Mick Redman

Monday, 17 February 2014

Twitter Bootstrap single page website without the need for yet another plugin

The code below creates a page using Twitter Bootstrap. It contains one of those fashionable single page navigations. I needed to create one for a site I was developing for a client recently. When I started to look into it all the examples seemed to use a plugin. For performance purposes, I didn't want to use another plugin. Especially since jQuery already comes with the 'animate' class. See code below for solution.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Single page website</title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

<link href="css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
<style>
#about, #contact
{
padding-top:4em;
}
#contact
{
margin-bottom:40em;
}
</style>



</head>
<body>
<div class="navbar navbar-default navbar-fixed-top" role="navigation">
<div class="container">
<div class="navbar-header">
<button type="button" class="navbar-toggle" data-toggle="collapse" data-target=".navbar-collapse">
<span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
</button>
</div>
<div class="navbar-collapse collapse">
<ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
<li><a href="#home">Home</a></li>
<li ><a href="#about">About</a></li>
<li><a href="#contact">Contact</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div id="home">
<div class="row">
<div class="container">
<article class="col-md-4">
<h2>Header 2</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quid ad utilitatem tantae pecuniae? Age, inquies, ista parva sunt. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Quae cum essent dicta, discessimus.</p>
<p>Invidiosum nomen est, infame, suspectum. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Non igitur bene.</p>
</article>
<article class="col-md-4">
<h2>Header 2</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quid ad utilitatem tantae pecuniae? Age, inquies, ista parva sunt. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Quae cum essent dicta, discessimus.</p>
<p>Invidiosum nomen est, infame, suspectum. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Non igitur bene.</p>
</article>
<article class="col-md-4">
<h2>Header 2</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quid ad utilitatem tantae pecuniae? Age, inquies, ista parva sunt. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Quae cum essent dicta, discessimus.</p>
<p>Invidiosum nomen est, infame, suspectum. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Non igitur bene.</p>
</article>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div id="about">
<div class="row">
<div class="container">
<figure class="col-md-4">
<img src="http://lorempixel.com/400/200/sports" alt="sports" class="img-responsive" />
<figcaption>Invidiosum nomen est, infame, suspectum. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Non igitur bene.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-4">
<img src="http://lorempixel.com/400/200/sports" alt="sports" class="img-responsive" />
<figcaption>Invidiosum nomen est, infame, suspectum. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Non igitur bene.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="col-md-4">
<img src="http://lorempixel.com/400/200/sports" alt="sports" class="img-responsive" />
<figcaption>Invidiosum nomen est, infame, suspectum. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Non igitur bene.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div id="contact">
<div class="row">
<div class="container">
<article class="col-md-6">
<h2>Header 2</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quid ad utilitatem tantae pecuniae? Age, inquies, ista parva sunt. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Quae cum essent dicta, discessimus.</p>
<p>Invidiosum nomen est, infame, suspectum. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Non igitur bene.</p>
</article>
<aside class="col-md-6">
<h2>Header 2</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quid ad utilitatem tantae pecuniae? Age, inquies, ista parva sunt. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Quae cum essent dicta, discessimus.</p>
<p>Invidiosum nomen est, infame, suspectum. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Quibus ego vehementer assentior. Non igitur bene.</p>
</aside>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<footer class="navbar-default navbar-fixed-bottom">
<div class="container">
<a href="#home">Back to top</a>
</div>
</footer>

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery.js"></script>

<script src="js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
<script>
(function()
{
$('.nav a, footer a').click(function()
{
var target = $(this).attr('href');
var targetLoc = $(target).offset().top;
$('html, body').stop().animate(
{
scrollTop:targetLoc,
easing:'swing'
}, 1000);
return false;
});
})();
</script>
</body>
</html>

Twitter Bootstrap CSS snippets

When creating a website using Twitter Bootstrap you often find yourself using the same CSS code snippets. Below are some of mine.

/*Standard bootstrap colour palette*/
.gray-darker
{
background:#222222;
color:white;
}
.gray-dark
{
background:#333333;
color:white;
}
.gray
{
background:#555555;
color:white;
}
.gray-light
{
background:#999999;
color:white;
}
.gray-lighter
{
background:#EEEEEE;
color:#222222;
}
.brand-primary
{
background:#428BCA;
color:white;
}
.brand-success
{
background:#5CB85C;
color:white;
}
.brand-info
{
background:#5BC0DE;
color:white;
}
.brand-warning
{
background:#F0AD4E;
color:white;
}
.brand-danger
{
background:#D9534F;
color:white;
}

/* Remove colours of navigation bar */
.navbar-default, .navbar-inverse
{
background-image:none;
background-color:white;
border-color:white;
box-shadow:none;
}

/* Set default colour for inactive navigation items in inverse bar */
.navbar-inverse .navbar-nav > li > a
{
background:#222222;
color:white;
}

/* Set hover colour for inactive navigation items in inverse bar */
.navbar-inverse .navbar-nav > li > a:hover
{
background:#333333;
color:white;
}

/* Set default colour for active navigation items in inverse bar */
.navbar-inverse .navbar-nav > li.active > a
{
background:#555555;
color:white;
}

/* Set hover colour for active navigation items in inverse bar */
.navbar-inverse .navbar-nav > li.active > a:hover
{
background:#999999;
color:white;
}

