Paul Richards

The latest version of Jabroo is available for testing out online. Its available at new.jabroo.com or following the link at the top of the Jabroo home page.

This version has been designed to make finding that font as easy as possible. Like the previous Jabroo the fonts are separated into categories and under their alphabet classification. It uses ajax to load all the fonts in one load quickly and makes flicking through each page a easy process. The old version required you to be signed up to automatically change the ‘preview text’ on every page, now users can change it without registration. The registration process has been completely changed and now requires only the most basic information, the user name and email activation process have been scraped. Now users can sign in with only a email address and password. Selecting the number of fonts to appear on each page is now also in the past. It automatically calculates the optimum number of fonts to be displayed for your particular screen type without the need for scrolling.

The technology

The application is built on the Zend Framework 1.5 technology. This implements a MVC architectural pattern and is fully PHP5 OOP. All the DHTML is built around the JavaScript framework jQuery. The main problem with a site like this is how it must be able to load a large amounts of images quickly. To improve perform all the images are cached server side and are pre loaded on the user side. This is done by loading the next two pages of image from the current one. This results in the user even flicking though at a quick speed doesn’t have to wait for images to load. Like many ajax enabled web sites use of the URL’s and browser ‘back’ and ‘forward’ buttons become useless because there is no physical page change. Using jQuery this site records your different Ajax clicks and tells your browser where you going to keep full use of browsers controls. With different Ajax screen that site gives a unique reference after the hash on the URL to ensure if you bookmark it you can always find yourself back on the correct page.

Known Issues

Microsoft IE 6 display issues

• Main content set to 80% width to make it fit, doesn’t display correctly on 1024 screens.
• Category pop up menu misaligned.
• Header and footer bar not the correct or the same size.

Microsoft IE greater then 6

• Log in form CSS misaligned with registration box.
• Browser not caching the images properly.