Something to keep in mind while freelancing

I might be just too young to write this but yes based on my experience with clients i had, i did like to put forward some points which i think every freelance IT professional must keep in mind

1. Always Freeze the requirements with the clients. Make sure "This is what they want". If possible get a signed approval from them

Its better if you complete this procedure in beginning of project so that you can avoid suffering in end. In many cases clients start demanding changes that are totally different from what they had asked in beginning. By getting this approval you can save your self from extra efforts being forced on you. For anything extra demanded make sure you charge them separately.

2. List down what you will be providing in maintenance.

In many cases clients over period of maintenance demand changes which in themselves are project and which cant be denied cause of service u need to provide them. To avoid this kind off issues, make sure you finalize terms and conditions of maintenance as well. i.e what all services or changes will you provide in maintenance.

3. Never take "Replicate a site" project

These are highly paid and very attractive for new freelancers but trust me.... they will screw up your reputation.

and this one is for web developers

4. Clarify well in advance what clients can expect to see on IE

Many times clients will complaint that site does not work as jazzy as it does on firefox or chrome or any other browser. We all know its not developers fault. IE sucks Bigtime!!! (Be it any version). Make sure that you tell clients this well in advance. If possible tell them what they wont be seeing on IE.
If client insist that he need exact output on IE you have 2 choices. 1 degrade the sites transitions and any latest improvements in css or js used or say "NO" to that project.

Well thats all on this. Will add to this as i learn more and more from clients ;)

Small issue of padding difference observed between chrome and firefox

In some elments like heading (h1,h2,h3,h4 etc) and anchors elements show weird padding difference. For example element that appears aligned properly in firefox may appear aligned slightly above or below its position in chrome.

This problem exist even after applying css reset. After trying out few things i found solution to this problem. All you need to do is add this line to the beggining of the css.

*{margin:0,padding:0}

And the issue is sorted. :)

Release of the month

Release of the month
www.bpecindia.com

Customising User registration form in buddy press

Its been quite a while since i have posted anything. So today i will be posting on how to customize user registration form. Now here's a quick overview of what i m talking about.

What is buddy press
Buddy press is a plugin of wordpress that converts a wordpress from a blog to a social network.

What is the issue faced?
Buddypress comes with a predefined user registration form. Now if users wish to customize it normal problem that they face is that submission doesnot occur and there no display showing some error in process (problem that i will address in this post.)

Solution
Now in order to customize it 1st thing you must try to find out what is getting submitted when u submit the form. Like in our case the requirement was that we needed js validation before the form could even submit so that most of the validation is done on client side. For this reaon i wrote a js function and changed the submit buttons functionality in order to trigger that function on submit. This is where we encountered issue. of form not being submitted.

Then i compared the post values that were being submitted with the original form and with the form i modified and found out that root cause of this problem was one of the parameters required for submission to be successful was being sent in post by button. (the value of the button itself).

So inorder to overcome this issue here's what i did:
1. i created a input of type text.
2. i set its display to none via css
3. and assign it the value of the button. (value of button in original form)

And......

My custom user registration form is working :)

Internet Explorer 6 continues to haunt us cause many essential services still support it

Many IT professionals and IT companies have been trying to get "Internet Explorer 6" outta market. Many sites came to make people aware that IE6 is dead. But still IE 6 is being used. Some use it outta ignorance, while some use it cause they are forced to use.
I myself hate IE6 cause of it inability to render most of the cool things that other browsers do easily. However i was recently forced to use IE6, mainly cause my bank didnt support any other browser. I had faced similar kind off situation earlier with our college website which would render ok only on IE6.
The worse part is that even sites of big education bodies such as mumbai university have sites that only runs on IE6.. (now they have updated it to run on any version of IE but still only on IE).
I pray that the day soon comes that developers and designers start making site compatible with all browsers. Atleast completely functional on all browsers.

Release of the month

Release of the month
http://matheran.org/

Resizing Background to fit in any screen resolution without repeats

Ever wondered how to use actually picture like a photo or something in your background without worrying about how it will be rendered in various resolutions?
Here is a solution for the issue. It is possible using Jquery and CSS. The logic for this task is very simple: Detect the browser window width and height and assign those values to the background image.
Now here points to keep in mind are that the background image is not to be specified in CSS. For this task create a div with lowest z-index value and place your background image inside it using img tag. Also assign it an id.
You can detect browser width and height using jquery's width and height function as follows:
$(window).width()

Store these values in a variable and again use the same width and height functions to assign those value to the image. For that just replace the window in earlier example with reference to your background.
Have a nice day :)