IE7 and Relative Links
by daniel
Be forewarned, IE7 essentially converts all the relative links on a page to absolute ones. Normally this doesn’t present much of a problem, but we ran into an issue when trying to replace content on a page with some we had loaded in via AJAX, after the initial page load.
Since we were determining what content to load by a link’s ‘href’ attribute, we just needed to use the split method to remove any absolute linkage if the browser tried to add it.
Por ejemplo – most browsers are okay with this:
var theLink = $(this).attr('href');
For IE7, we had to do this:
var theLink = $(this).attr('href').split('#');
var cleanLink = '#' + theLink[1];
Hopefully this information will be helpful to somebody else!
We are hiring!
by jen
JLOOP is hiring! Want to come work with us? Have a friend that would fit our team? Please pass it along! We love to have references from valued friends like you 
We have three open positions and would love to start talking to people right away so give us a call or shoot us an email.
PRODUCER / STRATEGIC PLANNER
We are looking for a strong personality to step into our world of creative web development services. Our producers live and breathe three things: Time, Target, Budget. Your job is to strategically guide our delicate clients (and their projects) into the depths of the online world. We seek outstanding talent, big ideas, and a great desire to work and learn in a collaborative small team environment.
The Day to Day
- Guide projects through our established internal and external process
- Translate creative ideas into executable plans
- Develop wireframes and communicate to developers, designers and clients
- Manage project scope and client expectations
- Facilitate weekly planning meetings
- Occasionally crack the whip with a smile
What we are looking for:
- Strong, bullet point like organizational skills
- Attention to detail from the 30,000 foot view
- Creative and Strategic Thinker
- Extremely web savvy, understanding of social networking landscape
- Comfortable handling multiple tasks
- Excellent communication skills
We will be the most fun place you have ever worked. We have a wide range of exciting projects to work on – with fantastic room for growth. We have a ping-pong table (need we say more?)
Here’s what we ask: Know what you do well. Know what you want to learn. Get excited about the work. Have a passion for innovation. Get ready to work fast. Be agile.
Contact us if interested: sayhello@jloop.com
JUNIOR DESIGNER / PRODUCTION ARTIST
JLOOP is actively seeking to expand our interactive design team. We are looking for a talented junior designer with big ideas and a desire to work and learn in a collaborative team environment. The ideal designer has a clean/progressive design aesthetic and can work efficiently creating beautiful interfaces while remaining true to the objectives of the project. We require every member of our team to specialize in an area or two, but have experience and a desire to learn a multitude of skills. We will be the most fun place you have ever worked. We have a wide range of exciting projects to work on – with fantastic room for growth. We have a ping-pong table (need we say more?) Here’s what we ask: Know what you do well. Know what you want to learn. Get excited about the work. Have a passion for innovation. Get ready to work fast. Be agile.
Some bullet points for non-paragraph readers:
- Degree in web/interactive design or equivalent
- Eye for typography, color and layout
- CSS experience a plus
- Strong conceptual skills
- Knowledge of standards and best practices for online media
Contact us if interested: sayhello@jloop.com
DESIGN INTERN
JLOOP is seeking a design intern to join our team. We are looking for a talented designer with strong communication skills, big ideas and a desire to work, learn, and grow in a collaborative team environment. The ideal design intern has a clean/progressive design aesthetic and has graduated in is currently in a design program with a web emphasis. We require every member of our team to specialize in an area or two, but have experience and a desire to learn a multitude of skills. We will be the most fun place you have ever worked. We have a wide range of exciting projects to work on – with fantastic room for growth. We have a ping-pong table (need we say more?) Here’s what we ask: Know what you do well. Know what you want to learn. Get excited about the work. Have a passion for innovation. Get ready to work fast. Be agile.
Some bullet points for non-paragraph readers:
- Earning a degree or new graduate in web/interactive design or equivalent
- Strong Design skills
- Eye for typography, color and layout
- CSS experience a plus
- Big thinker
- Knowledge of standards and best practices for online media
Contact us if interested: sayhello@jloop.com
3 Bees & The Pursuit of Par
by jay
One of the fastest projects we’ve ever completed will air on NBC this Sunday.
Friend of JLOOP, Brian Baumgartner, of The Office fame, is producing a new show called “Life, Lessons, and The Pursuit of Par” for NBC Sports, and we’re proud to have provided the “Vanity Card” for his production company 3 Bees Entertainment.
Stay tuned at the end of the show on Sunday, or watch it here, right now!
Social(k)
by jay
Our great friends over at Blue Marble and EarthFolio introduced us to the social(k) 401K a number of years ago. Its part of our benefit package at JLOOP, and we wanted to give them a shoutout today.
