The latest news, updates and announcements along with some tech news and personal opinion. http://www.codeworks.org.uk Copyright 2011 code that works ltd. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss en-us Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:43:19 0000 hello@codeworks.org.uk Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:43:19 0000 hello@codeworks.org.uk codeworks script (1.0.0) http://www.codeworks.org.uk/images/smallrupert.gif http://www.codeworks.org.uk codeworks latest news, announcements, and our blog 144 117 Firstly, everyone in the office has been feeling guilty that nobody has created a blog since before Christmas. So I've given Sarah the task of making sure someone blogs at least once a week and she's in the process of delegating to the masses. To start everyone off, here's my first blog of the year about something I came across while browsing the technology news that's set to launch imminently. The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spread sheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. The creators want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming in schools and as a hobby. Their idea is very simple; to see cheap, accessible, programmable computers everywhere without spending hundreds of pounds on a PC. They want owning a truly personal computer to be normal for children. I honestly think the device is an insanely excellent idea, the possibilities are endless! You could even go as far as making a robot with this credit card sized computer. I know that this probably isn’t for the faint hearted, but starting at £15 + VAT what more could you buy at that price that could offer as much fun!? Let’s all become programmers! The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity – For more information visit their website: http://www.raspberrypi.org http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/Raspberry-Pi-the-computer Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:05:42 GMT I recently noticed a spout of emails coming into my inbox that have background images!? As many developers know background images in outlook are non existant, unheard of, a miricle! So as any self respecting developer would do i jumped straight onto google with the string of keywords "when did outlook start supporting background images". Well, as it turns out a backround *image* does work, its background *images* that do not. I came accross a blog that then explains that background images do not work in Outlook (thank goodness im not going crazy!) - but what will work is one single background image that sits in the body tag! There is one little snag that you will need to deal with (as if a Microsoft product would just work!). While every other client seems to gracefully assume no-repeat for the second part of the repeat line, Outlook does not. Take a look at the css code below and boom, you'll have body background images working. http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/Background-images-in-Outlook-who-knew Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:00:25 GMT OK, maybe not. But I did do a little happy dance when I started my job here at codeworks as a Junior Developer. My name's Sarah and I've recently moved from Oxford since graduating from Oxford Brookes. For the last few years I've worked as a projectionist and have witnessed first hand the digitisation of cinemas from 35mm. I now cannot wait to begin my career in what is the exciting world of software development with such a fantastic team :D I love festivals and have rocked-out at Wacken, Amphi, Sonisphere, Mera Luna and Download with many more planned on the horizon.  I also hold the official* record for the "biggest baked bean found in a tin". Picture of proof to follow....   *official in the sense I googled it and couldn't find any pictures of large singular baked beans  http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/MOSH-PIT Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:23:58 GMT Here's another top tip from the Codeworks camp. Often Jquery is used to animate a particular element on a page after the user has clicked on something. For example, a news box could slide open if you click a certain link. Problems can often occur if a user is a bit keen on clicking, or impatient, and ends up clicking the link repeatedly, before the animation has taken place. Browsers can often 'queue' a backlog of clicks so that things keep happening long after they should have ended! This can also cause unexpected behaviour which can make the user think that the website is 'broken'. But fear not, there is a simple solution: http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/Preventing-multiple-clicks-in-jquery Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:28:05 GMT We're on the look out for a talented PHP developer who is confident in HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and jQuery and preferably also has experience with Photoshop. Codeworks is a small software development company who specialise in creating organisation systems for businesses through web applications, this is your chance to join a fun vibrant team of developers with a company that is progressing fast. Your role would include the development of tools within systems we've already created and creating new ones from a specification. You'll also be expected to help answer office calls, support clients with problems and get involved with new client projects. Do not apply if you are not confident in PHP as this is vital to the role. For more information visit our vacancies page: click here http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/working-for-codeworks Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:00:00 GMT Everyone loves a good sweet, especially the classics like the drumstick lolly, the small foam mushrooms, gobstoppers and toffee bon bons! We love making people happy, especially our developers; which is why there is always a handful of sweets at hand in the office for anyone to dip into if they're feeling peckish. We decided last week to extend this to our fans, clients and friends of the world; we're giving away hundreds of sweets to a selection of our fans who decide to follow us on facebook and twitter. We need more than 1,000 followers by the end of August, and if we reach our target we'll be selecting 100 lucky random winners to receive sweets! You could win anything* from a drumstick lolly to a big bag of rasberry millions! In order for this to happen though we need to reach our target! Simply retweet our tweets, @codeworks mention us and share the love with your friends, the more you share the more chance you have of winning. We'd also love to hear what your favourite past time sweets are! We'll keep you updated with progress! @codeworks - twitter.com/codeworks We've made a little progress bar to see far we are away from our target, it updates once every 24 hours! http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/The-free-sweet-give-away Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:15:24 GMT Well the Barry and District ‘summer’  league is truly in full swing and the team are enjoying playing so close to home.  