How did these web sites get so pretty and dynamic? (e.g. HealthMonth, NirvanaHQ)
August 5, 2011 12:59 PM Subscribe
How did these web sites get so pretty and dynamic? (e.g. HealthMonth, NirvanaHQ)
I've programmed on the web before with PHP and mySQL, so I understand how dynamic websites get data. But these very pretty websites are beyond me even when I look over Ruby on Rails tutorials (it just looks like a standard programming language!).
How are tasks dragged and dropped in Nirvana HQ?
What makes the goal boxes in health month sort of swing into view and resort? Are these simple things to do?
Would love to see a tutorial or a WYSIWYG editor for either.
I've programmed on the web before with PHP and mySQL, so I understand how dynamic websites get data. But these very pretty websites are beyond me even when I look over Ruby on Rails tutorials (it just looks like a standard programming language!).
How are tasks dragged and dropped in Nirvana HQ?
What makes the goal boxes in health month sort of swing into view and resort? Are these simple things to do?
Would love to see a tutorial or a WYSIWYG editor for either.
Best answer: There's two big frameworks which help with doing desktop style UI's, (more Nirvana then healthmonth) one is SproutCore the other is Cappuccino. Both provide standard Desktop UI widgets. Healthmonth looks more home grown
posted by bitdamaged at 1:38 PM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by bitdamaged at 1:38 PM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Oh it looks like NirvanaHQ uses the Jquery UIwhich is another option.
posted by bitdamaged at 1:39 PM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by bitdamaged at 1:39 PM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Ah, this makes sense!
So it looks like I could stick to the PHP I'm used to if I wanted to start using something like JQuery, right?
posted by jander03 at 1:48 PM on August 5, 2011
So it looks like I could stick to the PHP I'm used to if I wanted to start using something like JQuery, right?
posted by jander03 at 1:48 PM on August 5, 2011
Best answer: Both those sites definitely use jQuery.
If you use Firefox, you might like to install the Firebug extension; it's very useful for debugging your own work, and it's also an easy way to get a closer look at the JavaScript and CSS that other pages use. It shows me that, for example, one of the JS files used by NirvanaHQ is called jquery-1.3.2.min.js - a dead giveaway that they're using jQuery.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 1:52 PM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]
If you use Firefox, you might like to install the Firebug extension; it's very useful for debugging your own work, and it's also an easy way to get a closer look at the JavaScript and CSS that other pages use. It shows me that, for example, one of the JS files used by NirvanaHQ is called jquery-1.3.2.min.js - a dead giveaway that they're using jQuery.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 1:52 PM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: And yes, to answer your second question, you can use jQuery for dynamic UI magic irrespective of the language you're using at the back end. Here's a basic jQuery tutorial - but if you haven't used JavaScript at all, you'll want to find a JS tutorial first. I'm afraid I don't have a go-to source for those; Google is your friend.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 2:05 PM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 2:05 PM on August 5, 2011 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Perfect, I think that's everything I need to know to get started!
posted by jander03 at 2:08 PM on August 5, 2011
posted by jander03 at 2:08 PM on August 5, 2011
Best answer: Javascript can be... well confusing, especially if you are already used to a C-like language (whihch PHP is to some extent). And there are a lot of turorials etc. out there which give a very deceptively superficial introduction to the language--which is especially bad with JS. Get Douglas Crockford's book "Javascript: The Good Parts", it was very useful to me in really understanding the esoteric truth behind the deceptive surface I thought I knew as JS.
Also, wow that's a lot of tutorials: http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials
posted by thefool at 9:31 AM on August 6, 2011
Also, wow that's a lot of tutorials: http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials
posted by thefool at 9:31 AM on August 6, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
What makes the goal boxes in health month sort of swing into view and resort? Are these simple things to do?
The dynamic front-end stuff (drag and drop, etc) will be done with Javascript, and likely something along the lines of Jquery to make it less painful than pure JS. They're not difficult, necessarily, but certainly not easy on a WYSIWYG editor kind of scale.
But these very pretty websites are beyond me even when I look over Ruby on Rails tutorials (it just looks like a standard programming language!).
Ruby is a standard programming language, Rails is a framework. It would be useful for the backend and serving/generating the HTML, but it won't be where the dynamic interface things you mentioned would live.
posted by ndfine at 1:22 PM on August 5, 2011 [1 favorite]