Howto: Build a contact form with a Polldaddy survey

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Donncha

I just added a contact form to the about page here using a Polldaddy survey. While it’s not as straight forward as installing a plugin to do the job, I think it’s worth doing because it touches on all aspects of Polldaddy survey creation. After you’ve created this contact form on your own blog you’ll know how to create a Polldaddy survey, a custom style sheet and how to change the language in the form too. It’s very flexible.

Here’s how I did it.

  1. Login to Polldaddy and on the dashboard create a new survey for your contact form.
  2. Give your form a descriptive name and select the custom stylesheet. You’ll have to create a new one. I use the WordPress 2010 theme so I based my stylesheet on the Plain White theme. Changes are minor, mainly to accommodate width and font size. Grab the css file here and copy it into your style.
  3. Now on to the questions. I created a simple Name, Email and Comment form.
  4. You need to tell the survey where to send responses. After saving, go to Reports->Data and scroll down to the Email Notifications where you can fill in your details. You can also subscribe to an rss feed or send responses to a HTTP URL.

  5. To embed the form in your website use the embed popup and choose “Website Inline”. The iframe code should be copied into the new page that will hold your contact form.

  6. You’ll have a form that looks like this.

  7. You’re not finished yet though. Submit the form and you’ll see the message, “Survey Completed”. That’s not exactly appropriate for a contact form is it? Go to the languages page and create a new Survey Pack. You can change just about every bit of text displayed in the form here. After you’ve saved the language pack go back to the edit survey page and select the correct language pack:
  8. The one final job to do is to adjust the iframe size. I made each field of the form mandatory but that raises errors when you submit an empty form. Those errors make the form longer than the default and the iframe is too small to hold it. I bumped the height to 900 pixels and no more ugly scrollbars! There’s more empty whitespace below the form but my contact form is at the end of the page so I don’t mind.

You could also use the Javascript embed method, but that loads the survey form in a css popup window. I prefer the iframe method.

As you can see, Polldaddy surveys are incredibly flexible and offer a lot of customization options. I work on Polldaddy code every day so of course I’ll say this but I’d have no hesitation in recommending the service to anyone needing polls, surveys, quizzes or ratings. Create a free account and give it a spin!

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Hello Ubuntu 11.04

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Donncha

Today is the big day. A new release of Ubuntu Linux is out. Version 11.04 or “Natty Narwhal” is the first to ship with the Unity desktop and I’m very impressed! If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Ubuntu website or this handy guide.

I like:

  • The auto hiding sidebar of icons. When a window is maximised it hides. Long click on an icon to move it around, and right click for a context dialog to remove it.
  • Control Center is 2 clicks away in the top right where there appears to be a light switch. That menu also has a lock screen item and various session controls.
  • Apps with multiple windows show a corresponding number of dots next to their icon on the sidebar. Click on the icon and you see all the windows of that application.
  • Application menus are in the top toolbar ala Mac OS. Some, like Chrome, aren’t however.
  • Long press Windows key and the sidebar icons are highlighted with numbers 0-9 to quick choose them.
  • Click the Ubuntu logo in the top left and you get a nice applications dispay.
  • Speedy alt-tab previews of each Window.
  • Left and right maximising of windows like in Windows 7. I think you need to drag it a bit further than in Windows 7 however, no bad thing. Full screen maximise on dragging a window to the top of the screen.
  • Painless upgrade from 10.10.

And what I didn’t like:

  • The window display for multi window apps requires you select a window. It’d be great if I could click the app icon again to return to the same window. ESC does the job though.
  • GIMP tear away menus are still broken, but this is likely an issue with GIMP. It was present in the last release of Ubuntu too and I just found a work around this evening.
    The menus you are looking for are no longer part of the drop-down menus, but rather part of a right-click menu visible when clicking on the canvas.

    I found using the space bar after clicking the menu option worked on torn off menus. This may be a bug.

  • The lack of formal application menus is off putting initially but it’s actually easy enough to find things with the new launcher.
  • I doubt I’ll ever like the thin scrollbar. There is a way to change that, must find out how.
  • Why does Ubuntu keep installing Evolution every time I upgrade? I’m fairly sure I uninstall that each and every time ..

In previous versions of Ubuntu I always felt the eye candy was there just to make things look pretty. With Unity they’re actually putting that graphical horsepower to good use. If you haven’t tried Ubuntu yet, give it a spin! You can even try it without installing anything simply by booting from the install disk (or usb drive) and opting for that. Check out the download page for further details.

Posted in Linux | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Moriarty Tribunal in Text

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Donncha

The Moriarty Tribunal cost the Irish tax payer more than 100 million Euro and all we got was a 2,400 page protected PDF.

If you view the report’s PDF files you won’t be able to quote from it by selecting and copying text. You’ll have to manually type out anything you want to extract because the files are protected.

Value for money eh? Anyway, I ran the pdf files through the tool “pdftotext” and came up with m1.txt and m2.txt.
Use the original PDF files to read the report but for your convenience these text files will be much easier to quote from.

Please don’t link directly to them, mirror them on your own site if you write about them!

Here’s a Wordle tag cloud of the findings created by Jamie Lawrence.

Posted in Ireland | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Amazon Appstore opens in North America

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Donncha

The Amazon Appstore for Android opened today and apparently Apple are already suing them for confusing consumers with a name similar to their App Store.

I wouldn’t really know because after downloading the Appstore app (beautifully simple procedure: click a link in an email/text to a .apk file) and logging into Amazon it refused to let me download the exclusive Angry Birds Rio game.

