Handling huge amount of markers on Google Maps with clusters

If you used Google Maps in your projects as a developer,  probably you faced with a problem to display huge amount of markers on the map. Problem seems more User Interface related, than technical. On small zoom it does not look good. I solved it using a very nice marker clustering library available from Google.

What is jQuery .live() event handler

If you did not face with .live() handler before, this post is probably for you!  It makes event handling code much cleaner and easier to use on heavily dynamic pages.

Using jQuery events for triggering complex UI updates

Nowadays jQuery become a very standard library used in in 90% of all projects. Simplicity of DOM manipulation with cross browser capability attracts all developers, from newbies to profs.

While developing AJAX UI with many forms nested in each other I faced a problem of not well written code, what was a real pain to modify.

I am going to tell how jQuery events saved my ass.

Position custom and fancy overlay dialog on Google Maps V3

Nowadays many sites uses embedded map from Google for purposes like showing object location, drive-in way or more complex stuff. Recent Google Maps Version3 (V3) API becomes very powerful, but remained very clear and easy to use.

While developing site for real estate company I faced with necessity to display fancy, complex overlays on top of the map when user clicks on the marker.

There are some standard ways of showing so called info-windows. The problem is that it is not possible put complex formatting there or catch mouse clicks events.

To solve it I have to to dig into API internals and recent version V3 has some surprises here.

Easy way to change FTP directory permissions with LFTP chmod

Sometimes there is a necessity to change directory permissions on remote FTP host. It is okay if this is needed for 1-2 folders, but what if there are hundreds of them? In my case it was even worse, it was tree of folders, with sub- and  sub-sub-folders inside, kind of image cache!

How to run PHP cron tasks without cron available

In most cases hosting panels has CRON jobs available, so using cron is not an issue. Just sometimes you do not want to bother with it because of many reasons like no cpanel password, makes your script installation process complicated, or even cron is simply not available at all.

In this case I found interesting technique how to overcome this.

Find the latitude and longitude of address using Geocoding API example

In my recent project I faced the task of doing translation of property address in form we usually use it into global coordinates, that can be plotted on the map. Using Google API services this task is quite easy. You can check example and source code below

How to merge/mix/combine RSS feeds

One problem I faced on my multi-language blog setup - it has different feeds for each language. Multi-language plugin WPML which I use does not have feature to mix feeds into one. I like my subscribers to see one common feed which is merged for all languages and leave possibility to subscribe to one language also. I setup simple solution using pure PHP.

Deploying a web application via FTP

When your brand new application looks shinny, it is time to put it on the Internet, process called deployment. Usually this involves several steps, like uploading application files, creating remote database, setting up configuration, etc.. Once it is setup and running you reazlise that your app is missing features X, Y and Z and deployment starts over and over again, this often leads to strange bugs.

I use simple lftp command line tool to automate project deployment via FTP and eliminate any possible deployment errors.

OpenID login for Yahoo and Google accounts

I've updated my Openid sample code for logging in  with Yahoo and normal Google accounts.