Other Programming | Re-Cycled Air

Sometimes starting a business can seem like a lot of work. Actually, it can, and will be a lot of work. However, there are some tools out there for free (or at a small cost) that can make managing your business a lot easier. After all, don’t you won’t to focus on your work, and not your bookkeeping? Here’s a list of tools that I’m currently using, or plan to use in the future once business starts to increase.

Toggl – Toggle is a free time tracking tool. You can create tasks, track time on tasks, and run reporting operations. It’s also handy because it includes a timer that can be accessed via the web or a desktop widget. That way you can keep track of how many hours you’re actually working on a project.
Billing Manager – Billing Manager is a tool that allows small companies the ability to invoice clients, set up payment plans, add customers to Christmas card lists, and a host of other options. The real winner for this service though is that it allows for online payments, which means you won’t need to handle cash directly. The software is by Intuit, so you know it can be trusted.
Google Docs / Email – You may or may not know this, buy you can set up your companies e-mail to be handled via Google. Not only can you get email set up via Google, but company chat, and shared documents via Google Docs.

Edit: This was created before I had discovered JQuery or MooTools. Please, for the love of God, use those instead.

You’re working on your first sweet ajax form implementation. You’ve got the form communicating asynchronously with the server and sending status updates between to the two. However, when you want to let users know that the form is processing, the processing image just kind of “pops” in there. What you need is an easy “fade in implementation”.

The HTML

<div id=”myimage”>
<img src=”myimage.gif” />
</div>

The CSS

#myimage {
opacity: 0;
}

The Javascript

function fadeIn(id, level) {
if(document.getElementById) {
object = document.getElementById(id);
if(level <= 100) {
setOpacity(object, level);
level += 10;
window.setTimeout(“fadeIn(‘”+id+”‘,”+level”)”, 100);
}
}
}

function setOpacity(object, level) {
level = (level == 100)?99.999:level;
object.style.filter = “alpha(opacity:”+level+”)”;
object.style.KHTMLOpacity = level/100;
object.style.MozOpacity = level/100;
object.style.opacity = level/100;
}

How To Use It
Using this code is pretty easy. Make sure that the CSS & Javascript are included in your document correctly, then do the following.

fadeIn(“myimage”,0);

If you have any questions, leave a comment and I’d be glad to help.