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Need help with a site!


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Hey guys!

I am primarily a graphic designer so i know graphics and programs like photoshop and illustrator like the back of my hand. I dont however know programming and all the "under the hood" stuff. Anyways I recently came across a freelance gig that I really want for this local band to do their site. They are not too worried about my programming skills but they want me to perform 2 tasks or at least let them know i can do these 2 things to get the contract. That is why Im here- like i said i suck at the programming stuff and was hoping for some help/ suggestions from you guys!

The first thing:

They gave me this site as an example: http://www.deftones.com/

If you go there and click on "launch player" it opens up their myspace player in a separate window and nicely resized. I dont know how to do this! :( this might be super simple for you guys but I cant and Im hoping for some help. The local band has a myspace page with their own music.

The second thing:

Another example, another band page: http://www.chimaira.com/the-infection/

If you click on photos you get a gallery of thumbnails and if you further click on those thumbnails they open full size in a separate window with the ability to close or click to see the next pic. I dont understand how they did this. Should I use Flickr? The best I can do is use Flickr carousel :(

Any help/ insight would be much appreciated! I havent done freelance work for a long time and the chance to do some creative work outside my ****ty 9 to 5 would be GREAT! and a real... release for me ;)

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On the second site, they used Lightbox for the gallery. You'll need jQuery for it to work. It's reaaaallyyy easy to setup, just follow the how to use instructions. You just link the images and add a class to it which will tell it to open in lightbox.

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Yep the second site definitely uses lightbox, however they have skinned it a little bit. This is easy to do using CSS.

For the first problem, you can simply look at their code to see how they did it:

<a onclick="window.open('http://musicservices.myspace.com/Modules/MusicServices/Services/Embed.ashx/ptype=3,ap=1,plid=2072,profid=769597,pfc=PopUpPlayer','myWin','scrollbars=no,width=450,height=470');" 
href="javascript:;">LAUNCH PLAYER</a>

The href value is a dummy javascript command, so nothing happens when they click on the link that affects the page. So it doesn't reload or take you anywhere else. The onclick part uses javascript's "window.open" command to open a new window.

You can find more information on window.open here:

http://www.javascript-coder.com/window-popup/javascript-window-open.phtml

This examples however shows how to use it as a function on page enter/exit. It should give you an idea of how to use window.open. Combine it with the code above and you'll get a customised inline javascript version.

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lol thanks so much for the help guys.

ok this is going to sound really retarded. Like I said, Im a graphics guy not a java/web guy. I have Dreamweaver and dont know how/ where to implement the java code :( should i start reading up on java?

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Lesson #1;

Java is not the same as javascript. They're similar in ways, but they are 2 very separate languages :laugh: If I were you, I'd read up on javascript rather than java (;

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Yeah, Mouldy Punk's lesson is an important one; Java is a complete standalone programming language... java script is a scripting language

that mostly runs insiide browsers (those roll-over menus and most pop-up's etc. are usually generated from JS).

I'm a newb at programming myself... currently working on a social networking project ( viewcaster.net ),

that is based on php which I know nothing about. I started with a base platform and just studied each segment and would try different changes

to the code to see and understand what happens.

Look at a lot of page source from pages that behave like you want to learn some techniques.

I am manually doing much of my html so some of site is very basic, but have found that the visual apps like DW can generate some really

complicated code and confuse me when trying to work with JS and php. I used Coffee Cup to generate many pages and am in the process

of changing those over.

Just study the source from those example sites and do some research on javascript and also see how the scripts are implemented (if any)

in the example sites.

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thanks again for your help guys.

good news by the end of the weekend i managed to put together a temp site to show that person that i am capable of doing the two things i wanted

http://www.potbellygamers.com/mindsight

take a look :) it is super plain just to show the work nothing fancy, that can come later when i get paid lol

anyways I just got an email from him saying how impressed he is and i think ive pretty much got the contract!

woohooooo!

THANKS AGAIN GUYS! :)

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Congrats. I'd suggest that you have 2 versions of each image though. If you have thumbnails shown in the image selector, and a full sized version when you click the images - the image selector will load quickly because it won't be loading lots of massive images and scaling them down. It'll only load the full size images if the user clicks on the thumbnail.

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hey guys

im working away at the site and had a couple of questions i need help with asap as i have to show my work in a couple of hours and am a little behinde

i cant for the life of me figure out how to change the opacity on a background colour of a text box in dreamweaver 4! ive searched on the net and cant get a straightforward answer! please need some help on this asap!

also i need to put into a text box a constatly update/ live-esque twitter feed or shoutbox!

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