gerkintrigg

Hi! I wondered if anyone here knew of a good thesaurus CSV file that I can download, ideally for free, but I may be willing to pay for the right one. Thanks, Neil

I have a lovely RSS creation script which dynamically writes an RSS feed using the information from the database, which you can automatically update every time a blog entry (or anything else generated by a script) is added. The only issue with it, is that the <strong> tags have had to be deleted using strip_tags() because the RSS doesn't like it. I want to keep the original formatting of the blog article but because I have to strip out the strong links, the hyperlinks are also removed. I don't know enough about RSS (IMHO) to work out how to put the links back in - do I need to format the STRONG tags differently, or do i need to change the PHP to str_replace() the strong tags with nothing? Here's some code that does work: <item rdf:about="http://www.manteya.com/blog/Music-Improves-Productivity_24.html"> <title>Music Improves Productivity</title> <link>http://www.manteya.com/blog/Music-Improves-Productivity_24.html</link> <description>Research shows that music can improve speed of working within organisations. There is a double-edged sword to this article, however. Music with fast tempos can help the release of adrenalin and therefore increase the heart rate of the listener. Music producers here in the UK have taken advantage And here's some that doesn't: <item rdf:about="http://www.manteya.com/blog/Music-Improves-Productivity_24.html"> <title>Music Improves Productivity</title> <link>http://www.manteya.com/blog/Music-Improves-Productivity_24.html</link> <description>Research shows that music can improve <strong>speed</strong> of working within organisations. There is a double-edged sword to this article, however. Music with fast tempos can help the release of adrenalin and therefore increase the heart rate of the listener. Music producers here in the UK have taken advantage I'm sure you geniuses (or geniei) can work it out, so any help would be very welcome indeed.

I may be a little harsh here, I'm afraid... The video looks very good - high quality, clever effects and the software looks clever. To improve it, I'd tone down the backgrounds of the windows as they clash sometimes. Think "Apple iPad" and you'll not be far wrong. The music is driving me nuts! get a professional to do a voice over or do one yourself if you can't afford a pro. The features are not very clearly spelled out - I know it's a chat thing but is it a site, stand alone software or what? Perhaps edit it to zoom in better to show the features and key benefits. and a voice over will help with this, a lot. I hope this helps. I don't mean to be over-critical. I think perhaps re-look at the logo. You're after something that reflects how clever and innovative your product is. The GB thing just looks a bit clip-art for my liking. Great idea for the video, though. Most people (even now) don't do that. Cheers, Neil

Thanks. Forgive me for saying so, but I'm not sure whether this is just a plug of your website. Some of the content is useful, but surely most people know this anyway?

Ah I see. Okay I'll look into that. Thanks.

Hi Shawn, thanks for the feedback. I'd like a bit of a clarification on a few bits (I just don't get it) sorry. Firstly the black and White content. Is that on he main pages? If so, what would you recommend? I'm not sure a different scheme would work. I agree with the images idea but we are getting a video produced to plug his gap. That should give the pizaz you are looking for. How'd you change the page titles? Perhaps a breadcrumb trail might work well? I can change the style of the u2 tag very simply. I think the curved boxes work brilliantly and the extra blue colour background bring it to life so I'm pretty happy with it on the whole but your ideas are very helful and very welcome. Thanks for all the feedback Neil

Nothing really I think your navigation is very good.

Yes, the pagination is very good, but try using some kind of thumbnail with the images (and keep the pagination) to make it load a LOT quicker. You might need some kind of logic diagram to work out how to best put a multiple folding menu tree in there or something which gives you the option to only load minimal stuff initially and then open more information on-demand as you want to find out more, rather than seeing large images right up-front. I have a pretty good screen resolution and fast connection to the net, but they still took longer than I'd normally wait for the images to load. The chances are that if I wasn't reviewing the site, I'd probably leave. I'm not a big fan of the large menu on the right - I just think it looks a bit 1990s (I was there and did something similar)... The menu text along with the logo seems to be out of keeping of the supper-modern feel of the feel of the site. The serif on the "E" of the logo implies "old school" but I think you're trying to go for "cool" - I would be... Try some kind of sans-serif (if you have that kind of freedom). If you do all this and scaled down the right hand menu, took off the italics, put the highlight the same kind of colour as the car background (and changed the font colour in a similar way to how you have done it), I think you'd have a great site. I hope this helps and if you'd like to critique my site back, there's a topic on this forum under "gerkintrigg" Cheers, Neil

Hi colmustard, Okay, I like the name of your site - very clear and quirky. the wrap around menu titles look cool (recent posts, archives etc). To be honest, the scrolling "Hi, we're envato" is really annoying and should at the very least have more of a delay on it... ideally offer more than just the two images that I saw. Perhaps the off-state buttons for "about us" etc should be more prominent. I know what you're trying to do there, but they probably need just a bit more clarity - they currently fade into the grey of the top bar. I'm guessing that the photoshop tutorial is the only panel that has something, because the others are empty and even the photoshop tutorial doesn't go anywhere - I suppose this is a content issue and will be sorted after launch, but it might be worth having a few things on there prior to letting the public loose on it. For wordpress, this is pretty good, design-wise. I like tag clouds but do wonder whether there's really a need for it when your colourful navigation is so clear. When i first load the homepage, it shows me all the "Hi, we're envato" images very briefly, before refreshing after a second or so and displaying properly. This is probably a coding error. There's not much more i can comment on, but I hope that was helpful. I wonder whether you might be able to comment on my website now... there's a topic in this forum for it. Thanks. Neil

shayward2003, how dare you! - Nah I'm kidding, that was great feedback. I have made some changes to the main body - I thought the same about the colour - it looked a bit bland, didn't it? Regarding the nav menu - I was wondering about that, actually. I did something similar on http://www.stemgroup.co.uk so is this more the sort of thing you'd like? I was thinking that perhaps I should round off the header, but not sure if that would look a little odd. Like a ball balancing on a ball. What do you think now of the changes I've made so-far?

Hi All, Any feedback on http://www.manteya.com would be much appreciated. Thanks, Neil

and which browser are you using?

Good advice about the div restraints... Fading in sounds fun - how'd I do that?

Thanks for that - I changed the id tags into classes and it now seems to be working. Thanks a lot for that. I'm not sure where the </a> tag was... but thanks anyway. I notice that W3C doesn't like my Ajax script at all... Might have to do something about that.

Hi Forum! I have been creating a demo for a new bit of software I've written, and it works fine in everything except Safari. The URL is: http://www.manteya.com/demo/index.php so if anyone has any idea why the ajax script stops after step 2, then please let me know. Thanks, Neil

I just include a pretty generic image resize script which I then call. If you would like this script, then let me know (on this board) and I'll email you it. Or if you follow me on Twitter (@manteya) then I will message you my email address.

Anyone?

Hi all, I am using some code i wrote for www.tingifts.com and although it works fine on that site, it has problems on http://www.regalosdehojalata.es/ The code relates to passing a currency symbol to a variable for inclusion on a page hosted by the payment gateway. Before I get into code, does anyone else have any experience with foreign languages interfering with php code, and if so, is there an easy way of getting around the issue? I have added slashes to all variables, so I wouldn't think that this would be the problem. Suggestions? Neil