 |
Yesterday, my goal for the day was to finish the portfolio page. This required generating all the project images and then dynamically loading each project into my 'pseudo-lightbox'. Generating the images took all day (but it was worth it) not leaving much time to load each project, but no worries, that easy as pie...or so I thought....
Instead of having my ajax script pass all the html for each project/overlay, I opted instead to have the php script generate a file that will be the source of an iframe which is hanging out in the main page. All I need to pass back to the ajax script is the filename, genius right? I wrote it all up, hunted down all the missing quotes & curly brackets and was happy to see that Firefox, Opera, Safari and Google Chome were all working beautifully. Then turned away from my Mac, waited for Windows to wake up and started the PC tests; Firefox,? check. Opera? check. Google Chrome? check. IE? At first I was surprised to see that when I clicked on a project thumb everything loaded wonderfully, jQuery worked fine, the close button worked fine, it worked! In IE. Then I clicked on the next project and found I was looking at the first one I clicked on, clicking the Bela Lugosi, product Photography and Red Lotus Ink thumbs all gave me the same thing.
Of course at that point I'm annoyed, IE once again insists on being the bane of my existence and foiled my perfect plan. But at this point it was 2am, and troubleshooting frustrated and tired wasn't going to get me anywhere so off to bed I went.
Next thing I know I'm sitting bolt upright in bed. I wouldn't call it a nightmare exactly, the dream itself wasn't scary, no. I dreamt the solution to my problem, I dreamt I'd figured it out and actually SAY all the code I was writing to make it work, when I realized it was a dream when Kitty pulled a simon cat "feed me" gesture and it shocked me awake. You see why I'm tempted to call it a nightmare right? I'd actually dreamt about code; as much as I do enjoy writing it, there's a lot of other things I'd rather be dreaming about- I can write code in life, I can't sneak past airport security officers in red shirts to have lunch with Spock or have an illicit encounter with Bear Grylls.
The worst part about it all is the solution I dreamt actually worked.
One of the most difficult things I find when building a new site or redesigning an old one is curbing my enthusiasm, and my portfolio is the perfect example.
The goal has been to get a basic, usable site up, then add the fun flourishes later. For instance, I want to use the jQuery plugin qTips for some stylin' tool tips. I want to add it now, and every time I work on a page that could use it, it takes all of my will power to leave it be. However, it doesn't show up in the game plan until overtime, the site will look and function just fine without out, and there's more pressing things to do.... it's just going to be so cool!!!! And I've never used it before! Getting the blog up and running, that's easy money, using a plugin that's new to me- a challenge! Gimme gimme gimme!!
|