Ultimate New Media, Inc

jQuery and JSONP for Cross Domain Requests

If you have ever had issues making AJAX calls between two servers (domains) then I strongly suggest you check out this post and jQuery ajax method.

I went through a considerable amount of headbanging before finally figuring this out and the post above is the only solution I could find that even came close to pointing me in the right direction. One thing I would add to the post above is a clearer example. Here was my solution:

function makeRequest() {
$.ajax({
url: ‘http://myserver.com/page.php’,
dataType: ‘jsonp’,
jsonp: ‘jsonp_callback’,
data: “id=10″
});
}

This function will generate a request to page.php on http://myserver.com (you should replace the domain and PHP script location with your own of course).

In my PHP script, and after doing the necessary processing, I returned the following:

echo ‘processResponse(’ . json_encode($vRetValue) . ‘)’;

When this is received by the AJAX call above the processResponse function will be called.

function processResponse(data) {
// do something with the data
}

Note: Make sure your call back function is outside of any jQuery.ready blocks:

$().ready(function() {
// stuff here
});

function callbackFunction() {
// do stuff here
}

Magento Zoom Reset Option

When recently working on a Magento Enterprise project, a client requested a reset button be added for the product zoom feature because while switching between different product images, a new image would load in the current zoom state.  As it turns out, adding this feature is quite simple.

1. Add a button (or trigger of your choice) to initiate the reset:

<input type=”button” value=”Reset” id=”zoom_reset” />

This should be done in the media template: /app/design/frontend/enterprise/**/template/catalog/product/view/media.phtml

2. Pass this button’s id to the Product.Zoom call:

<script type=”text/javascript”>

Event.observe(window, ‘load’, function() {

product_zoom = new Product.Zoom(’image’, ‘track’, ‘handle’, ‘zoom_in’, ‘zoom_out’, ‘track_hint’, ‘zoom_enlarge’, ‘zoom_reset‘);

});

</script>

3. Update the Product.Zoom class in /js/varien/product.js to prepare the zoom reset id:

initialize: function(imageEl, trackEl, handleEl, zoomInEl, zoomOutEl, hintEl, enlargeEl, resetEl){

this.resetEl = $(resetEl);

4. Bind this element to a new function that will handle the reset:

Event.observe(this.resetEl, ‘click’, this.resetImage.bind(this));

5. Add the resetImage function:

resetImage: function() {

this.scale(0);

this.slider.setValue(0);

},

As you can see, this is a pretty straight forward method for resetting the image to the full view position.

IE Browser Testing to the Max

Ever needed to test your website in IE 6 but currently have IE 7 (or soon IE 8) installed?

Check out this website: http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

You can install all versions of IE prior to IE 7 (IE 6.0, IE 5.5, IE 5.01, IE 4.01 and IE 3.0) – pretty useful tool for testing.

SWFObject/Internet Explorer abort message and fixes

Another issue that we ran into recently when launching a site that used Flash was an error message in Internet Explorer 7 on a PC (Vista for me).  When trying to access the home page, the following error was displayed: “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site . . . Operation aborted” and killed the page rendering and showing a page cannot be displayed message. This, of course, made the homepage inaccessible.

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Why PHP should NOT be run on Windows

I ran into an issue today sending emails from a CMS system that was running on a WAMP installation due to the client’s request.  We were using the default PHP mail() function to send emails from the form and the emails were not sending.

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