• Fixing an IE 7 bug in mm_menu.js navigation

    We’re proud (even stubborn) hand-coders, so we don’t often get the opportunity to delve into the JavaScript libraries deployed by using applications such as Dreamweaver.

    Recently, however, we were contacted with an IE7 bug: a navigation system that was using the mm_menu.js library appeared to be only showing the first word of each option.

    At 800 lines of dense JavaScript, this was not going to be fun to debug. Fortune, however, smiled upon us in the form of an invidual named Hiroto, who posted the following on the Cre8asite Forums:

    function writeMenus(container) {
        .... some code here ....
        menu.menuItemHeight = menu.menuItemHeight || defaultHeight;
        var itemProps = ‘’; <= CHANGE THIS LINE TO => var itemProps = ‘white-space:nowrap;’;
        if( menu.fontFamily != ‘’ ) itemProps += ‘font-family:’ + menu.fontFmaily+’;’;
         .... some code here ....
    }

    You should find this spot around line 163 of mm_menu.js. The change worked a charm. Thanks Hiroto!

    Date Posted
    Posted on February 29, 2008 at 11:05am
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    with tags Tips, Application Development, UI Design
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  • Hbc.com - do they still use canoes?

    Many bricks-n-clicks-n-mortar companies offer a free delivery-to-store option. It’s a fairly obvious means of bringing an online customer into their controlled environment in which cross-selling, impulse-buying, and all those lovely little retail tricks can be employed.

    My experience of ship-to-store shipping is that the sooner the item is ready for pick-up, the more likely I am to be in a buying mood when I eventually arrive. With a day or so between the clicking and collecting, I’m still very much in the flash-my-plastic groove.

    Letting your customers have their online orders shipped to your existing stores by leveraging your existing logistics infrastructure is a fantastic idea. It gives them another valuable touchpoint with your brand and gives your staff opportunities to turn a one-off buyer into a repeat customer. Take too long to get the order in their hands, though, and you risk tarnishing their perception both of you as an online vendor, and of your store as a reliable source of merchandise.

    Earlier this month I had the pleasure of packing all my worldly goods in cardboard boxes and lugging them across town to my new home. I had all the luck in the world - the cold/snow kicked in just as I returned the rental truck which I had picked up with an extra day at no charge. It was just that type of move. Just perfect.

    Realising I needed an iron and a set of pots and pans (I love to cook!), I decided to trawl online to see who had a good deal. HBC.com (the Hudson’s Bay Company online store) had both on sale. I eagerly placed my order, and, excited by the possibility of walking up the road (to the flagship store) to collect them, selected the ‘ship to store’ option. After all, the warehouse is just 34km from the store, so I expected the items to arrive within a day or two.

    After six days with no news I contacted HBC.com’s customer service department. They informed me that

    it takes approximately 14 business days for an Hbc.com order to arrive at store.

    In the end my iron arrived just nine days after placing the order and my pots and pans took the full fourteen. From the time they left the warehouse, they traveled an average of 0.25km/hr. That’s less than a tenth of the speed of a beginner canoist.

    Maybe they were portaging.

    Date Posted
    Posted on September 03, 2007 at 11:04pm
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