Newly launched project

[BabyJeffy]

Happy New Year everyone!

I wanted to show off one of the projects that I've been working closely on for the past few months - and ask for any feedback (and of course features you think would be fun)! It's under constant (weekly cycle) development and is designed to explore elements of social networking (eventually many of the parts of this may get included in other projects we are working on).

http://www.badj.it/

(this is a play on "Badge It").

Anyone can browse the site without logging in, but if you want to express an opinion on something (or upload your own badjits), you will have to register (1 step - totally free - and totally safe for home and work). There is one google adwords banner per page (text only) and that is the ONLY attempt to recover costs (no popups, no spamming you etc - I promise).

Anyway, please take a peek... it's not a huge site... and it may help you vent some (more) tension and stress in an anonymous (kinda) fasion.

Cheers,
Jeff

PS: If you really like the site, please pass on the URL to your friends... it'd be cool to get some new users posting here

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[feherke]

Hi

I like the funny domain name, the tricky file extensions, the pale color shades.
[ul]
[li]Add [tt]alt[/tt] attribute to the search [tt]form[/tt]'s [tt]image[/tt] [tt]input[/tt].[/li]
[li]Add [tt]alt[/tt] attribute to the main page's image map's [tt]area[/tt].[/li]
[li]Verify the insertion of [tt]meta[/tt] tags, for example on /search.html they are above the doctype declaration.[/li]
[li]Matbe redesign abit the Hey you box on the main page, because it is somehow hard to observe beside those huge badges.[/li]
[/ul]

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[BabyJeffy]

Thanks for that Feherke - we are waiting to pushing out the bug fix for the meta tags (fixed it yesterday on dev). I'll take a scrub for missing alt tags too (thanks for bringing that up).

Cheers,
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[traingamer]

... no spamming you etc - I promise).

It actually should say this on the Web site somewhere, but I couldn't find any reference to privacy.

Greg
"Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught." - Winston Churchill

 

[vacunita]

I ran your site through the W3 validator. It has a few errors you might want to fix so it can be considered standards compliant and be properly displayed in all standards complaint browsers.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.badj.it/

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[BabyJeffy]

Traingamer - it certainly should say that on the site... and I'll point it out to the team tomorrow. As you can see, the site is in "alpha" and is missing some of the finer points required for a site (requiring registration etc) to be considered "safe" in our modern web world. Actually... given it's a UK website (although hosted in Germany) I'll raise a few noises about the Data Protection requirements, too.

Vacunita - well reminded. Rest assured that I'll be running the page through that validator (and others) over the coming days to iron out these last few faults.

Cheers for the heads-up!
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[richcleverley]

NIce looking site.

You seem to have your <h2> tags mixed up with your </h3> ones - easy typo to make when you are coding I know.

also I would look at your & signs and replace them with &amp;. You also seems to have some empty spans in there too tags in there too. If you need them to be there I would suggest putting a &nbsp; in there to stop the validators complaining.

You probably know all this anyway, but I know it's easy to miss things out and having others point them out is always useful.

Richard

 

[BabyJeffy]

I've addressed almost all the validation errors (copy-paste errors for the h2/h3 problem) and made sure our & are now &amp;

I have one remaining problem with the imagemap on the main page. I'm going to see if we can set our content to be served as xhtml+text to allow Firefox to work properly without having to use a name attribute -- something not allowed in 1.1 strict.

The fixes will probably make it through for next week.

Cheers,
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[BabyJeffy]

Just a quick update for those interested. The latest roll-out addressed a lot of validation errors (as well as the usual new features).

There is now one remaining validation error on the front page to do with the use of a client-side imagemap. For those of you who have experienced this in the past, the solution is to not use the name attribute, and to serve the page as xhtml+text (which is something we are not doing on the live site just yet). This is required to get FF to use the imagemap.

There are some markup problems (block level elements inside an inline element) that we're addressing on the browse Badj page (and I'm sure it's repeated across some of the other code as well) - hopefully this will be rolled out next week.

We're currently not outputting ampersands properly in the user generated content pages... and this will be next on the agenda.

The FAQ section (which has a newly introduced validation error to do with use of the name attribute) of the site now includes a statement on how the personal data you enter is to be used, and the data protection issue has been raised with the appropriate people (they are such a busy bunch of people so I'm not holding my breath).

We've just added our first RSS feed to the site as well - shortly to be including this on many more of the lists that are currently generated. Next rollout of features and fixes due next week

Cheers,
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[BabyJeffy]

Another release of Badj.it went live today! For those interested, this project is now 13 weeks old! We've had 2-3 people working on it for most of that time.

The whole site validates to the doctype now. We "fixed" the imagemap issue and non-escaped ampersands (from user submissions) by changing the doctype from XHTML 1.1 to XHTML 1.0 Transitional. This is not a permanent fix - but it addresses the immediate concerns - and let's us focus on other (more important - to the business) problems.

