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jQuery, AJAX, and “invalid label”

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Adam Campbell

Over the past few weeks I’ve run into the same problem time and time again – trying to make AJAX calls with jQuery 1.5+ and receiving an invalid label error message every time. I typically use JSON as well, and it would always break.

I couldn’t figure it out until I stumbled on a recent Stack Overflow post with the answer. The error was being caused by a de facto plugin that I use, Jörn Zaefferer’s Validation plugin. Apparently it doesn’t play nice with jQuery 1.5.

To fix, disable the plugin or, more ideally, use this patch on Github.

The Folly of Novelty

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Adam Campbell

Be careful. Educate yourself. Think deeply into new and novel things. It may turn out that their novelty is based on the fact that someone has forgotten the folly in an idea tried long ago and revealed as ridiculous.

Andy Rutledge has written an article regarding emerging hybrids of creativity/business/selling-out through platforms like Kickstarter, and it’s very intriguing.

To be honest, it gave me relief to read this. It qualms some fears that I’m “falling behind” in some great game, that I’m not participating in the way that everyone else it. It gave me reprieve and encouraged me to give clear thought to the reason WHY I’m doing work, business, and being creative (aside from basic bill-paying reasons).

Give it a read, think about it, and share your thoughts.

Update: Seems to have ticked a lot of people off. Can’t say I blame them… seems pretty down on certain people and services. I think Kickstarter is awesome, and same with Frank Chimero. I don’t care how he does his promotion. I actually would love to do what he’s doing. For me, the article was just a good reminder to think.

Colosseo coolness.

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Adam Campbell

Shortly before Christmas, there was a little contest on Dribbble (called a “Rebound competition”) to see who could take an image of the word “snowflake”, written in cursive type, be inspired by it, and then create something new out of that inspiration.

I hesitate to share what I came up with, because it isn’t that great, but here it is anyway. Here’s the original Dribbble, and here’s my Rebound. As I mentioned when I posted it, it was my attempt at an homage to Cameron Moll’s incredibly beautiful Colosseo letterpress prints, in which he replicates the famous Roman Coliseum entirely out of type. I put it up, fired off a humble tweet to Cameron to let him know what I had unleashed on the world, and that was it.

Actually, it wasn’t it. Cameron checked out my Rebound and his favour shined upon me. Being a real nice guy, he graciously sent me an 8″x10″ print of his Colosseo in black, an amazing gift from basically a stranger. Thanks again, Cameron.

Check out a few shots of said Colosseo below:

Colosseo 1

Colosseo 2

Colosseo 3

Colosseo 4

Stretching with absolute positioning

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Adam Campbell

As discovered in this awesome animated borders demo, David DeSandro points out that when absolutely positioning a child element, by setting “no size dimensions… the child element stretches to the size of its parent”.

That means top, right, left, and bottom are all set to 0, or any combination of dimensions for how you want it to stretch. Check it out.

Creating a service experience

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Adam Campbell

Read an awesome article last night by Paul Ford (via Dan Cederholm) titled The Web Is a Customer Service Medium that tries to help clear up the misunderstandings of what the web “is” and what it “is not”. My favourite bit is this (excuse the long quote):

That is the point that I am trying to make. The web is not, despite the desires of so many, a publishing medium. The web is a customer service medium. “Intense moderation” in a customer service medium is what “editing” was for publishing.

That’s what I tell my Gutenbourgeois friends, if they’ll listen. I say: Create a service experience around what you publish and sell. Whatever “customer service” means when it comes to books and authors, figure it out and do it. Do it in partnership with your readers. Turn your readers into members. Not visitors, not subscribers; you want members. And then don’t just consult them, but give them tools to consult amongst themselves. These things are cheap and easy now if you hire one or two smart people instead of a large consultancy. Define what the boundaries are in your community and punish transgressors without fear of losing a sale. Then, if your product is good, you’ll sell things. (Don’t count on your fellow Gutenbourgeois to buy things. They’re clicking the little thumb icon on YouTube like everyone else.) If you don’t want to do that then just find niche communities who might conceivably care about your products and buy great ad placements. It’s a better online spend.

Create a service experience around what you publish and sell. That’s a fantastic insight and something that over the past 12 hours I’ve been mentally applying to projects past and present to see how well I’ve achieved a “service experience”. Not sure how successful I’ve been previously, but I know that I’m going to do some tweaking on my current project.

Read it and give Paul some feedback.