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Drupal php block visibility for the first page of a view.

Today I had a block that I wanted to only show on the first page of a view. The view has a pager for past entries which I did not want the block to show up on. Without the context module which allows path exclusion and inclusion at the same time I had to use the php visibility setting on the block's configuration page.

The view's path in this case was the first url argument (path) like mysite.com/theview. The offending pager query looks like mysite.com/theview?page=1 or any other number after 1.

The code:

"<?php
$flickrBlock = FALSE;

Smart images for content editors

Smart images for content editors

As our team, content and site grows we have been struggling with how to deploy images in a easy user friendly way to our admins. We have run in to situations like a video thumbnail link to a video gets put on a page. That same video get’s a new preview image on the backend by another admin. The old image link either breaks or is out of sync. Also how is this image scaled and how can we control that for a mobile version of the site.

Building the Ultimate Staging Server

During our big rebuild at Concur I got to research and build out the ultimate staging server for our big re-design.  

Designers vs developers

Recently I worked on a project where I was just doing front end development and managing the code. This is one of the first times where the designer did not hand off the master files but instead cut images for us devs to use. All in all it slowed things down a lot. When we got to making sprite images, all of the files had to be re-done. We never received images that looked acceptable for IE 6. In fairness to the designer, he was working blind and disconnected from the code.

All in all it could have been easier and now I know how to handle it for the next project.

Blog publishing gets ugly...

Seems like most of the content we view/read on the web is produced by some sort of content management system (A blog...). They have a front page, then some articles and maybe some pictures all laid out the same for each article. The monotony comes from the templated structure of these sites. What are the other options? A flickr stream with every photo grouped together? A word press front page with many little cubes of content? A hero image with articles all around it like the NY times?

 

Alternative to the Mobile Tools Module for Drupal. Go mobile the easy way.

There is a great way to handle mobile devices for Drupal and it is not the Mobile tools module... If you are confined to one url, willing to turn off caching and like to forward users away from content then use the module tools module.

HTML 5 native video vs. Flash 10 video. Is it more efficient?

 

The tech community has been pointing a finger at flash for a long time claiming it a resource hog.  Don't get me wrong I have had plenty of crashes with flash and equal frustrations on the developer side writing code for flash players.

Drupal Easy Ajax Content, Lightbox2, Nodes and a few hacks

It seems like every new site I build, there is a need to pull another node in via Ajax. This can be done with the lightbox overlay or by emptying a div and refilling it with another node.

 

Drupal vs. Ruby on Rails first impressions.

I have been playing around with Ruby on Rails for the past week. Everything is so different than Drupal which I have been working with over the past year.  It seems like I spend so much time hacking away at Drupal to properly display my output in a themable manner. Drupal 6 is better but still a bit grey as far as documentation is concerned.Here is how I would some up the two:Drupal = a over grown Bonsai Bush that you have to hack down to size.Ruby on Rails =  a sparse tree that you only grow the leaves you need.

Web Gibblets

The blog is where we post little tidbits of information. Building and designing sites is done in fresh snow. A lot of times you find a new way to do something that is relatively undocumented. Luckily for us all of our peeps are just a google search away.

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