of boring web sites is over and we’re all into pushing the envelope, erasing boundaries and getting beyond whatever prevents us from building the next killer web application.

Aye! I feel lucky working with developing interfaces for the web right now, it is a very interesting time. One problem as I see it is that some people in IT-organisations still tends to minimize the efforts needed for creating rich interfaces for the web. We need more advocates to raise the status of our profession and we need more professional articles like this.

DomQuery is extremely fast

Posted on by
2

Jack Slocum who manages a great extension library for Yahoo! UI has released is working on a new library for CSS/XPath selection of the DOM named DomQuery. The first figures says it is fast, extremely fast.

To make it even more interesting, jQuery has released a new version of the library where api-size and speed has been the main focuses, but it still doesnt match DomQuerys speed. DomQuery made me start looking into Yahoo UI. Its a good competition benefitting all of us working with interface development. I am sure the jQuery community will make the best out of this competition. There is already a debate between John Resig and Jack Slocum about the results and how to interpret them.

Insert flash into your XHTML-document correctly without using JavaScript

Posted on by
1

An interesting walkthrough of how to insert a flash movie into your xhtml document without using JavaScript and fulfill the main requirements for a flash-movie:

  • Crossbrowser
  • Show alternative content
  • Not use JavaScript

Read more at Insert flash into your XHTML-document correctly without using JavaScript and with the possibility to show alternative content

Competitive Analysis Before Redesign

Posted on by
Reply

Dan Brown writes a good and informative article about how to make a competitive analysis from an Information Architetural / Design point-of-view. A must read for those interested in business analysis and the more theoretical area of work for people working with front-end related issues. I liked it.

Every industry has its own version of the competitive analysis and its function is clear: to line up your product with other products and show where yours falls short and where yours is superior.

I am a ….. Front-End Architect

Posted on by
2

I read Garrett Dimons posts The Time is Now for Front-End Architects, The Latest on Front-End Architecture, Front-End Architecture at Web Visions 2006, Front-End Architecture: Markup is the Technical Foundation, Front-End Architecture: Browsers, Front-End Architecture: AJAX & DOM Scripting and realised that Front-End Architect fills the gap for all of the different titles I have had the last 5 years.

If you tell someone that you work with front-end related issues on the web, people tend to say that they also know HTML and you can see in their eyes that they wonder how it comes you suck so hard not getting a better job after almost 10 years in the business. The front-end is a huge and ever growing area of potential problems and a variety of solutions to these problems.

After the vacations and paternity leave I will step into the big boss room and discuss a smaller title change. Maybe I find this one more suitable to whatever I actually do for a living.