Category Archives: info

Getting and setting radio button values with JQuery

Posted on by
Reply

I figured I would share this because I found so many inconsistent hits on the internet searching for a solution. I have this dialog that I pop up and want to set the values and then retrieve the values once OK is hit using JQuery.

jquery-radio

The HTML is pretty straight forward:

jquery-html

The code to set the value from my model looks like this:

var $radios = $('input:radio[name=transition]');
$radios.filter('[value=' + model.options.transition +']').attr('checked', true);

The code to retrieve the value looks like this:

model.options.transition = $('input:radio[name=transition]:checked').val();

 

Registering a new page layout in Aurora

Posted on by
2

Page layouts are arguably one of the best features to be introduced into WebSphere Commerce. They allow the marketing staff to quickly change or schedule the layout for page types or the entire site with a few basic steps. What has to be done today is a developer has to create the page layout first – which will not be the case in a future release (more to come on that later). So what are the steps and skills needed to create a new template? The good news is the code is extremely well structured and easy to follow. If this is all new to you, you should check out this PDF to learn about layouts and widgets. The Aurora store provides modular UI widgets that can be plugged into store pages. These UI widgets are independent, self-contained entities (IEA).

A page layout is a store page created for a particular layout type such as a category page, product page, or home page. A page layout has widgets associated with it and each widget has a set of configurable properties that can be provided to allow finer configuration of the widget in a layout. – IEA

Continue reading →

Who’s viewed your profile?

Posted on by
Reply

Your LinkedIn profile can either be a positive or negative element in the social world equation. I received some good tips from Ben Martin about how to have a profile that gets results. While I am not looking for a job, I do use my LinkedIn profile to connect with customers and partners and I want to be “found” when I am not out looking for others. I want others to find me. Since I expanded my introduction section I have seen a drastic difference in the statistics around how many times my profile was viewed or has shown up in search results.

If you want to be taken seriously you should have as much information about your skills as possible. People are looking for something out of the ordinary buzzwords. I am sure my profile is not perfect and if you have any advice for me please share!

 

My Top 5 Twitter tips

Posted on by
2

Here are my top five Twitter tips for the professional and casual Twitterer:

  1. Hash tags
    Use at least one or two hash tags. Many sources on the net will say the most powerful aspect of Twitter is the hash tag and search. I have also read that readership starts to fall after two hash tags, so you can use three but I would not recommend going to four or more hash tags.
  2. Consistency
    Whether you do it professionally or just for fun, be somewhat consistent with what you Tweet. If you need to have multiple Twitter Id’s then so be it. Be consistent with each account and you will attract like minded followers.
  3. Block Spammers
    While having a lot of followers is good, make sure they are real followers. Many companies check to see who you follow and who follow you. If you have a lot of “let’s meet at a hotel” type of followers it does reflect on you. So I don’t have a ton of followers but I can say I block as many spam accounts as I can recognize.
  4. Be Social
    Don’t just push information out to others, start a dialog, get involved, retweet things you really like and if you truly like it then favorite it. This will get you on Twitter lists – another way to get recognized in forums.
  5. Publicly thank!
    Everyone likes a mention, make sure you thank people who re-tweet you or mention you. It’s part of being social in this online forum. If you get a new follower then you should seriously consider following them and thank them publicly!

Do you have a favorite tip of your own that you want to share?

    HTML5 Automation best in Internet Explorer – See for yourself

    Posted on by
    Reply

    The video in the previous post did not do the test justice as many could not tell it truly is a smoother animation so here you go, you can view this web page yourself on the different browsers.

    What I see on my machine is a much smoother animation of both the outer box and the growing text. Notice it is not choppy at all in IE, very smooth. And just an FYI, I am a solid Chrome user for a few years now, before that FireFox, and before that IE. With all of these IE commercials on television I had to see if this really was “faster”, at least in this space. I would be interested to hear what others see.

    Link also here.

    Why Khan Academy is a great site

    Posted on by
    3

    If you have a child that is a student at pretty much any level, then you need to check out Khan Academy. Even parents can learn a lot from this site, from basic math to trading stocks – there are over 3000 videos and tutorials to learn from.

    I started a couple of weeks ago having my youngest son use Khan Academy to learn and review school subjects and even simply watch things on the site that interest him.  I am sure teachers will have a different opinion about the site but I promise, this site only supplements what our teachers do, and in fact I think the content of the site should be part of the in-school curriculum or at least as assignments.

    So why is Khan Academy so awesome you ask?

    I have been watching my sons progress on the site and had an interesting observation when looking at one of the areas he studied on the site. The topic was number lines.  You know, those lines that go from -10 to 0 then to +10:

     

    Khan allows for “teachers” to track the progress of a student, look at their daily activity, and even guide them in their learning adventure. After my son did the section on “Number Line 3″ I saw this interesting switch in his proficiency.

    This graph shows each question in the evaluation, the score, and the time it took the student to answer the question. A couple of things, it looks like he got almost half of the questions wrong in the beginning. I saw he was having a problem with it and assisted, even showed him he can watch the video for the subject in the lower right.  He now knows to watch the video when he is having a hard time. Once he understood numbers decrease to the left and increase to the right he aced the rest of the questions. The site even offers “hints” for each question. What I really liked about the questions were you had to read them carefully. Here is an example of one of the questions:

    I am excited and look forward to watching my sons progress through the content of this site!

    Presentation Tip: Locating the pointer for the viewer

    Posted on by
    Reply

    When you create tutorial videos or live presentations of software you may want to have the viewer see where the mouse is at certain times throughout the video. Windows 7 has a pretty slick feature that you can enable in the Mouse dialog box. Enabling that option will then allow you to simply hit the CTRL key to get a visual indicator of where the pointer is. This is great for highlighting the pointer and also highlighting a button or a click option you will click.

    Many video production software packages do something similar as this but if the one you are using doesn’t you can always use this as an option. This is what it would look like in the end video:

     

    Removing the ZeroAccess rootkit virus

    Posted on by
    2

    Over the past four days I, on and off, had to look at my kids computer. The basic symptoms were “every time I search for something in Google I get redirected to another site” and then it moved on to “the internet is not working…at all“. When I first looked at it I noticed a strange looking executable named “2398764521:2143489.exe” or something like that in the process explorer. The colon is a clear sign this is not a normal process. I then searched the Windows registry and under services found the EXE under a folder named “2728″ – once again…strange. I attempted a few things first, removing the entries, rebooting, and seeing if the EXE would disappear. I searched all start up areas in the system and registry and cleaned them out…nothing seemed to work. I then did the same process in Safe mode – to no avail the virus was still there after a standard launch.

    I then searched and searched and finally found this article. The symptoms were identical, was this the ZeroAccess virus? I downloaded the tool, TDSS killer, to see if it could remove the virus. I had to download it on another computer as the kids computer could not access the internet with any of the three installed browsers. I then copied the tool over to a USB stick and renamed it to a “.com” file as directed in the article.

    The tool found three variations of ZeroAccess on the computer and cleaned them up. I was shocked how easy the tool was to use and it looks like everything is fine now. I just had to blog about this and share the experience.

    The eCommerce Daily is out!

    Posted on by
    Reply

    I am really digging paper.li. I use it almost every day. It is a great way to get a news paper look and feel of my social network. I started with The Bob Balfe Daily, which is really my own interest and things I post. I just created The eCommerce Daily which is dedicated to commerce and ecommerce posts. Hopefully this paper is just as interesting for the world of eCommerce as the other one is for my own personal stuff.