Puttering

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I hate to reinvent the wheel.

(As an aside, that probably explains why I don’t like to drive the same road back that I take to the store, but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.)

Roller ChainLiz Arden and I were discussing using off-the-shelf widgets in product design. We mostly do that all the time. A conveyor builder, for example, would no more design a proprietary chain or sprocket for the electric motor than build a fiberglass cow to straddle the conveyor belt in a book factory. See, someone else has already invented the roller chain and you can buy as much as you want at any industrial hardware store.

This story is about websites.

I mentioned this preference for off-the-shelf stuff because I’ve been jinkering with the North Puffin Gallery. That’s my site over here that acts as a portal to my mom’s paintings and scratchboards, my own portfolio of interesting work that may be for exhibit only, and the emporium where I try to separate art afficionados from their moolah.

Lazy I am. I like slideshow gallery presentations but I hadn’t bothered changing from my static display, mostly because I really didn’t feel like reinventing the wheel. Or writing the code.

There are 29,763 freely downloadable slideshows available online.

Lazy I am. I like slideshow gallery presentations but I hadn’t bothered changing from my static display, mostly because I really didn’t feel like wading through all that code.

OK, I started wading.

First things first. The design parameters.

Any slideshow must “fit” the other pages on the site.
The “slides” had to be easy to update as the exhibit changes.
Slides should link to descriptive (or sales) pages.
The show should have navigation buttons.
The page cannot use Flash™.
The code had to be open source and easy to change.

The original source code of “open source software” is freely available and the owner allows all users to use, redistribute, and modify it.

Flash™ is common on sites but (fortunately) many designers are moving away from it in applications like this. It is sloooooooooooooow loading. The back buttons are difficult (or impossible) to make work. Basic text functions like copy-and-paste don’t work. Adobe doesn’t even use it on their own site. And it doesn’t scale well to mobile devices. I decided right from the start to use standard HTML and Java coding.

I found a bunch that fit my list.

Sample Page No. 1This is Ger Versluis’ Carousel, a page that has that displays multiple images in a 3D, carousel style. It has a number of lovely tricks for code that was written a decade ago. The slides slide in from either right to left, or left to right. I can set it to have pretty much as many images in view as I want (I chose three for this sample). Each image can have its own associated link. The carousel pauses on mouseover. And the script works in all browsers introduced since about 2001. Cool.

But it doesn’t have a way to title the images and there are no navigation buttons.

 

Sample Page No. 2Patrick Fitzgerald developed this script about the same time Mr. Versluis released the carousel. It doesn’t have the multiple images sliding around that we see on other pages but I made my own custom Start and Pause buttons, and moved the other links to match my page layout. The best part for me is the dropbox that lets you go to any slide in the show and then restart the flow from there.

 

Sample Page No. 3Book Flip is another image slideshow from Mr. Versluis. This time he simulates a page being turned to reveal two new slides at once. It is indeed an impressive display. I set it to flip horizontally because our browsers and monitors mostly display in landscape but it can work vertically. Each image can have its own associated link. The carousel pauses on mouseover. And the script works in all browsers introduced since about 2001. Cool.

But it still doesn’t have a way to title the images and there are no navigation buttons.

I like the carousel in number 1 and the book feel of number three but I love the controls and added text in number two.

Blog Contest:
OK, OK, it’s really a survey. I really want to know which of the three slide shows you like better. Click one of these links to drop me a quick email to let me know or leave a comment below.

Sample #1         Sample #2        Sample #3
Something Else
A winner (chosen from among all the entries) will receive a free lifetime subscription to the No Puffin Perspective™1!

And if you want to look at the code to tell me how to add the buttons to Number 1 or Number 3, that’d be great!

Next up, why the remote control for your TV doesn’t speak to your BluRay player.

1“Lifetime” in this case means the life of the world, the Internet, or this online column, whichever ends first.

 

 

I Hate Lines

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I hate liars more.

!@#$%& KMart had peanuts on sale and I needed a clothes line. The peanut aisle was, of course, empty of peanuts and had no “sale” stickers on the shelves so I went to the front counter to grab a flier, just to make sure I was right.

I was.

A slight aside: This event occurred at the Marathon, Florida, KMart. This store, perhaps the least liked of all KMart locations, has long been said to be the most profitable per square foot of all that chain’s retail locations. Local customers dislike the store because they regularly run out of sale merchandise. Local customers dislike the store because many of the staff are surly or missing. Local customers dislike the store because the one or two open checkout lines are always backed up and slow. A typical Yelp review of this location was “now I know why KMart is struggling and closing stores.” It does have a decent fishing section. There were no peanuts there, either.

Since I was at the customer service counter and there was no line, I asked for a rain check.

“What’s a rain check?” the customer service employee asked.

After I dope slapped myself to make sure I heard correctly, I explained.

“This term comes from baseball, where in the 1880s it became the practice to offer paying spectators a rain check entitling them to future admission for a game that was postponed or ended early owing to bad weather. By the early 1900s the term was transferred to tickets for other kinds of entertainment, and later to a coupon entitling a customer to buy, at a later date and at the same price, a sale item temporarily out of stock.”

“Oh, we don’t give those.”

“Of course you do. Every KMart in the country does.”

“No we never have.”

We never have?

Welcome to the MyKmart Community!
Rain checks are normally offered as a final solution after all other options have been completed in locating your item. Rain checks do not apply to special purchases, clearance and closeout sales where quantities are advertised as being limited.
Normally once a rain check is filled out, you will be called once the merchandise comes in and have a specific amount of days to come in and pick up your items, otherwise they will be placed back on the shelf.

Another employee was there. He said they did and to call Mr. So-and-So.

“No, we don’t do that.” The other fellow faded. I guess he saw the look on my face. I hate to be lied to.

A third rocket scientist came up.

“Oh, we have never given rain checks,” she said.

That’s when I returned my cart to her.

Rain checks are a good news/bad news solution for a retail store. Every business wants to minimize inventory and maximize inventory turns. If you hold too much inventory, whether on the shelf or in the warehouse, you risk getting stuck with stuff you can’t sell. If you hold too little inventory, then you risk running out and losing customer good will. Either problem costs you money.

KMart apparently worries not about losing customer good will.

Were I a KMart employee, particularly one charged with maintaining inventory, I might not want to give a customer a rain check either. See, their 1940s policy to bring in the oversold/sold out merchandise, store it in the layaway center, and then stand around in the layaway center back there in the far dungeon of the store waiting for the customer, I’m sure I’d find something better to do with my time.

Still, were I a KMart employee, I wouldn’t lie about it to the customer.

!@#$%& Kmart. I never did get my clothesline.