The Bridgend ‘Winter’ league has finally finished, however, the ladies are STILL waiting to receive information about what position they finished from the Bridgend officials.   Westend Ladies are still as dedicated as ever and have expanded since the winter months.   Since we began sponsoring the ladies they have grown in size (numbers not physically).  There is talk amongst captains and coach that trials for the A and B team will be taking place this autumn.  So watch this SPACE.... New players to join are Abi Ladner, Nina Huggett, Emma Hughes and Stephanie Lima.   The Barry league has started well for both teams and they are preparing for the Annual Versatility Tournament held on Sunday 24th July.   The A team have lost their centre court player Stacey Brown due to an injury.  Stacey is currently in plaster and will miss the rest of the summer league.  We wish her a speedy recovery and hope she is back fit for the start of the winter league. We also say congratulations to Rebecca Haysom who is expecting her first child, we know she is missed on court and will be welcomed on her return. If anyone is interested in joining Westend Ladies, contact jenna@codeworks.org.uk. http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/Westend-Ladies-News-Update Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:33:18 GMT Shw mae  Hello Its Jenna here, Codeworks’ latest person to fill a desk.   Just writing to say a BIG hello to you all and to let you know that I will be working here this summer doing all the donkey work that Kev no longer has time for.   I am sure I will get the opportunity to speak to you lovely people at some point, as my role is customer service based mixed in with a spoonful of design and marketing, sprinkled with a smile.  So who is this Jenna? Well I have just finished studying at UWIC and graduate this coming July with a BA (Hons) in Graphic Communication.  (I am now ready for the big, wide world). Some of you may be aware that Codeworks’ sponsor a ladies netball team, Westend Ladies...well I play WD for them and it is a great way to socialise with friends as well as keeping fit.  I am quite competitive however, and Kevin has already challenged me to a game of squash. (Have to confess, I have never played it). So I will let you all know the outcome via twitter.  My role here in The Coach House is to make sure that you, (our customers) are happy with us, (the company)...So if you have any issues feel free to send me an email.  jenna@codeworks.org.uk.  Chow for now http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/New-girl-in-the-Coach-House Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:17:37 GMT In short, no. The cookie EU law that was set to start on May 26th 2011 has been deferred for an extra year because many companies are not ready to implement the measures required to inform users visiting their website. Which i have to admit, includes us. This new law requires a user's consent before using cookies. (not the edible crumbly kind) Cookies are text files stored on your computer while your browsing the internet, they store snippets of information. An example could be a welcome message when you first visit a site, after you close it a cookie is stored so that you don't have to keep clicking the x to remove it every time you re-visit the site. For more information about cookies click here. The changes are demanded by the European e-Privacy directive. The section of the directive dealing with cookies was drawn up in an attempt to protect privacy and, in particular, limit how much use could be made of behavioural advertising. This form of marketing involves people being tracked across websites, with their behaviour used to create a profile that dictates the type of adverts they see. The directive demands that users be fully informed about the information being stored in cookies and told why they see particular adverts. However, the directive is likely to have an impact on the more general use of cookies that remember login details and enable people to speed up their use of sites they visit regularly. It could mean that once this new law does come into effect, users see many more pop-up windows and dialogue boxes asking them to let sites gather data. It just depends how each company decides how to tackle the issue. I found a really good example of how companies could approach this task on the new Alpha UK Government Website. For now though, we have another year to come up with solutions that comply with the law but don't make it annoying for the user, personally i believe a browser approach would be a much better way forward as i can guarantee even after another year a lot of companies still won't be ready. http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/cookies-are-my-websites-illegal Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:23:42 GMT As a client and friend of ours (sam clarke) has already learnt earlier this year, "a downside of freely sharing on the net is that not everyone will play fair." Another one of our clients (designdough) experienced the same situation this week after their entire concept, design and code was stolen and replicated by a local! competitor who states "Cardiff's most established graphic design studios with over 20 years experience delivering effective, original graphic design solutions for a wide range of applications and clients". I'm all for developers jumping in and seeing how things are done, It's interesting, a fast way to learn