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A new version of the ICS Calendar plugin has been released (Download). For those who are unsure what this plugin is/does, I will explain briefly. This plugin takes an ICS files (from iCal, Google Calendar, etc.) and imports it into Wordpress. The user can display it as a list of events on a page, in the sidebar, or display it on a page in calendar form.

There are many features, including:

• Language support for events and calendars.
• Caching of the ICS file in order to reduce bandwidth.
• Repeating events supported.
• Multi-day events supported.
• Calendar permalinks to link directly to events.
• Choose how many events to display in events list.
• Custom date formatting for the events list.
• More features to come…

Feel free to send me suggestions for new versions. The current version is ICS Calendar v1.2.4. Stay tuned for more updates.

At my office, we have been trying to get an accordion menu to work for some time now. Searching the internet did not provide a simple solution that would animate a menu, then do a page refresh and remember which page we were on and expand the menu accordingly. Sure, we could find a solution easy enough with a PHP / Javascript mix, but the problem was that we could not use PHP on this particular website. So, I developed this code to solve all our problems.

Begin by creating a document ready function for jQuery then post the following code there.

The above code the ID of the UL list should be 'left_nav,' or you can change it to whatever you want. then place links within the LIs. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a message. If need be, I will post again with an extended explanation. Enjoy!

jQuery is my new web obsession. I have fallen in love with it; its simplicity, its power. I can find plugins that do nearly everything I could imagine, and things I would never want to do. One thing that I was trying to do is create a simple popup bubble. When a button is clicked, the bubble will pop up and will disappear when the user clicks away from it. This is much like the Google Maps bubbles.

Below is the code that I eventually got to work.

jQuery

As you can see from the previous code, an event is fired when a button ("#button") is pressed and displays a bubble ("#bubble") at the location of the button that was clicked. This can easily be change to the location of the mouse, or a different location completely.

The key to this example is the `e.stopPropagation()` code which will stop the event from continuing onto the next important element: `$(document).one("click", func);`. This will bind a function to the document to be handled once. Its simple really, but unless you know all the right functions and objects, it can be quite confusing.

One last bit of code allows the user to click on the bubble without making it disappear. It uses the same stopPropagation() function as before. This is personal preference, but I like to have it.

One thing that I have noticed as I began working on my current PHP, HTML, CSS design project is that most people have the inability to see the code visually (kind of reminds me of The Matrix). When I took over from the previous "web developer," (believe me, the quotes are necessary) I was surprised to realize that this person did not know hardly any HTML, and certainly no CSS or PHP. Then I looked at the website and it was clear what had happened.

Dreamweaver had been the main source of development, and I mean WYSIWYG Dreamweaver. The problem with WYSIWYG is that you are limited on your ability to use extensive CSS and other cool techniques often necessary for getting that extra sleek and smooth design. Another is the massacre it does to the code. Parsing through the code of that website was a nightmare. In any case, the problem was solved and the disaster was averted.

Below is the originally created website, which is not the worst site I have seen, but it does give the vibe of WYSIWYG:

The site was then redesigned from the base code up and it now looks like the following:

Basically, what I am trying to say is, if you want to be a good web developer, you must understand your design at the code level. If you require the use of Frontpage, or Dreamweaver for WYSIWYG, then I would suggest that you dive into your HTML and CSS code and get a gist for what is happening. Once you know how to manipulate the code, your possibilities, while they may not be endless, extend far beyond the reaches of WYSIWYG.

Once you begin to understand your code, you can really get good design that is coherent as well as visually interesting. Believe me, it's worth it!