DISQUS Comments | Powering Discussion on the Web. IntenseDebate comments enhance and encourage conversation on you. Creating a “Filterable” Portfolio with jQuery - Nettuts+ If you have worked in your field for a while, there is a pretty good chance that you have a rather extensive portfolio. To make it a little easier to navigate, you will probably be tempted to break them into different categories. In this tutorial, I will show you how to make "filtering by category" a little more interesting with just a little bit of jQuery.
Our portfolio is nothing more than a simple unordered list: Note: I was by no means a part of creating these wonderful sites; I am just using them as examples. We are going to assume that our portfolio can be broken down into 5 categories: DesignDevelopmentCMSIntegrationInformation Architecture In order to use the categories we have defined, we will convert them to lowercase and replace all spaces with hyphens: Design = designDevelopment = developmentCMS = cmsIntegration = integrationInformation Architecture = information-architecture Now that we have the portfolio pieces in place, we are going to need some way to navigate through them. A jQuery Portfolio Plugin that's Interactive and Filterable. Update: Since this post was written, we have rebuilt the New Media Campaigns website. There still is a filtering portfolio, but it is now based on the jQuery isotope plugin. This is a much better plugin however it does cost $40 for commercial use. The plugin below still works great, but it doesn't animate quite as nicely.
See a Demo Read The Documentation Download the Plugin and Zip Last week we finally launched our new site design. Some of the requirements we had when we built it were: It should be easy to updateEach item should be able to be in multiple categoriesWe should be able to link to certain filters with a url hash To get this done, Josh, Eli and I collaborated on different aspects. Documentation Markup The plugin is configurable to work with just about any markup. Filters Portfolio Items Saranac ... Of course the markup can be completely arbitrary. Linking Filters to Items - The hashed href of the filter link must match the class of the portfolio item.
Javascript/jQuery Setup. Why front-end developers are so important to the future of busin. Or How traditional businesses who have moved to the web regularly undervalue their front-end web developers, and are worse off because of that The roles of web developers and web designers have been around for over 15 years now, and the role of a client-side or front-end web developer started to mature into a distinct entity around 10 years ago, as the content-presentation-behaviour layer paradigm became embedded in people's working methodologies (and, with the introduction of Google's then-new search algorithm, when the need for cleanly structured, easily indexable pages became, for businesses, not just an aspiration but a necessity).
Unfortunately the perception of the front-end developer's role remains somewhat coloured by an early association in observers' minds with the other, loosely related role of the web designer. Skill set Perception Frustration Value The modern web developer has huge amounts of value to offer a business. Slow Large businesses and organisations move slowly. Confusing menus and links: the web's biggest challenge. SEO FAQ. In Q&A, SEO on 13 October 2009 So yesterday I had a bit of a rant about SEO and I’ve gotten a few common questions so I thought I’d try to answer them. Here goes. Gosh you seem angry. Damn right. I publish a magazine and I know a lot of magazine publishers. And they are forking over embarrassing sums of money to charlatans who say they can raise their search engine rankings.
These magazines can barely pay their writers. If you’re a company that’s about to pay some SEO expert, please, I beg you, take that money and hand it to a talented writer or competent web developer instead. Did you just quit smoking or something? But I use SEO for good. You shouldn’t call people names. This article is linkbait/SEO. [Insert irate defense of SEO here.] If you’re so smart, prove it. How did I accomplish these magic SEO feats? In this case, I wrote a passionate post. I’ve done this thousands of times. SEO is needed because of bad web design. It’s easy for you – you’re an expert. The $300 Million Button. By Jared M. Spool Originally published: Jan 14, 2009 Editor's note: Thanks to Marco Dini, you can now read this article in Italian. [While Luke Wroblewski was writing his well-received book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, he asked if I could think of an example where a change in a form's design made a noticeable difference in business.
How Changing a Button Increased a Site's Annual Revenues by $300 Million It's hard to imagine a form that could be simpler: two fields, two buttons, and one link. The form was simple. The problem wasn't as much about the form's layout as it was where the form lived. The team saw the form as enabling repeat customers to purchase faster. "I'm Not Here To Be In a Relationship" We conducted usability tests with people who needed to buy products from the site. We were wrong about the first-time shoppers. Some first-time shoppers couldn't remember if it was their first time, becoming frustrated as each common email and password combination failed.