and a good way to improve your skills for later projects. But plagiarism is something everyone at codeworks strongly disagree on. The company in question was contacted by our friends at designdough and after a few hours of discussion what was firstly changed, was then taken down. Rightly so! Now i personally can't comment on the circumstances of who was responsible for copying ours and designdough's hard work, but i can comment on the fact a company who states they deliver original content need to have a serious look at how they operate. Personally, we would like to see an apology from designworld for stealing our code and an explanation as to how this happened and what they're going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again. Our intentions here are not to slander this company for a mistake, but highlight the important issue that if you outsource your work make sure you trust who you're working with. It's also worth mentioning as much as we're annoyed we're also flattered that the design together with the code was that good, they felt the need to steal it, so together with designdough we must be doing something right! Update: We've since had a response from the company; "we gave the brief to a freelancer which was 'big image, couple of panels of text' and what we were presented with we liked so it went straight up. Obviously though the buck ultimately stops with the Partners, so I can only apologise again for this incident and rest-assured that we will tighten up our procedures from now on and ensure that everything is checked in much more detail. We will obviously not be using that supplier again ..... Apologies again for this incident and I hope this puts your mind at rest regarding our intentions and integrity." We're glad to hear from the company and consider the matter resolved, we hope that other companies can learn from this and get to know their suppliers a little better. http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/copycat-websites Sat, 21 May 2011 14:11:42 GMT At the beginning of this academic year the hot topic in university was 'cloud computing'. Put simply, as you may or may not know, cloud computing is the ability to access everything you could possibly need (software, documents etc.) via an internet browser. The general consensus was that it would take a number of years for this idea to become a true, fully-functioning reality. Google has released news about its Chrome OS, a computer system for people that don’t like computers. So what is it? Based on the Google Chrome web browser, Chrome OS is a fully-fledged operating system that operates solely online. There is no software running on the local computer except the browser, not even an anti-virus program. As such the whole thing operates a lot quicker than traditional computers that are running other well known operating systems. It is reported that the operating system takes approximately seven seconds to start and can offer up to 10 hours of battery life if being run on a laptop similar to the ‘Chromebook’  that was revealed a few days ago. Every time the system is switched on it will automatically check online for updates and update itself if necessary. If it develops a problem it will simply re-install itself without any need to hassle the user and ask for permission. Is this really a good thing though? I know I certainly wouldn’t want my computer making decisions for itself! The Chrome OS makes it easy for the user to access and edit his/her documents with ‘Google Docs’ as well as allowing them to read their email, edit photos and many other features that can be performed on a traditional PC. The obvious problem is that not everybody as a Wi-Fi or 3G connection all of the time, you cannot access the internet from just anywhere. Does this mean the whole concept is flawed? Google argues that it’s not. The argument is that as more and more developers take part in the project this issue will be resolved. The New York Times app that is available for the new operating system has resolved this issue by downloading the latest news items while the device is connected to the internet so that they can be browsed while the user is offline. So to answer the original question, ‘True cloud computing - Is it finally here?’... Well, kind of. It seems that in the past eight months since the original debate started in university that the world of cloud computing has advanced greatly, but the idea isn’t exactly as we envisaged due to the fact that online applications and documents cannot be accessed from anywhere, anytime. If Google gets the developers that it needs onboard to help it solve this issue we could well see the cloud computing dream becoming a reality and if anyone can achieve this goal Google can! For more information on the Google Chrome OS take a look here http://www.google.com/chromebook/features.html# http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/True-cloud-computing--Is-it-finally-here Fri, 13 May 2011 16:46:39 GMT We've had a lot going on over the past month, so much so nobody has had time to blog! It's a shame because since the launch of the site i thought we were doing a great job at keeping things updated! I thought i'd take this opportunity to update you on a couple of changes within the company that will be happening over the coming months, firstly i'd like to introduce you to the newest full time member of the team; Michael Morgan, head over to his website www.michaelgarethmorgan.com if you want to know a little bit more about him. Michael started last week and as well as helping out with the existing work load he's going to be taking a leading role in the development of our inhouse projects, more info about that in the coming weeks. While we're on the subject of new staff, we've also teamed up with Go Wales and we've got a work placement starting next month, we've taken on a few work tasters over the past year, this will be our second placement and we're looking forward to the challenge of training someone up to our standard, giving them a taste about what a programming role involves within the industry and hopefully keeping them on afterwards! There's so much going on and as any business owner knows there's simply not enough time to do it all in, (hence the blogging at 9.20pm!) But I'm extremely excited to not only give new staff the