what is the default pop up replacement now? - popup

I know pop ups are not good and should be avoided if possible but is that really true that now, whenever i think of using a pop up, i should always be considering other options? Are there any exceptions? And the last question is: what is the default replacement for pop ups?

You can use any javascript based dialog. Look for example at jQuery UI Dialog

The "Web2.0" pop-up might be a lightbox. I hope these are just a passing fad, because they are kind of annoying (a lot like pop-ups).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightbox_(JavaScript)

Banners, like you get at the top of Stack Overflow to tell you about badges, comments, see the FAQ if you're a new user are my favorite. They don't really get in the way and can link to the main content.

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Pop-ups are completely acceptable in certain contexts. The aversion to pop-ups arose from having pop-up foisted on users in the form of advertisements. I think that pop-ups are still a valid device in the correct case.
My rule of thumb is to not make any decisions for the user that they can make themselves. This typically includes opening a pop-up since they could right-click and choose "open link in new window" if they so desired.
Do you want to capture of a piece of user input without allowing any further interaction? A modal dialog is your friend.
there are cases where you want to offer a bit of useful info or a quick reference that doesn't necessitate closing off the rest of the web page or navigating to a different location. This could be addressed using some javascript and floating div's but many times a pop-up will do what you want without being obtrusive to a user.
I tend to read resources from the likes of 37 signals and UIE to keep up with the best ways to enhance user experience without alienating a user.

Related

confluence display content by user

I am trying to get specific content on a confluence cloud wiki to display content based on a specific user. The scenario here is that there are links on a page but only 1 should display, the one that displays is based on whom ever is logged in.
I have been told how a macro is the way forward, but I have read the documentation and I am at a loss. I do not understand what I have to do or how to write a confluence macro. could someone help me out with either an example or some links? I have searched like crazy, but maybe i am not asking the right questions but hopfully you can all help me out?
There's a plugin for this:
https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/net.customware.confluence.plugin.visibility
But I'm not sure how thoroughly it hides the content. It might still be visible if users view the page source. If you're trying to hide content which needs to be really protected, you'll probably need to do something else.
Depending on how many users are going to be using the page, you could also just make separate spaces for them, add the permissions to those spaces, and then use a page-include on your "main" page to display the content. If they don't have access it shouldn't show up. You might experience some formatting issues with that solution, however.
Finally, you could grab the username with jquery and display stuff based on that. This solution will be pretty easy if you are familiar with javascript/jquery.
Edit: Here are some helpful resources on how to use javascript and jquery within confluence:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/How+to+Use+JavaScript+in+Confluence
https://developer.atlassian.com/confdev/confluence-plugin-guide/writing-confluence-plugins/including-javascript-and-css-resources

SurveyMonkey survey as in-page overlay/modal/lightbox

I've searched the SurveyMonkey website, both help... and developer..., as well as the general net and stackoverflow, and can't find any examples of a SurveyMonkey survey being displayed in an in-page overlay (referred to by some as a "lightbox" or modal).
I think what I need to use is SurveyMonkey's Embed option, as opposed to Invitation or Survey Popups:
http://help.surveymonkey.com/articles/en_US/kb/How-do-I-embed-a-survey-or-have-it-open-in-a-popup-window-on-my-site
I'd like that overlay div to appear, close, etc upon the same triggers as a regular survey would/could, that is open if the user has no previous SurveyMonkey cookie, close when completed or closed by user, etc.
I can probably hack through a solution by forcing the survey into a custom overlay I build, but the behaviors would be more tricky, probably having to read the SurveyMonkey cookie, I suppose. Or, perhaps I could check for certain IDs of SurveyMonkey content that exists at various stages to pull off the behaviors (but I'll have to look at the generated code throughout the process to know if this is an option).
In short, it seems like someone else has surely run into this issue before and likely that a solution has already been created, at least partial to save me some time. I just can't find it.
Here are some things I found on the embed itself:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/en/blog/2013/04/23/how-to-embed-your-survey-on-a-website/
https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/en/blog/2013/04/16/video-tutorial-how-to-embed-your-survey-on-a-website/
Any and all help much appreciated, pointers/resources, example code, etc. Thanks!