Social(k) is an amazing way to invest in your future while simultaneously investing in our planet and forces for social good in the world. SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) is a legitimate and powerful force in the investing world now, and we’re proud to include it in the JLOOP benefits package for our team. Check out this video:
Just Launched: My Haiti iPhone Apps
by jay
We’re really proud to be working with Anne Glick at Round by Design to launch a series of interactive children’s story applications. The first two apps were launched today:
Anne is traveling the world and telling amazing stories about children’s lives in other countries. From the iTunes description:
“Alo, hi! My name is Gamenlie, but you can call me Gabou. My parents, Manman and Papa, and I live in a village near the home of my grandparents and my great-grandmother. It’s fun to have so many relatives nearby, especially when it’s time to celebrate. Come, join me!”
So begins this delightful photo story app that introduces young readers to a life similar to their own and yet fascinatingly different – that of Gabou, a young Haitian girl. Using photos rather than illustrations and first-person narration, Gabou invites readers to join her as celebrates her uncle’s wedding, feeds her family’s pig, and plays during recess at school, among other activities.
Experience cultural immersion for the youngest reader AND make an international friend!
By highlighting what our children have in common with others no matter where they live, this book lays the foundation for cultural understanding and openness among the youngest readers.
We’re looking forward to working with Anne to produce many more apps in this series. And look for the iPad versions coming very soon as well!
SWFObject and Dreamweaver FLV Player
by daniel
So Dreamweaver has some nice little built in FLV Players and functionality to insert them on a page for you. Only problem is they make use of the old ‘object’ and ‘embed’ tags. SWFObject is a much more graceful, standards-compliant method for adding Flash to your site, so why not combine the two?
I wanted to use the progressive player that Dreamweaver provides, so I generated the code, pulled out the flashvars and parameters and inserted them into the SWFObject code like so:
(Line wraps marked »)
<script type="text/javascript">
var flashvars = {
skinName: "video/Clear_Skin_3",
streamName: "MyVideoTitle",
autoPlay: true,
autoRewind: false
};
var params = {
movie: "video/FLVPlayer_Progressive.swf",
salign: "tl",
quality: "high",
scale: "noscale"
};
var attributes = {};
swfobject.embedSWF("video/FLVPlayer_Progressive.swf", "FLVPlayer", »
"800", "600", "9.0.0","video/expressInstall.swf", flashvars, params, »
attributes);
</script>
The important thing here being, that the path to the video file is relative to the player SWF (in this case ‘FLVPlayer_Progressive.swf) NOT the page calling it – Nice!
A New Work-Week Schedule
by jay
We’re trying a little something new at JLOOP.
Even though we’re a pretty standard 9-6 business in a lot of ways, in a lot of other ways, we’re not. Our work involves routine processes and daily tasks, but we are also a creative firm – and creative work sometimes doesn’t happen on schedules.
So we’ve been pondering for a long time whether some periodic changes in our work-week schedules might be a good idea. And we’ve decided to give it a try.
For the time-being (meaning, we don’t know for exactly how long we will implement this change), we are closed to the outside world on Fridays. We are doing a few different things with this time. Some of our team will be working 4-day weeks for a while, and some of us will be here on Fridays – either working intently on client services, or… surprise, surprise… working intently on our own projects. (pique your interest?).
Of course if there is ever anything urgent, you can always reach us at support [at] jloop [dot] com.
We’ll keep you posted on how this new schedule affects our productivity and our creative output. We’re interested to find out ourselves!
Flash’s short term/long term problem
by jay
So where does Flash go from here?
I’ve been thinking a good bit about the predicament for Flash and it isn’t pretty.
I’ve been building Flash websites and applications for 10 years now. I started right at the time when Flash 5 was arriving (I never really used TellTarget much, thank goodness). When I really got going building Flash stuff, I would say it felt “hot”. There was no end of inquiries and the ability to make stuff move around on screen made people pretty giddy.
But what turned my Flash skills into a career was the fact that there was an overload of terrible Flash hitting the web. The fact that Flash was so “easy” to produce, made every web shop around think they should use it, just because they could. For this reason, Flash got a pretty bad name in a lot of circles. But as I’ve always said, it isn’t the tool’s fault, its the untrained artists who were using it. In any case… it created a nice landscape for me to stand out, so that worked well for a good long time. It was exciting.
Platforms a-plenty
Cut to today. JLOOP produces web applications of all shapes and sizes. And Flash has become only one component of what we do. We still produce full-Flash websites, and Flash is used to some degree in almost every project we work on. The main difference here is that we never ever utilize Flash without providing an alternative. With tools like SWFObject, it is so easy to provide a non-flash alternative in a seamless way… there really is no excuse not to. Of course it gets more complicated when you are doing full-Flash websites, but the onus is still on us to provide a reasonable experience for users across the many platforms there are in use now.
Which brings me to the real point of this post. Without getting on a soapbox about how things have changed… its safe to say that we are seeing more “fracturing” of the internet landscape than ever before. And that trend will only continue. Here are a few facts that point at this trend:
- We used to test on IE on a PC (back in the day). Now we test on IE, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome on both PC and Mac (at bare minimum).
- We never used to test on mobile devices unless we were specifically working on a mobile application. Now we always do some sort of testing on the iPhone browser.
