Magento – jQuery clash with testimonials, prototype.js & showcase

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If you use testimonials on magento and then place them onto a page that contains the prototype extension showcase, you may notice that both the testimonial and showcase animation stops working, and that an absolute snow of javascript errors are generated.

 

If this is happens to you, it may be caused by a jQuery library conflict. The testimonials PHP template directly includes jQuery and this may clash with the prototype library, we found that we could resolve the library conflict by placing good old:

 


jQuery.noConflict();

 

In the file testimonial_advance.phtml just before document/ready, like this…

 

[code]

jQuery.noConflict();

 

jQuery(document).ready(function() {
….
}

[/code]

 

Adding this solved the problem for us.

 

testimonial_advance.phtml should be found in this folder:

 

app/design/frontend/default/default/template/testimonial

 

However, it is not good magento practice to alter this version of the file, instead you should create a testimonials folder under:

 

app/design/frontend/default/[your folder]/template/

 

Then copy testimonial_advance.phtml to this folder and edit it there. Remember to clear the magento cache when testing changes!

SQL Express 2008 – Can’t login using SQL Authentication

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In the Software Development game there are always plenty of annoying problems that will just eat up your time, what I really hate is being caught out by the same annoying problem more than once… I have been caught out by this one before so this time I am going to write it down!

 

So the situation is that you just can’t login to Microsoft SQL Express 2008 via the Management Studio or by any other means using the ‘SQL Authentication’ method. You can login using ‘Windows Authentication’ fine, and can then add SQL users and change their passwords and configure their permissions etc. etc. but you can never login with these users…

 

If you are experiencing the above the most likely cause that ‘SQL Authentication’ isn’t enabled at all! And Management Studio doesn’t bother to remind you of this when it lets you add, configure and enable such logins.

 

Well, to check if ‘SQL Authentication’ is enabled, and to enable it if it’s not try the following:

 

Login into Management Studio, right click on your server and choose ‘properties’. Click on the ‘Security’ tab, make sure that the ‘SQL Server and Windows Authentication Mode’ radio button is checked and hit OK.

 

Hopefully all of your SQL logins will work now, ours did!

 

If after you have done this, you still can’t login as ‘sa’, edit the users’s properties and under ‘Status’ tab, make sure that the ‘Login:’ radio button is set to ‘Enabled’ – It may have been disable during installation.

New Surewash Website Launched

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Surewash have just put their new website live to coincide with the launch of their hand hygine training product at the Matter Private Hospital. This time it was ‘our’ Sinead who designed and built the website which runs atop WordPress and we are very proud of how it looks and performs.

 

Meanwhile, we wish Surewash and the Matter Private every success with the launch!

Current Directory / folder of a Batch file run As Administrator

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It is a very lucky software developer that doesn’t have to interact with a microsoft windows batch file (.bat) ever now and again, recently my luck ran out and I came across a funny problem:

 

In windows 7, if your batch file does anything interesting (such a registering a COM dll) you may have to run it ‘As Administrator’. When you run it as administrator you may notice that a strange thing happens, it may be run with a different current/working folder to the folder in which it resides – whereas when run normally its current folder is its local folder.

 

This can be a real problem if the batch file needs to reference other files in its folder (such as the COM dll to be registered in my example above…)

 

Well not to worry, it turns out that to change batch file’s current directory to its local directory we just issue this rather esoteric command at the top of the file:

 

pushd %~dp0

 

The pushd bit I get, as for the rest….. well I am just glad it works!

The Cork News launches their new Online Newspaper

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The Cork News has today launched their new online newspaper. We worked closely with Pride Design to build and deploy the website. It was quite an involved design & build but once again drupal proved to be more than up to the job! A site like this really puts a CMS to the test!

 

Anyway we think that the site looks and works really well. To celebrate the launch the Cork News are running a competition with a great prize, to enter the competition all you have to do is visit this page:

 

www.thecorknews.ie/articles/introducing-brand-new-beefed-bold-beautiful-and-frankly-brilliant-cork-news-website

 

To enter, just hit the share button to share it with your friends on Facebook, and then leave a comment on the page.

Dublin Mobile App Localization Company Tethras, launch their new Website

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Tethras, an innovative Dublin company that provides a cloud based Localization Enginering service for mobile App developers have launched their new website, and to celebrate they are offering $100 off your first purchase for any language!

 

We have worked a lot with Tethras and can heartily recommend their service, so to all you software developers – if you have a mobile App and want to expand its market beyond the English speaking world, and you feel like snapping up a deal then head over to their site and check it out!

 

For more details visit the Tethras site here:

 

http://www.tethras.com

 

Backends Video – Google App Engine Software Platform

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Here is an interesting video about the new google ‘backend’ concept on the google app engine cloud computing platform.

 

Google says that these new backend instances will allow GAE software developers to perform more heavyweight computation tasks on the Google Cloud – something that up to now has been very difficult (sometimes impossible) to achieve. We have been struggling to overcome quite a few of these issues on the GAE and are very hopefully that this new functionality will save us a lot of software development time that we would otherise have spent coding around them.

 

Anyway the video is well worth a watch if you have the time:

 

http://geektv.info/video/search-engine-tips-e-tricks/google-io-2011-app-engine-backends/

 

Once again its great to see the google software developers dealing with these issues and coming up with solutions – keep up the good work lads!

Cully & Sully’s Cheffactor nominated for All Ireland Marketing Awards

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Cully & Sully’s Cheffactor eMarketing campaign and competition website has been nominated for an award in the eMarketing section of the All Ireland Marketing Awards. We are proud to have worked on the software and development of the drupal cheffactor site with our good buddies Pride Design, the eMarketing campaign featured tight integration with facebook and we wish the lads the best of luck!

 

The winners will be announced in the Burlington tonight in Dublin – so good luck guys!

Google Cloud Software Release – App Engine 1.5

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To coincide with Google I/O, Google has released the latest version of their cloud computing platform – Google App Engine 1.5.0, more details can be found here.

 

There seem to be quite a few interesting additions and changes to the platform especially for those software developers that are involved in doing more heavyweight computing on the backend – we fall into this category and we look froward to trying out the new features!

 

We have been hitting hard memory limits when parsing relatively medium sized XML files (>700Mib) with the DOM parser – hopefully this problem will disappear with the GAE’s new ‘backend’ framework. Will test & report back!

New Cork Opera House Website Launched

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The Cork Opera House has recently launched its brand-spanking-new website – www.corkoperahouse.ie

 

It was designed and developed by our web design partners at Pride Design in Cork, we had a great time helping them to build this website which contains loads of multi-media content with facebook and twitter integration. Once again we worked closely with pride on the development of this fully content managed website which was (as always) site built with drupal.

 

So if you are in Cork for the weekend and fancy a good show, why not have a browse over the site and see if anything catches your eye!