We've reclaimed some of the real-estate from the side bar sections of the page through the introduction of javascript driven "tool tips" (or maybe a better description would be "info tips") to allow us to present images as a group rather than a list. We used the same technique to add context help to some of the more obscure functionality - and this will pave the way for us adding a LOT more help across the site in the coming weeks.

You can now express an opinion when voting to "love" or "hate" inline. This cool feature does increase the number of clicks required to express an opinion (from one to two) but the functionality gain is worth it (we think). I'd be interested in your opinions on this in terms of usability.

The title tags for each page have been updated to be a little more descriptive of the page function, and we have finally set up description and keywords meta tags for a little bit more SEO opportunity.

As usual, there are all manner of CSS changes (and some changes to the markup) - and whilst I'm never 100% satisfied with large CSS files, I think the current look on Firefox, Safari and IE is ok. Hopefully there will be a chance to optimise this sometime soon.

We have an RSS feed available now that reports on recently added Badjes - so you can watch the activity from your RSS aggregator if you like. There will probably be more of these RSS feeds delivered shortly for stuff like "Recently registered" and "Recently Loved & Hated" lists.

Oh, we changed the copyright to 2007

I'd appreciate any further feedback if you have some spare time. Take a stroll through the site and see what you think.

Cheers,
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[Foamcow]

The inline commenting works fine for me. In fact I didn't even realise it was different to how it used to be. This has to be a good sign as it just felt 'right'.

I think the info tips could be a little more elegant though. They don't seem to gel with the site.

<honk>*:O)</honk>

Earl & Thompson Marketing - Marketing Agency Services in Gloucestershire

 

[BabyJeffy]

I'm not disagreeing with you on the look of those help tips Foamster - they certainly "stand out" from the rest of the site, don't they . I'm hoping they'll be replaced shortly with a nice background image that looks like a speech bubble or something - depends on how creative the design team are feeling

Got some nifty stuff coming up for release next week - a page that shows 100+ random Badjes (great for discovering new content) and we're starting to make use of the keywords (appearing in search results and being made clickable to help link "like" content).

I've already noticed a couple of things that need fixing too

Cheers,
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[Stretchwickster]

I'm very impressed with the site - great job Jeff (& team!).

I have to agree with foamcow, that the info tips seem a bit out of place when compared with the style of the site. I'm no designer but I think the following changes to the info tips might be beneficial and more fitting:
- rounded corners on the border
- gradient fill
- thinner border

Clive

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer." (Paul Ehrlich)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To get the best answers from this forum see: faq102-5096

 

[glenmac]

When I try the links on top it crashes my browser!!!IE6

Glen

http://lantzvillecomputers.com

 

[BabyJeffy]

Clive, thanks for that I'm going to see what I can come up with "in stealth mode" for those tool-tip popups. I'll let you know what happens

That doesn't sound so good, Glen! We did some hot fixes on Friday to remove references to a missing image in the css (this affected all pages except the front page) - and this may have prevented some people from being able to use the site properly (I'm hoping you were affected during this time, and the latest changes we sent up will have fixed things for you). This should all be settled down now, though.

Could you take another look at the site, Glen, and see if it happens again? Also, do you refer to the google ads, or the "tab"-like navigation?

Cheers,
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094

 

[BabyJeffy]

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I was last here to report some updates... and we've been busy!

Here is a quick summary of the main features:
[ul][li]Keywords are now included in searches - and they are also clickable (so that you can now drive a search directly from the keywords)
[/li][li]Display the number of opinions on a Badj page, and the number of Badjes on a User page
[/li][li]Show whether you have already expressed an opinion on a Badj in lists
[/li][li]Added a "recently added" link that shows a properly ordered list of Badjes in the order they were added
[/li][li]Allow users to filter the list of Badjes to show just Badjes they haven't expressed an opinion on yet
[/li][li]Added a page of "random" badjes - 81 badjes to encourage you to explore
[/li][li]You can now deep-link to opinions on the Badj pages and on the User pages (ideal if you want to link to your content from, say, a blog)
[/li][/ul]

Of course, we continue to enhance the back-end as well

Currently we're working on a suite of CSS changes and some new "what's hot" functionality that may make it into the next release due in a few days time.

The project is now approaching 16 weeks old (!) and is almost ready to lose the "alpha" moniker and move to the more interesting "beta" stage.

No news on the tooltip look and feel... it's still on the back-burner.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Cheers,
Jeff

PS: Any more progress on the crashing issue you were experiencing, Glen? We haven't had any other reports of this happening across many different environments.

[tt]Jeff's Page @ Code Couch

http://www.codecouch.com/jeff/blog/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

What is Javascript? FAQ216-6094