chance the flourish, let some pressure of Adam and to hopefully give me a chance to take a step back and spend more time with the customer rather than programming myself. Oh and in other news, my laptop is in desperate need of a re-install! Again though, time!!? http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/Just-an-update Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:27:21 GMT "a more beautiful web is here" - that’s Microsoft's slogan for this new piece of kit, and it means exactly that. It's been a long time coming but it’s fantastic news for us development companies because it means we can start taking advantage of newer technologies which we know the new browsers can support. On top of the announcement of today's release Microsoft have also launched a campaign to help rid of IE6 www.theie6countdown.com, the same browser which has now been superseded 3 times over yet many companies and organisations still can't find the time to upgrade their systems. I do understand why some organisations find it difficult to keep up with new technologies and updates because of security issues and compatibility worries, but if they never update we can’t create! If you're a fan of IE, or you’re someone that just clicks the big E because it was already installed on your machine, I thoroughly suggest you take this upgrade for a spin, check out how our website looks, you'll probably notice the animations become much smoother, you may also start to notice hidden secrets start to appear on other websites that were just waiting for this new technology to be released (www.twitter.com). If you're a Firefox or Chrome user its highly likely you won’t touch this download with a barge pole, but to you I say; go and take a sneaky look (I promise I won't tell anyone), I think you'll be pleasantly surprised! Maybe one day Microsoft will decide to include an auto-update feature in their browser? So we can keep people updated, automatically, or, automagically! Click here to download IE9 http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/Internet-Explorer-9-Released-Today Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:38:24 GMT When developing applications its inevitable at some point you'll be checking to see if something exists and if it doesn't; creating it in the database. The way you've most likely been doing this is running a select query to see if it exists, grabbing the ID if it does exist then executing an UPDATE or noting it doesn't exist then executing an INSERT. It's time consuming and adds more unnecessary code you feel you probably don't need. We have an answer! There is a way to run an update within MySQL and make a note as to how many records it has updated, you can check to see if this is zero then run the insert code if need be, simple eh? Check out my example below and start counting up those saved seconds for another tea and biscuit break! http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/MySQL-Insert-or-Update-if-exist Thu, 03 Mar 2011 12:25:48 GMT We're developing a lot of applications that require things to happen on the page without refreshing, we use the jQuery library to achieve a lot of the results we require but while all this stuff is happening on the page sometimes need animation or the action you're about to achieve to wait a second. To achieve this you'd usually use the standard setTimeout function within Javascript. It does the job perfectly, right down the very millisecond; however, if you're asking the timer to pass a variable to the function you're asking it to run after a certain amount of time you'll find it falls on its feet and passes nothing at all. All you need is a 'closure', closures are arguably the great secret of Javascript: the way variable scope stacks get frozen at the point of closure (and hence variables persist within the closure) is quite subtle and catches most out, including me! See what im talking about in the examples below http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/A-coding-tip-Javascript-setTimeout Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:21:25 GMT Ever wanted to add a string to the end of a MySQL field? An easy way to achieve this is to use the concat function. This is short for "concatenate" (I think) which basically just means join to things together. Have a look at the code below to see how it is used. This used in an UPDATE query would at a string ' newstring ' onto the end of whatever is contained in the field. Tips in the jar please. http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/A-coding-Tip-MySQL Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:58:18 GMT We haven't had an opportunity to talk much about our sponsorship of the codeworks westend ladies that started November last year, we're busy putting the final touches to their dedicated area on our website but we couldn't let the opportunity pass to tell you about the great work some of the team are doing to collect money for charity. Our ladies from the codeworks Westend Netball Club braved the freezing cold waters at Whitmore Bay to take part in the recent ‘Dip with a Nip’ - to raise money for CLIC Sargent. Each person registered had to pay £5 and raise at least £50 each - seven of the team took part and raised a fantastic total of £1,500 between them. Well done girls! Click here to see the article http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/our-netball-team-raise-for-charity Mon, 21 Feb 2011 13:19:28 GMT Many of our customers ask us about how to take payments from their website, they're usually aware of the well known methods such as PayPal and Google Checkout; but these come with high costs in fee's which affects the price of the product they're selling. The other alternative is to use your bank, which usually provides an internet supplier who deals with their online payments directly. This comes at an even higher cost than the previous mentioned methods due to high setup costs, further ongoing monthly costs and a percentage plus fee for every transaction made. This isn't so bad if you're turning over tens of thousands each month, but for the average small trader who has only just started trading online this is a large drawback. For over a year now we've been using a different method that requires absolutely no setup fee*, no monthly costs and only a small percentage