I ran across an interesting situation where some users of mine were complaining that a form I created “didn’t work”. Kind of strange to get this complaint after almost a full year of operation. I remember testing the xhtml and css design in both firefox and IE browsers and it all checked out. What I didn’t think of checking was the behavior of browsers when one presses the return key. With the help of Fiddler (thanks to Casey Williams for the Fiddler suggestion) this is what I discovered:

(For a larger, more detailed image click here)

As you can see, when my IE users were pressing the return key, the button itself was not being $_POSTed. So what right? Well what if you were checking if the submit button was pressed before doing any processing? Like so…

< ?php
if(isset($_POST['button_name'])){
    // validate the user entries...
}
?>

This would fail if the user hit the return key in IE7. I haven’t tested earlier versions.

View the example. Test it in both browsers.

Right now the only thing that was suggested to me was to add a hidden field to mimic the submit button in your form like so:

<form ...>
    <input type="hidden" name="button_name" value="whatever"... />
</form>

That works just fine.

From perusing irc and several forums, the only response as to WHY this happens are comments like “It’s IE, what do you expect?”. I’m already annoyed that IE doesn’t think it has to adapt to web standards, but this ont really caught me off guard.

I’m wondering if any readers might have some input on my inputs ;P

This may seem simple enough to many programmers out there but this threw me for a few days. This is how you install imagick on a windows server. If your site is on a shared host, you need to ask your host to install the extension for you.

For this example I am running php 5.2.4 on Abyss/Apache web server

Download the matching pecl5 Binary from php.net. In this case its pecl5.2-win32-200710121230.zip (matching my current php version).

Unpack the file.

Copy the php_imagick.dll into php/ext/ directory

Open your php.ini file and look for the “Dynamic Extensions” area. In there will be a list of items (some commented out). Add the following line to the bottom of the list: extension=php_imagick.dll

Save the changes you made.

Restart your web server.

If these steps were successful imagick will show up on any php page using the phpinfo() function.

Technorati Tags: imagick, pecl-extension, php-extension

The folks over at Picktogame.com have a way for you to make games and have fun. Its easy to use and intuitive. Of course it’s still in Beta. The downside is that I noticed the signup isn’t secure (https).
What are you waiting for? Go ahead and get busy!!

Put this game on your blog   Create your own   More games

You can predict media success, or can you?

In this day and age one sometimes wonders who is behind what media is pushed for success. Who are the ‘experts’ that push and market a movie that flops? What are they thinking that we will like? Enter MediaPredict. MediaPredict is a site that allows people to predict the success of new media.

The site is basically a media rating game. After registering you are given $5,000 play money. You use the money to invest in media you think will succeed or fail. It’s played much like a stock market where you can even short sell. The value of the stock(media) is a value based upon others buying and selling the commodity. This represents it’s probability of succeeding out in the world.

(Dashboard - My first purchase)

It appears that MediaPredict is relatively new. The choices available to work with currently seems limited to new publishers, books, music artists, and a few television sit-com pilots.

The media can be just about anything ranging from books, movies, music and television. Up and coming, and mainstream media is included in the system. Here is an example of a music artist;

New music artist
• - Will the artist get a record deal?
• - If the artist has a deal what are it’s chances of success?
• - Will a single reach the top 5/10/100?

There is a deadline or time limit for each ‘project’. Obviously there are dates for record releases and such.

Features I’d like to see
I couldn’t find a way to add another source of media to the site. So for now it seems that only MediaPredict has the power to add/remove new media. I hope this can be changed in the future.

I would like to see MMORPG category added to the list or tag cloud of choices.

Another feature that would be nice to have is current media, and the prediction of it’s future from now. There is a lot of media and sites out there that started of well, and began to stink after a few episodes or albums. One hit wonders.

Features I don’t want to see
Social networking within MediaPredict. There is already no value to any positive gains you get from playing the game. You win fake money that can’t be used for anything other than bragging rights or just feeling nice about participating. The game itself is interesting. But to add social networking with equally useless winnings and badges is a total turn off for me.

I’d like to see MediaPredict stick to what it is. I think they’ve got something here. Maybe MediaPredict should add themselves to their own market

Via googlfied:

According to Blogger Buzz Google is looking for user experience research blogging with google blogger. As mentioned in the FAQ you first need to sign up. After you have signed up you may or may not be selected depending on what they are looking for:

For each study, we need to make sure that we invite people who match our target user profile for the product we are researching. We also want to get a good balance of ages, backgrounds, and levels of experience, so please be honest with your answers. It’s easier for us to match you to a suitable study when we have more information about you, so if you fill in as much of our sign-up form as you can, it’s more likely that you will be invited to participate.

There are different experience sessions where you will work with a google researcher 1 on 1, on the phone, or in a group. It looks like some of the research will be done in person at google. Except you have to find your own way there. The pay looks pretty decent too.. “typically we pay $75 for each hour that you spend with a Google researcher”. The FAQ also mentions the average time commitment is in the range of 1-1.5 hours during business hours.

I think this is great customer service. It seems they want to see how users view and work with their goods. It also gives an opportunity for users in the test to request features, changes to existing features, as well as having features removed. I wonder if this is a result of googlecanyouhear me?

All in all I think this is a smart move and I’m quite curious what will come out of this.

Technorati Tags: google, blogger, blog