Make user submitted data into a link

I'm a bit of a newbie and I'm scratching my head over this one.
Here is what I want to do:
On my web page, I have an input form and a submit button.
I want users to input data to the form, click submit, and go to a page that uses the data the user input as the url.
For example, if a user inputs 'bob' and clicks submit, they would go to '../bob.html'.
Is this possible?
Thanks!
I think the task you have taken on cannot be solved with HTML, though I am not sure about HTML5. This sort of thing is generally done using Java/JSP, C#/ASP, Perl CGI, or any of a number of other options. Whatever you use will almost certainly involve a bit of programming effort and require a server running at your site.
I could be wrong, so try looking at http://www.w3schools.com/tags for a relatively complete list of HTML options. It also occurs to me that you might be able to do this client side using JavaScript. Once again you might try W3schools for some helpful tutorials or just a quick query in you favorite search engine will bring up lots of stuff to get you started. One problem with JavaScript is that many people turn it off in their browsers for security reasons.
Good luck.

change text button of the dialog request component

Considering the component (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/dialogs/requests/), I would like know how to change the text of your button. I would like replace the "SEND REQUEST" to just "SEND".
Thanks.
Just a note: http://developers.facebook.com/policy/ states:
IV. Application Integration Points
4 Platform integrations, including social plugins:
d. You must not obscure or cover elements of our social plugins,
such as the Like button or Like box plugin.
Which I think applies to that button as well. There is a discussion over the like button here:
http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=81844
that probably applies to this question. Other than that, with fbml and fbjs, there was a way to change it, but facebook is deprecating them soon, so it won't even be worth trying using that. I think the only way to go would be to try and get a hold of facebook and make a request to change it, but seeing as how they are always changing things, not sure how that's going to work. If you have an argument as to why, they might listen.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fbml/
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/fbjs/

iPhone SDK: Ideas on how to implement a help facility for application

We we wondering what are some ways developers have added a help function to their apps. What are some techniques people have used?
One way we were thinking of is to us UIWebView to display a HTML file with help instructions.
Thoughts appreciated.
I'm using UIWebView right now which pretty much contains all the help in a single page, along with some JQuery things to display popups, etc. But I like the way iCab Mobile (et al.) are doing things which is a sectioned UITableView with each row a separate topic or section within their overall help information (complete with icons...) then in their bundle they have each section in its own html file, organized by localization.
Another thing in my queue for the next release is to provide a dynamic "News" view. The rough idea is as follows... I have on my server a file or CGI where I can place small bits of news I'd like to push out to users. On startup, my app checks for network availability and if present, start a thread to see if anything has changed on the server since last updating the News data. If changes present, post an alert letting user know, and asking if they'd like to read it now. At that point, the latest news is already downloaded and cached, so they can simply read it later if they want, and I won't post anymore alerts until the server file changes again. (And one could add a preference/setting to disable these alerts.)
I'm thinking this would be a good way to let people know that some nasty bug is known and fixed and an update is sitting in the queue, solicit beta testers, promote upcoming features or other apps, etc. I can see where constant alerts everytime I've got something new to promote would get annoying, so having a setting to disable them means the user never has to read them unless they want to. Although some kind of override to warn of recently discovered/fixed bugs seems sensible.
FWIW, the author of Mover+/Mover has just started doing a similar thing, though I think Emanuele is perhaps only showing one Notelet at a time, whereas I envision a bit more of a history (shown in UIWebView) until I decide to age stuff off the bottom of the stack.
I'm using a scroll/page view to show several images containing small notes. Each image then tells the user about the more advanced functions on a specific part of the app.
In my opinion the help should only contain information that isn't a 100% relevant for the use of the application. It should be things the advanced user should use to make more use of the app. It should contain gold for the power users. The "basics" should be so obvious that no help would ever be needed. If that's not the case, I think, you've failed as a developer on the iPhone platform.
(Here's a screen shot from my demo app)
I'm currently creating a fairly complicated app. I'm thinking of doing help as a semi-transparent overlay - help in text form is hard to swallow for users; it's much more helpful to just point at stuff and say "this does that".