The Amazon Appstore for Android is not yet available in your region

Good thing I’m sick of Angry Birds, but it’d be nice if it worked over here too!

Posted in Android | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Make Android screenshots without root

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Donncha

Sometimes you can learn useful things from a bad thing happening. Yesterday came the news that 21 popular apps on the Android market had been copied. They were uploaded again to the market with similar sounding names but loaded with a trojan.

That installed a rootkit on your phone to get root access and then sent private data to a remote server in the US. All the apps have been removed, and the developer accounts banned but of course it’s a bad day for Android. :(

Anyway, this Symantic post explains how to know if you’ve been unlucky enough to download one of these apps. Open up Settings->Applications->Running Services and look for “DownloadManageService”.

I did that and found a service I didn’t recognise, ScreenCaptureService. What? In the past I had to root my phone to take screenshots. How do I do it now? A quick search and I found this thread. Apparently pressing the back key and power key starts the service and this post explains that pressing Back and Home takes a screenshot! This is a Froyo, (Android 2.2), feature and a welcome one but I wonder why it’s not documented?

Screenshots are stored on your SD card, in a ScreenCapture directory. The screenshot above was created with it. No root required!

Posted in Android | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Stephen Fry on Ros na Rún

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Donncha

Beidh Stephen Fry ar Ros na Rún anocht ar TG4. Looking forward to watching it! (via)

Posted in tv | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Parents: baby’s first years

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Donncha

I know many of my readers are already parents so they’ve been through the life changing event that is the birth of a baby. The video above may well prepare the rest of you for this moment when you become a parent. Well worth watching. (via)

Posted in Humour | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

WordPress in my Minecraft

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Donncha

I logged into my Minecraft server yesterday evening to see a stunning WordPress logo up on a hill. It was created by Thorsten. No it wasn’t. Author remains unknown. I wonder who created it?

I really must get that Minecraft commmentary done so I can show off what he and everyone else created in this world..

Posted in Games, WordPress | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

I’m an ebook convert now

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Donncha

Matt has made it well known that he loves his Kindle and for a while I thought about buying one too. Unfortunately I’ll have to order it from Amazon.com in the US because I live in Ireland. Attempts to buy it from Amazon.co.uk result in an error and asks me to go visit the US site. When you add shipping costs and import fees it drives the price on Amazon.com up to $193.58!

So, if not the Kindle, how do I read ebooks? On my phone of course! I downloaded the Android Kindle app for my Samsung Galaxy S. The 4 inch screen of this phone is plenty big enough for reading, though you won’t be doing it at arm’s length. It’s also backlit so there’s no need for a light to shine on the device to read it. That suits me as the majority of my reading is done when I’m in bed at night. I don’t think I’ll ever read a magazine on the phone as the screen is too small. I tried reading bits and pieces of a Retro Gamer pdf on it but it was a horrible experience. I presume Kindle formatted magazines are better suited to the small screen?

I tried reading books on previous phones but each time it was one of the free “out of copyright” books I picked up rather than a book I had to spend money on. Last September at Seaside all that changed when I bought the Kindle version of Terry Pratchett’s “Unseen Academicals” and put the paperback version of that book back into my bag. It was wonderful!

I don’t think I’ve bought a paperback since. I wandered into Waterstones once (killing time, I didn’t even head over to the sci-fi section), and any time I pop into Eason’s it’s to buy a magazine. I’ve since made several purchases on amazon.com including a few books by authors unknown to me. Check out Containment and Brainbox by Christian Cantrell for example.

I’m not happy about everything Kindle however. Even though Ireland is in the European Union along with the UK, Amazon customers here cannot buy the Kindle or ebooks through amazon.co.uk. Instead we have to use amazon.com. Thankfully there’s no VAT on books so the US price is the price Irish customers pay. Good thing the Euro is stronger than the US Dollar. It does however mean that we have to buy books with American English spelling and that won’t improve the humour of those people who will criticise the service.

Also, some books cannot be bought because I’m not in the United States or United Kingdom. Ender’s Game is one such novel. If I search Amazon.com for that title I won’t be shown the Kindle version at all but I found it by using Google. I can’t even look for it on amazon.co.uk because I’m in Ireland, not the UK. I understand this is probably because publishers have regional contracts but this is digital data and Amazon has a worldwide audience.

I’d still like to try out a Kindle as a reading device as I’ve heard so many good things about it, but the important part of the Kindle are the books, and I can read them just fine on my phone.

Besides the Kindle app there are many other Android ebook readers. I particularly like FBReader myself but check the market for others.

For historical purposes for those reading this in 10 years time when it will probably be hard to buy paperback books, Amazon sold more ebooks during the last 3 months of 2010 than paperbacks.

Amazon has revealed that it has sold more Kindle ebooks than paperbacks in the US during the final three months of 2010.

A similar pattern has continued during January 2011 with 115 ebooks being sold for every 100 paperbacks.

Posted in Android | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Spacelog: Apollo 13

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Donncha

From the Apollo 13 Spacelog transcript. Good thing nobody had to get out and push. (via)

Jack Swigert (CMP): Okay, Joe. I’ll tell you, I’m just trying to figure out where we are here.
…..
Joe Kerwin (CAPCOM): Roger, Jack. We see that. Of course, there’s a lot of cloudcover and you see it more clearly than we do, but it does look like the Earth, not the Moon.

Filed under travel because, well, you can’t travel much further than the moon and back. Right?

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , | 1 Comment