The Lab
If you work with documents from many different sources, you’ve probably seen this before: That’s good. “Oh no”, you think, “A utf-8 encoding problem.” That three-letter combo should be a single close-quote, like this: That’s good. Sometimes the problem is that your application is reading the file as a win-1252 (or cp1252, or the kinda-sorta
A client recently requested a feature for their website that would allow users to access state by state data by rolling over a map of the US. At first, I considered using one of the available Flash packages, but the design took a couple of twists that made that much more difficult. So I opted
Slinging php code to and fro one day, I found myself needing to process a potentially large result from a url–a result too large to fit within PHP’s memory limit. However, I could process this result a line at a time, so I could avoid buffering the entire thing in memory. I couldn’t use cURL,
My name is Tim and I’ll be a part of the Dancing Mammoth team for the summer. During the school year I’m a PhD student in computer science at Princeton, working with these fine folks. Princeton keeps us pretty busy during the school year, but during the summer, they turn us loose and force us
Did Gibson think that nobody would notice when they completely-ripped off Apple for their new website design? For reference, here is a screencap of Apple’s site: Which brings me to two points: When you have your own iconic brand, you really shouldn’t need to steal so shamelessly. It’s 2009, Gibson. Did you really think table-based
Sometimes it just makes more sense to put the controls right on the site. Watch this quick screencast to find out how we let one of our clients order the stories in their main content well with drag & drop ease. Bringing Site Control Out of the Admin Interface from Dancing Mammoth on Vimeo.
A Story Recently, a client of ours wanted to institute a “point” system for an existing body of users. The idea was that certain actions of the user would generate points for that user, which the client could then track as part of an incentive program. But What are “Points”? At the time, we had
In the Internet world of seemingly endless computer resources, it’s not often that a website requires visitors to wait in line to visit, but a recent Dancing Mammoth project called for just that. The Requirements: Visitors will be added to a Virtual Waiting Room prior to advancing to website content. Visitors will be advanced according
I’ve been to a few Apple stores in the past and I love their clean design. The products they sell are well displayed and their staff are usually very helpful, but I am always looking for a bargain. So I can’t envision myself purchasing a new computer from my local Apple store with the deals
I have an Intel iMac (the white kind). It’s my personal machine. I like it. It’s nice. What I especially like about it is that it has a big screen (1680×1050). I also have an Intel MacBook. It’s my work machine. I like it. It’s nice. But what I don’t like about it is that