fee for each transaction. (The * simply refers to the type of account you setup with them, their highest setup fee is £50, which is hardly a deal breaker). This company is called Nochex - and you can find their website at www.nochex.com You get a dedicated account manager to lease with, their card processor is very customizable, you're able to accept all credit and debit cards and the percentage fee is variable depending on how many transactions you plan to process. If there we're any downsides to this service it's that each transaction will appear on your customer's statements as "Nochex" and this isn't changeable, you do need to keep a certain amount of money in your Nochex account so that you can refund any customers at any point, and this sometimes can be quite high depending on how much you plan to process. It's important to note this is not a sales pitch, we're not getting anything for recommending this service, we simply wanted to point you in the right direction of a good company that offers a good service, and we’ve used them for over a year and recommended many customers to them. If you want to get an idea of how much money they might** take from your online sale use the little tool we've created below. (** the transaction fee is variable, you will need to agree this with your account manager, the standard is 2.9% + 20p which is what our calculation is using below.) http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/Top-Tip-Taking-payments-on-your-website Sun, 20 Feb 2011 14:16:15 GMT Here's a top tip to speed up anyone's day (so long as they spend their days typing code). Sometimes you may want to have an on/off status for a particular entry in a database. For example, in our CMS system you can make web pages visible or invisible to the public by simply clicking the on/off button for each page. To do this might involve looking in the database, finding a field, checking the value and changing it accordingly (eg 1 for on, 0 for off). So without the need for all these lines of PHP and MySQL you can simply use the MySQL 'CASE' construct, which looks at a field, and changes it if it is a certain value,  in much the same way as an if ... else statement (but with much less code!). Have a look at the example below, this is a quick an easy way to say "If 'status' is set to 1, set it to 2, but if it is set to 2, set it to 1. And Bob's yer uncle! http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/A-Coding-Tip-MySQL-CASE Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:29:05 GMT In some projects you sometimes need to print out the alphabet either for a search facility or maybe because you like letters, either way we found a solution today which we thought was worthy of sharing! In PHP, there are more than 700 built-in functions. The one function im going to be sharing with you today is called "range". The range() function creates an array containing a range of elements that can be returned from low to high. This function is mostly used with numbers like this: $number = range(0,3); but it can also be used with letters $letters = range('a','e'); Take a look at our examples and outputs below. http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/coding-tip-the-alphabet Fri, 14 Jan 2011 10:00:00 GMT If you visit often you may have noticed sections of our site which are not quite finished yet, mainly because we were that excited about the animations we ran out of time to finish some of the less exciting stuff off. For example you can't quite filter the blog posts yet, not that there's enough to filter through because we decided to start fresh with the new design. But its something we definitely plan to get sorted by the end of the week ready for our new bloggers! Last year we went on the lookout for a team of geeks who could help keep our little corner of the internet exciting, keeping you up to date with the latest technology news, announcements and gadgets! Well there time has come to shine as we're about to unleash our new system on the very people who will keep you updated on all these delightful happenings. We'll still be posting company news, announcements and tweets so make sure you start using the filter functions on the right hand side! http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/blog-for-us Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:00:00 GMT I'm very exhausted, proud to present to you our brand new website! With tons more content, updates, news, tutorials (to come), and extensive portfolio! It's finally a place we can show off exactly what we do and how we do it! We still have a lot of fans out there for our old design and interactive office so we wanted to make sure it stayed with the site! So if you're missing a bit of monkey madness head over to the homepage and launch the interactive office! It's been a few months in the making, we wanted to extend upon our flash interactive office from the last design but make it to available to everyone so we delved into jQuery animation and while working with one many great designers we made animation available to the masses, without flash! Go on, try it on your mobile, or your ipad! It's a taster of whats to come inside our great software for 2011. Thanks for visiting, take a good look around and enjoy the hard work we've spent putting all of this together! Don't forget to become a fan on facebook and follow our twitter as there are definitely more updates to come! http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/new-codeworks-website Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:00:00 GMT Hello, This is just to remind our customers that the standard rate of VAT will go up from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent on 4 January 2011. Its actually nothing to be worried about, you're being encouraged to spend spend spend before the rise but in actual fact if you were to spend £100 now compared with after the 4th January, it would only cost an extra £2.13 - hardly worth splashing out now to 'save' the difference. Being a software development company we though it might be useful if we made you a little tool to see how much something might cost you after the VAT change compared with now (and by now i mean as i write this blog). http://www.codeworks.org.uk/blog/vat-changes Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:00:00 GMT