Recursive

Category: Tech

  • BBC Homepage Beta Using jQuery

    The BBC Beta Homepage is using jQuery, but unfortunately it’s ugly.

    I should qualify that – I think it’s a good move to make the homepage more personalisable, but does it have to look so Web2.0?
    Big text was a fad a year ago, but it’s too informal for an internationally recognised and respected news source, and it makes it look so childish – I dread to think what the new CBBC sites would look like!

    I realise this is only a beta, and may well change considerably, but without a bit of a shrink I won’t be likely to use it as a homepage tab.

  • BT (‘British’ Tele-extortion) Woes

    BT have me in a head-lock.

    I get my phone and broadband service from them, and am charged, on average, £30 per month.
    This is not overly excessive, but I wanted to reduce it somehow, since I’ve been made better offers by Virgin Media.

    After digging through the website after looking at my online (paperfree) bill, I eventually find a number. (The usual 0800 800 150).
    On calling this number I’m asked by the automated system whether I’m calling from the phone[line] I wish to talk about.
    I am, and press ‘1’ to indicate as such. (The alternative is to enter the phone number.)
    So why am I asked for that number every bleeding time I actually talk to a real human being?

    I’m then asked for my account number for ID verification (though they are loathe to admit that’s why), oh, and my name and my address and postcode. (All of which are on the bill, so anyone who can intercept my bill can claim to be me.)

    So, who do I speak with? Various people in India, that well-known British territory.
    Is that why they can’t see my phone number, because they’re on some crappy-quality network 5000 miles away?

    After explaining the reason for my call I’m told all the things I already know, the total cost of my last bill etc., and I have to suggest that we look into changing my broadband package. Oh no, that means I have to be put through to another department! Okay, fine, just get on with it.
    “Welcome to BT. Your call may be recorded…” … “If you’re calling from the phone you wish to talk about…” Argh!

    I give all my details again, and am eventually told that I might be better of upgrading my broadband package to avoid a repeat of “your recent email” notifying me that I went over my 8GB limit. That was about 6 months ago.

    Can I just cancel my account? “Yes, but you’ll be charged the cancellation fee.”
    Not actually a fee, just the whole bill (minus call charges) for the remainder of the contract, which is until August ’08.

    Oh bugger.

  • 3 / Skype Marketing Technique

    I was recently contacted by Matt of 3mobilebuzz.com and offered the chance to trial a pair of 3 (the network) Skype
    (the VoIP company) mobile phones (3skypephone.com) for a month. (No obligation to do anything, other than the mention of returning them after a month.)

    I thought it was an interesting marketing ploy – it seems very generous, but is probably not actually particularly expensive to such large companies.
    I also thought it seemed a little risky – how many people will return the phones? How many people will actually generate any hype, and will it be positive?

    The first link above will show that the scheme has been going for some time already and world-wide – highlighting one of the benefits of calls made using VoIP (i.e. via the internet).
    You can also see that they’re being fair with the selection of linked blog articles – some have negative points about the phone.

    I’m not going to review the phone itself since many others have done that already, unless enough people leave comments here.

  • JavaScript Bug – Modulo of small numbers

    It seems that there is a problem with the modulo function, ‘%’, in JavaScript.

    For example: 10 % 0.1 should equate to zero but comes out as 0.09999999999999945 probably due to some internal floating-point rounding errors.

    Easy solution (a hack really): Multiply both numbers by 1000 before using the modulo function.

  • Recursive Moved Itself

    The highly observant amongst you may have noticed that I have moved this blog to my personal domain, jezmckean.com.
    You should have been brought to this domain automatically, and I hope to fix the multitude of links online, but need the automatic move for those I can’t fix.
    I’ve done this because I’m working to separate my freelance business, jazzle.co.uk, from my personal stuff.

    Eventually, the blog subdomain at jazzle will be replaced with a work related one.

  • IE7 Tip – Reload

    IE7 Tip - ReloadWhen IE7 was designed they took the peculiar decision to split the navigation buttons into three places (if you include the home button).

    If you find yourself up in the top left wanting to reload, just click the drop-down button and select the current page (will be highlighted and have a tick-mark on the left), as shown in the picture.

    Bizarrely and unfortunately, this only works if you’re not looking at the last page in your navigation history for this tab. This suggests that it’s only through poor programming logic that it works at all.

    [tags]IE,IE7,Microsoft,tip,tips,browser,flaw,bug[/tags]

  • Firefox Tip

    I discovered yesterday that [tag]bookmarks[/tag] in [tag]Firefox[/tag] can have no name.

    Seems pointless? Not if the sites have [tag]favicons[/tag]:

    Firefox Bookmark Favicons

    Space saving, so you can see more, hence fewer clicks.

    The above are jazzle.co.uk, The Sketchup Components Collection, bit-tech, ebay, amazon, radiotimes.com and the default icon (for a site with no [tag]favicon[/tag]), but you knew that of course since you recognise the sites’ icons.

  • JS: Clear Default Value onFocus

    Simply add the following to the the onFocus attribute of any HTML form input tag.

    if (this.value == this.defaultValue) this.value = '';


    this.defaultValue is automatically given the value in the HTML.

  • Append to Body onLoad

    I looked for a long time how I could add JavaScript functions to an HTML document’s onLoad attribute.

    Eventually I found this, something so obvious that I had considered trying it but foolishly didn’t try.

    var oldLoad = window.onload;
window.onload = function() {
  oldLoad();
  function2();
}

  • jsReq

    I wanted to tell the user that they need JavaScript, but obviously only if they don’t already have it enabled.
    The following is a very crude script which uses the very fact that JS is available to hide the requirement notice…

    HTML:

    <!-- "jsReq" - Jez McKean (jazzle.co.uk) 2006-04-24 */ -->
<div id="jsRequiredDiv" class="important"><span class="error">Warning!</span>
You need to have javascript enabled to use this page.</div>

    JS:

    function removeElementById(eleId) {
    eleId = document.getElementById(eleId);
    if (eleId.parentNode && eleId.parentNode.removeChild) {
    eleId.parentNode.removeChild(eleId);
    }
    }
    removeElementById("jsRequiredDiv");