Wiley Author Widget

One of the things that went up in last weekend's build was a new tool that generates widgets like this for authors to use. With it, they could simply enter an ISBN and the little app will generate the code for use on their personal sites and blogs.

It has a clean neutral look so it will fit in well with any page design. It was coded to have a flexible vertical dimension. So it accommodates the wide variety of aspect ratios across all brands and series. Clicking any part of the widget will take user to Wiley.com's multi-retailer page where they'll have several options to buy the advertised book.

Mobile Detection for Android Tablets

Any website that had device detection + redirection created over a year ago will now run into the issue of sending Android tablet users to the mobile version. Detection scripts usually look at the user-agent for the device type, which isn't a problem for Apple because they distinguish "iPhone" from "iPad" for iOS. Android only has a device type of "Android" since they had all phones back then. Even the early tablets were really just phones with larger screens as they shared the same exact OS (2.x) as their smaller siblings. Over the past year Android evolved into a dual device operating system and several manufacturers released popular tablet models. Their device type was still "Android" in the user-agent for everything rather than moving to "Android Phone" and "Android Tablet." Fortunately, they started distinguishing tablet from phone in 3.1. The browser portion of the string has "Safari" for tablets and "Mobile Safari" for phones. So an Android device should get sent to the mobile site if "Android" + "Mobile" are both found in the full string. "Mobile" can't be used as a catch-all term because that word in Apple lingo refers to phones and tablets. Both the iPhone and iPad use "Mobile" in their user-agent strings.

Of course, all of this may change soon as pixel density continues to increase in newer screens and manufacturers release devices that fill in all sizes between 4" phones and 10" tablets!

Crocus Bed SOLD

AARP Bookstore

Here's the address of the new AARP Bookstore by Wiley:

bookstore.aarp.org

So far, we have travel, health, cooking, money and technology e-books available as well as FREE content.

Etsy Feed Update

Previously, Kimengyeo.com was taking a feed for products the artist was selling in her Online Etsy store, SketchyCards. All items used to have the same template and introductory paragraph, so I had ColdFusion strip it out so it wouldn't look repetitive on the page that was parsing the RSS. Just recently, Kim added some new products that no longer followed the template. So the truncation and processing has been removed. Check out new products for sale on SketchyCards by Kim Eng Yeo.

Additionally, the homepage has also been updated with 2012 events.

Wiley Web Updates

We had another Saturday morning deployment today, though not as early as the usual 6am. Here are some of the highlights:

WIREs: Another new journal went up for WIREs... Developmental biology is concerned with the fundamental question of how a single cell, the fertilized egg, ultimately produces a complex, fully patterned adult organism. Click here to visit WIREs.

AARP Bookstore: In partnership with AARP, we'll be selling a bunch of our books with special branding through this co-branded bookstore. The site components went up with this build, but the URL has not yet been publicized. I'll provide it in a future post once it goes public.

All Sites: All sites in our system will now have links to buy books from Foyles, MPH, Kinokuniya, Sony and WH Smith if they are detected as being available.

WIREs Membrane Transport and Signaling

• An important new forum to promote cross-disciplinary discussion on transport and signaling aspects in membrane biology for researchers in science and medicine


• An authoritative, encyclopedic resource addressing key topics from perspectives of biophysics, cell biology, neuroscience, physiology and medicine


• Content is fully citable, qualifying for abstracting, indexing, and ISI ranking

Click here to visit this new journal

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Blogger Modal Windows

Blogger has updated their templates so that clicking on a photo with their default embed code opens up the larger version in a modal window now. The old method just opened up the image in a new blank page with no interface. Now the experience is streamlined and eliminates the need to use the back button. Click on the photo in the post below to check it out. Page updates without doing any work are the best!

Wiley's Scientific, Technical, and Medical Databases

The Wiley's Scientific, Technical, and Medical Databases mini-site was updated last week. It was another quick design refresh to modernize the look and make things easier to navigate for the user.

Before


After


Visit Wiley's Scientific, Technical, and Medical Databases