JavaScript

VisualForce Element Ids in jQuery selectors

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I have retired this approach in favour of a much neater solution that can be found here.

This tricky topic had me puzzled for some time and in earlier posts I went the way of using CSS classes to identify DOM elements; but was always a touch dissatisfied with the solution. Not only is it less efficient – valid XHTML pages should only have one element with any Id, although CSS classes can be shared by many elements – but it also feels all hacky ‘n stuff. I’m a bit older now, a bit more experienced and I RTFM. Without further ado, here is why it’s tricky, and how to fix it.

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Masking Input on VisualForce Pages

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I am a developer and (at least as often) a (l)user. UI and UX design are important from both perspectives, and it’s important to bear this in mind whilst creating any application. What is this waffle all about? There are some platforms, based in yonder cloud that could tweak the tiniest of features, and make the lives of their users (and administrators) 1 x shed-load better. Until they do that, we’re gonna have to do it ourselves.

Let’s get specific. Typically, validation error messages provided by Apex and VisualForce are only apparent after form is submitted ( or when we’re on the last page of a 39-page wizard ). Of course some cases require that it be this way, but for other cases it’s like my (very) old professor used to say, “Jus’ don’t let em make the mistake in the first place boy *tongue-click*”. Heeding Prof. Swart’s advice, let’s see how we can easily do this.

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Flickr + jQuery + Salesforce = Awesome^5 [Part 2]

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Okay software developing enthusiasts, I’m back from Paris (you didn’t know I was gone did ya?), I’m a year older and culturally, I’m richer (well I’d like to think so at least). It’s time to complete our two-part series on integrating disparate systems using  the most-excellent combination of web services, jQuery and the Force.com platform. In part 1 we learnt how to connect to a third-party endpoint (Flickr in our case), and consume their SOAP-based web services. Now we’re going to jazz it all up with our spiffy jQuery gallery carousel. Let’s have another look at where we want to be at the end of this all,

GalleryView 2.0 Integration

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VisualForce Component Ids & Javascript

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I have retired this approach in favour of a much neater solution that can be found here.

Salesforce used in conjunction with JavaScript and Ajax can be pretty smashing. I’ve used a number of JavaScript libraries that make you want to high-five yourself when implemented. There can(and probably will) be some frustration while you bend a library and make it fit within the Salesforce framework, although Ron Hess has some pretty sweet examples for you to pore over.

One simple frustration I’ve come across is that of retrieving elements by Id. Salesforce has an intelligent scheme in place which ensures that HTML elements don’t have duplicate Ids and therefore conform to W3C standards.

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