Hello, I am Kevin Glover.

How to toggle info panel with Galleria

Recently, I found an excellent picture gallery built on top of jQuery: Galleria. It is pretty awesome and powerful as well. 

However, for my purposes, I needed to have the information captions open for each image on load. Galleria has several options for displaying info, but mostly it was just to display or not display. 

After a few minutes of staring at the code, I could see that the answer wasn’t in the JS, but instead the CSS. Basically, all it is is changing the default CSS (‘display:none;’) from .galleria-info-close and .galleria-info-text. Then add ‘display:none;’ to the .galleria-info-link class. That’s it. 

I would like to thank the developers of Galleria, Aino, and suggest that you take a look at it @ http://galleria.aino.se/

Come on internet…you’re not even trying anymore.

We are heading towards a gated online community. Partly because writing for browsers sucks.

It is much easier to develop a site for one platform than trying to accommodate 4 or 5 completely different ones. Why fiddle around with IE8 when you can create an app for Apples or Droids? Apps are not only simpler and easier, but also safer. You don’t have to worry about the version of the browser or if the user updated to the lastest patch. 

Web standards that are made moot by browser rendering is completely insane. Not only does it cause headaches for the desktop user, but it also eats up developing time that could be spent on usability. 

I understand why proprietary rendering and code was instituted in the early days of the web, but now the walls have to go down. The web as we know it is dying. I know that this is arguable and the ‘Death of the Web’ is still a heater subject, but my two cents is this: building a website should be intuitive. Not a cross-compatibility nightmare.

I have been told again and again by a experienced web developer to use a content management system. He’s done his time and has been jaded by his run ins with computability issues over the years. Is this what web development has come to; apps and widgets? 

If browsers continue to differentiate themselves, then soon they will be abandoned by developers and users alike in favor of a smoother, more compatible platform. I would hate to see the internet wither simply because making something that works on all browsers is so clunky. 

Am I a coder now?

At the beginning of my work day, I wasn’t planning on digging into javascript too much. However after looking at the webpage I create, I realised that something wasn’t quite right. I am playing around with iFrames, and some had really long load times. Usability time: I needed some indication of loading! So I needed a spinner. A javascript spinner, I think to myself. Great. After looking at different forums and sites for a while, I am throughly confused. These people are going about this way too hard! This should be simple; not 50 lines of code. Good grief. I will just make this myself, I say. And now I feel in control. I can create alert boxes from nothing! I am the creator! Until I realise that for all my variables and calls, the load spinner is not working. Plus my other script is no longer working either. Oh shit. Why do I have three functions now? Consolidate and simplify! Why do people think that simple=easy?Vola! A simple working spinner based on animated gif and the load() parameter. Simple. Elegant. Coding.

[initiate on click]

spinner = document.getElementById(‘spinner’);

spinner.style.display = ”;

[the rest is easy!]

function load(){

spinner = document.getElementById(‘spinner’);

spinner.style.display = ‘none’;}