Final Project : Back on Track in the Footer

Thanks to Jack and Amos today for the assistance. It got me rolling again after being away from the lessons and in bed sick for the last week. I quickly forgot so much! We'll see how far I get this week...


I started PHP & MySQL coding with the big footer:

File to view is here http://onepotcooking.com/davidbone/kasthomes/office.php
UPDATED LINK is just http://onepotcooking.com/davidbone/kasthomes/

SHOW / HIDE Footer

• Viewable when you click on the plus sign at the bottom. Reason I implemented this was because of client's comment when I showed them the first XTML version of the wireframes. They didn't want the footer so present. I think I could have lessened it's presence with design but this may work too.
  
• Accomplished with javascript. I know I could have achieved this with a previous class example where we used javascript to change the class to show and hide but for this I found a pretty good tutorial for a simple show/hide with Prototype. I used example 5b.
  
• When you click on the image I also put an in-page link to jump to the bottom of the page so the user didn't have to scroll down once the footer expanded.
  
• Room for improvement but I'm happy with it for now. Needs design.
  

Populated Columns

• So far I have one table holding the company info and then one for employees/company owners. The company info table is one row and very simple. That information isn't even called with a loop. The employees info is called with a loop since there are four of them.
• Assistance: I would like to display in the "Currently, Kast Homes is:" section the [category] and how many [properties] are in that category in a way of [# of properties] [category]. I would appreciate any comments on how to do this, which will get me researching in the right direction.
  

PHP Mail:

• Accomplished a simple contact form for now. I tested Amos' class 07 example then applied this simple contact form. This is the bare minimum and I'm certainly not going to go live for the client with this but wanted to take the development of the contact form in baby steps.
• For official launch I'm going to build a more robust form and use this kirupa tutorial for reference or this preferred Secure & Accessible Form Script I also found these examples will help me in understanding the forms in the administration section. If anyone has found other ways of making the built in php mailer more robust, please let me know.
  

GENERAL:

• Starting to get the hang of MVC architecture but I sure don't think in this format.
• While building the XHTML part of the footer I had some hangups because of the CSS Blueprint I'm using. There were some unexpected results from the framework but I figured it out. Funny thing is the footer has it's most layout quirks in Firefox. I'll fix it once I know the exact design requirements.
• After a few layout steps I test in browsers IE 6, IE7, Safari & Firefox. Since this will be for a client in the end I need to know all aspects are moving forward together. My client is on Mac but 95% of the people using the site will be PC.
• Already, I'm having content issues. I've asked the client three times for content but nothing yet. I need to know exactly what information they would like to share about each property and I need photos. I may just have place holding content for the final presentation. This is by far one of the consistent issues I have.

GOAL for the Final Presentation:

• To work on more functionality than design.
  
• To be happy with the first version of each solution. Don't get too focused on any one part.
  
• Full control of the information in the footer from an administration section.
• Be able to enter and display properties with photos!
• Understand the Foriegn Key and how I can query different displays of the properties entered with all the criteria!
  
• Create a very simple administration page for Rentals that only uses the tinyMCE

That's a lot already but of course there is much more to do.