shepline creative

Whilst rolling out a new, spruced up, clean site design to my own website that conforms to both XHTML Strict DTDs and CSS 2.1, I encountered a conflict with the javascript scripting involved with the Lightbox that I was implementing. Although the pages continued to validate against the DTD and the CSS was similarly fine, and indeed in Firefox and some instances of IE8 there were no display problems. However in some instance of IE8, having the lightbox running on the page caused some elements of the page to not load correctly, and for the footer to not display at all. Further more I had the KB927917 error from Microsoft which was as inconprehensible as these things usually are.

By systematically deactivating the various scripts running on the page, I tracked down the problem to the Twitter provided javascript code.

I’ve now put in place a new Twitter feed service, which has the advantage of both working with Lightbox and having an option to abort loading tweets if the site is down (something which was causing a problem during recent twitter outages).

Details

You can see the scripts in action here.

Installation instructions

These are ammended for my install (you can see the original instructions and download the scripts here):

Container HTML

You need to insert a holder element for the twitters to go in to. In the example above, I’ve included some ‘waiting to load’ content – but you don’t have to.

Here’s what I did:

<div id=“tweet”>
 <p>Please wait while my tweets load <img src=“/images/indicator.gif” /></p>
</div>
<p><a href=http://twitter.com/yourtwitterusername>If you can’t wait – check out what I’ve been twittering</a></p>

Here are some more progress indicators.

If you include contents inside the holder div, then you’ll need to set the ‘clearContents’ flag.

Add the script

You should download the twitter.js script, and add the following code within the head or (best at the bottom of the) body tag:

 (this example will generate my twitter status in quotes on a single line with the ‘ago’ linkable back to the original twitter post)

<script src=“http://yourdomain.com/includes/js/twitter.js” type=“text/javascript”></script>
<script src=“http://yourdomain.com/includes/js/twitter.tweet.js” type=“text/javascript” charset=“utf-8″></script>

Create a file called twitter.tweet.js and paste the following code into it:

getTwitters(‘tweet’, {
  id: ‘yourtwitterusername’,
  count: 5,
  enableLinks: true,
  ignoreReplies: true,
  clearContents: true,
  template: ‘%user_name% %text% <a href=”http://twitter.com/%user_screen_name%/statuses/%id%/”>%time%</a>’
});

Note that the getTwitters function will execute after the page has been loaded by your browser. It will fire once the DOM is loaded but before images are loaded.

And your’re done!

Bicester-based wind band, Bicester Concert Band,  has today, soft-launched their brand new website. Teh new website, built using the WordPress platform, features an intuitive and simple content management system so that much of the ongoing content changes can be managed by the band itself.

Shepline Publishing Services, which has been providing freelance support for publishing companies, charities and small companies in the areas of proofreading, copyright permissions clearance, web production and content control since 1997, has today rebranded itself as Shepline Creative.

The new name, together with the new website sets the company in place with its renewed focus on the creative side of the business producing expertly typeset small publications, print publicity, and effective, budget solutions for fully costed and upfront website production.

We will still offer all of the existing services but as a supplement to our core business.

The Hyde District Climate Change Forum is a local subgroup of the New Forest Transition. With their new site, which has launched -  in beta – today, they will more easily be able to update their group of news, events, and meetings pertinent to just their local group.

The focus behind the website is for it to be easy to update and easy to use, small and excessible.

Work on phase 1 of a new website for Oxfordshire based Bicester Concert Band is nearing completion. As the band itself undergoes change, the need for an accessible, easily-updated website is crucial. Phase 1, when launched will feature all of the current content transferred and updated in a new site that will continue to evolve up until and past the release of Phase 2.

Watch this space!

The new website for Oxford based science publisher, Huxley Scientific Press, has launched their brand new website. Replacing the original place-holding page used for many years, the website also features the launch of a new logo for the company (also provided for by Shepline).

Some of the content has still to be decided, and details need to be provided in the some of the sub-pages, but this is an important milestone in the development of a publishers that focus on quality of design and editing.