- Video online blossomed via the Flash Player. Today you can watch online video through applications on mobile devices, xboxes, silverlight, and HTML5 just to name a few.
We expect this trend to continue. New browsers are entering the market. IE6 is dying (finally!). And new standards are emerging.
A new playing field
I believe that Apple has forever changed the game. (I do not believe it is a game that will be “won”, however.) Apple lovers & haters aside, the iPhone was the most significant change to the online landscape (beyond just mobile devices and phones) in the last few years. And the exclusion of Flash on the iPhone cannot be ignored as a major turning point for Flash.
First let me say that I LOVE the iPhone. I love the phone itself. And I love developing for it. I feel that same excitement I felt about Flash 10 years ago. Apple has done so many things right and the platform delivers on a new set of promises that Flash is not ready to embrace.
It is not a random occurrence that Apple succeeded where Microsoft failed in the “smartphone” market. Apple has created a closed and controlled platform – and it is because they understand users better than anyone else. We don’t care WHY our phone crashes… we just find it completely unacceptable when it does, and we will blame the phone. Apple has vigorously protected the phone in every way – from their SDK, to their control of distribution, to their (oft maligned) approval process. I am one who believes that they are more RIGHT than they are wrong. And they are winning because of it.
And I hate to say it, but having learned what I know about how the phone works and the rigors of developing for iPhone… I don’t see how Flash can meet the standard. Not without a major shift in the platform.
If I put the Flash Player on my iPhone, I could then write a Flash file in about 10 minutes that would crash the phone – guaranteed. That, to Apple and to me, is unacceptable in this environment.
But Adobe has a conundrum. I believe that they have slowly been developing the Flash platform to a point where it is much more rigorous and standards based. It is much more rigorous to write ActionScript3 than it is to write AS2 – and that is the trend they have been been pushing. But Adobe’s biggest coup is also their biggest problem – every version of the Flash Player is completely 100% backwards compatible. That means that Flash code I wrote in 2001, using simple ActionScript 1, will still run in Flash Player 10. If they ever break that backwards compatibility, the platform would be in major trouble.
But the reality is they may not have a choice. To me, the signs point to the fact that Adobe will be forced to deliver a new standard – more likely closer aligned to AIR than to SWF that will enable some sort of Flash capability on the Apple platform. And its the iPad that clinches it for Apple. IF the iPad is successful, and I believe it will be, Adobe will be forced to bifurcate the platform. They have probably already lost the war in terms of video. All video platforms are already working on HTML5 alternatives and I don’t think Adobe can counter with a Flash Player that works better and has less overhead.
I can see a path where a new Flash Player is introduced for mobile and “intermediate” platforms like the iPad. One that no longer supports legacy Flash – but requires ActionScript 4 (hee hee) and a more rigorous standard of code development. One that has more built-in control for runaway processes and crash-inducing code. (the old “this flash movie is looping uncontrollably” pop-up has got to go.)
So where does this go?
Short Term: I think Adobe must be working on a path forward and an announcement may come soon. But the true short term test will be the success of the iPad. If it really takes off, Adobe’s hands will be tied to providing some sort of Flash Player that passes muster.
Long Term: I am very confident Flash will continue to exist. It just works too well for the simple experiential design element, interactive piece, presentation, etc for it to go away entirely. But all signs point to complication for developers such as myself. JLOOP is taking strides to make sure we can deliver solutions for all platforms that have traction… now and in the future. This will mean we need to be able to develop for the mobile world as well as the traditional browser-based web. The app culture is here to stay. But its not the only game in town. For better or for worse, we have to be ready for anything.
We’re a finalist for the App Star Awards
by jay
DoWeHaveEnough is a finalist! Help us win!
Many of you probably know we’ve been working on a streamlined event utility called DoWeHaveEnough. Its a very simple little application that helps you plan the type of event that can only happen if you have enough participants. Things like… a poker game… a golf foursome… a basketball game. Stuff like that.
We’ll we’ve been hard at work developing a companion iPhone app that integrates with the web application. And we just found out that we’re a FINALIST to win something called the Appsfire App Star Awards! These awards are for showcasing brilliant upcoming apps (not yet released).
The winners are announced next week at the LeWeb conference in Paris. Please visit our page and rate us with a thumbs up to help us!
Here’s the demo video we produced to enter the contest:
And if you would like to be notified by email when the app hits the iTunes App Store, you can sign up today at http://dowehaveenough.com.
Give the app a try and let us know what you think!
A JLOOP Halloween
by jason
Trick-or-treat.
We had a JLOOP party. Pizza, candy, pumpkins, piñata, candy, costumes, dry ice, noodles, candy corn, monsters, candy, and more candy…the kids loved it.
Check out the JLOOP festivities by clicking on one of the thumbnails below:
My favorite moment from last night was when I told Micah (the scarecrow), “Hey Scarecrow, Nice costume…you look scary”
And he responded with “Youre welcome”.