/* Set default colour for inactive navigation items in default bar */
.navbar-default .navbar-nav > li > a
{
background:#222222;
color:white;
}

/* Set hover colour for inactive navigation items in default bar */
.navbar-default .navbar-nav > li > a:hover
{
background:#333333;
color:white;
}

/* Set default colour for active navigation items in default bar */
.navbar-default .navbar-nav > li.active > a
{
background:#555555;
color:white;
}

/* Set hover colour for active navigation items in default bar */
.navbar-default .navbar-nav > li.active > a:hover
{
background:#999999;
color:white;
}

/* Align figure text to centre */
figure
{
text-align:center;
}

/* Align figure images to centre */
figure img
{
margin:0 auto;
}

/* Change size and colour of glyph icons */
span.glyphicon
{
font-size:6em;
color:#222222;
}

/* Make the carousel images centre and take up the whole carousel */
.carousel > .carousel-inner > .item > img
{
margin:0 auto;
width:100%;
}

/* Lift the arrows a little higher to vertical middle and dim */
.carousel-control > .icon-prev, .carousel-control > .icon-next, .carousel-control > .glyphicon-chevron-left, .carousel-control > .glyphicon-chevron-right
{
top:40%;
opacity:0.5;
}

/* Remove the awful background gradient */
.carousel-control.right, .carousel-control.left
{
background-image:none;
}

/* Take the right arrow closer to the edge */
.carousel-control .icon-next, .carousel-control .glyphicon-chevron-right
{
right:20%;
}

/* Take the left arrow closer to the edge */
.carousel-control .icon-prev, .carousel-control .glyphicon-chevron-left
{
left:20%;
}

Monday, 27 January 2014

Twitter Bootstrap sticky footer (without the pain)

Strangely enough, the sticky footer examples which I've seen for Twitter Bootstrap 3 seem to ignore the fact that there is now a class which takes all the pain away. It's called 'navbar-fixed-bottom', and it is usually used to create a bottom up navigation bar. However, if you add it to your footer code, it works better than any other sticky footer examples. Here's how it works:
Create a footer thus:
<footer class="navbar-default navbar-fixed-bottom">
<div class="container">
<p>Hello world!</p>
</div>
</footer>
Then style it using CSS thus:
footer.navbar-default.navbar-fixed-bottom
{
background:red;
color:white;
padding:1em 0;
}
footer.navbar-default.navbar-fixed-bottom p
{
margin:0;
}
Easy! Sticky footers all the way for me now. They're really useful for mobile web apps.

Thursday, 19 December 2013

Quick overview of humans.txt for SEO

humans.txt is a TXT file that contains information about the different people who have contributed to building the website. Click here to access an example from humans.txt. The file is picked up by search engines.
Add a humans.txt to your site and reference it using the tag
<link type="text/plain" rel="author" href="humans.txt" />

Wednesday, 11 December 2013

Dynamic progress bar for Twitter Bootstrap using PHP

Twitter Bootstrap offers some very useful progress bars. See http://getbootstrap.com/components/#progress
They are based on percentages, so you need to get the length of the shaded bar as a percentage of the whole bar for them to be accurate.

Below is a small example of how to do this with PHP.

<?php
$currentVal = 10;
$maxVal = 20;
$percentageVal = ($currentVal/$maxVal)*100;
?>
<div class="progress">
<div class="progress-bar" role="progressbar" aria-valuenow="<?php echo $currentVal ?>" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuemax="<?php echo $maxVal ?>" style="width:<?php echo $percentageVal ?>%;">
<span class="sr-only"><?php echo $percentageVal ?> Complete</span>
</div>
</div>

Recursive delete for blogs and forums

Let's say, you've developed a blog or forum and you need to delete some entries. You will also want to delete the responses to those entries. In this example we'll use a table structure like this, where 'refid' is a field used to associate a response with it's referer :
`id`
`refid`
`userid`
`title`
`content`
`tags`
`created`
In our PHP we want to go through each blog entry which we'd like to delete and ascertain it's responses identified by 'refid' before deleting it. Thus :
function deleterecursiveblog($id)
{
$q = "SELECT * FROM `blog` WHERE `refid`='{$id}'";
$result = mysqli_query($con,$q);
if(isset($result))
{
foreach($result as $key)
{
deleterecursiveblog($key['id']);
}
}
$q = "DELETE FROM `blog` WHERE `id`='{$id}'";
$result = mysqli_query($con,$q);
}

Friday, 6 December 2013

Bash techniques

I've been doing a lot of work in bash lately. I've been speeding up the time taken to create the website basics. Right now I can create a Twitter Bootstrap/Modernizr website with blogs etc within a couple of seconds by calling my bash script. So, below are some techniques I've learned along the way:
Prep-end all slashes in a web address with backslashes
webdir=`echo $webdir | sed s,/,\\\\\\\\\\/,g`
Get the last substring from a string separated by slashes
dbn=${longstring##*/}
Put the contents of a .sql into a database
mysql -u root -p password $dbn < $workingdir"/users.sql"
Change a line within a .ini file
sed -i -e '/DB_NAME =/ s/= .*/= '$dbn'/' config.ini
Hope they help!