Site is finally up

[Jon Crain]

CMU School of Music

If you search back through this forum, I've had a number of posts related to a site I'm doing. Well, it's finally finished...er, up. Is it ever really finished? It's a mix of straight html/php and some filemaker stuff as well for event data and anything that has multiple records.

Some of the coolest parts of the site are unfortunately only for students (authenticates across the schools Active Directory...), which include a locker check out with a GUI map of the lockers (attached image) showing which ones are available built from the Filemaker PHP API using some html table and css tricks. It also offloads a ton of work for my office so we don't have to manually sign out the lockers and give students their combination when they forget it.

So check it out and let me know what you think.

http://www.music.cmich.edu

jon

[Genx]

I'm thoroughly impressed

Nice layout, good use of animation, nice color scheme. Only thing that kind of puts me off is no cursor on the initial menu item (i realize its not meant to be clicked but its still a little weird looking : )

[Jon Crain]

Thanks for the thoughts. I can't take complete credit for the design and the colors as its a modified template of the University's.

For the top bar, I've gone back and forth on what to do there. I don't think they need to be clickable, but yet I do have to find something for those with java turned off to be able to get into the menus (I believe this would include iPhone users as it doesn't appear to be able to get into those menus either), so I'll take that into consideration as I figure that out.

Thanks for the advice/comment and also for the help you've been with my other questions.

jon

[Genx]

For your javascript menu issues: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dropdowns

It should work quite nicely for iPhone, and well, at least degrade to single menu items for IE if no JS exists. Also, not to shove my own beliefs on people... but then again I have to: switch to jQuery (or at least take a look at it), mootools is nice, but far too limited in comparison and prototype just annoys me lol .

[Jon Crain]

Well, it looks like I'm ahead of myself. I already fixed that! Turning off javascript (at least in Safari and Firefox) the menus still work. I did go ahead and changed the cursor and I'm liking that. Good call.

As far as jQuery, I'm not a strict javascript programmer by any means and I needed something light and quick with tools for what I wanted to do. Most library's have the accordions and lightbox style stuff, but I really liked the slideshow plugin, and I had already had experience in some mootools stuff, so that's why I went that way. It looks as though jQuery has quite the user base and seems to be expanding fairly rapidly, so I will definitely give it a harder look next time I'm creating a site.

jon

[Genx]

Do - the plugin repository for jQUery is brilliant, and the general method for DOM manipulation, chainability and simplicity of the ajax calls are unsurpasable as far as i'm concerned.

I can however understand your liking for Mootools - it was one of the first libs I played with

And its easy to make plugins for it to boot... well relitavley speaking anyway!!