Development Blog - B&Q Branded Site

So once again we reach the end of the week and today I have gone back to working on the branded sites. I have spent most of the day working with one of the other developers here at HelloTurtle to ensure that the code I wrote for the New Look site would integrate correctly with the template and skin that he had already been working on for B&Q, so that we could finish working on the B&Q demo by mid-afternoon.


Once we started integrating the card selector code, we decided it would be best to rebuild the content layout for the main page to better display the elements that we needed on the page. This was primarily a matter of rebuilding the table until we were happy with where a particular element (e.g. the drop down list of gift card amounts) was located on the page, and then ensuring that the other elements looked correct on the page in relation to it.

The next step was to clean up the Javascript calls and update the code we had into a more jQuery friendly format, since the majority of the pre-existing code was all written with the jQuery framework in mind, and while using the old Javascript framework generally wouldn't impact on the performance of the code, it is good practice to try to keep all your code using the same framework instead of a mix of several frameworks.

With that done, I then went on to drop in my modifications to the basket and pre-basket code that included the details of the card gift in the order table, and in the basket itself, while Darrel (the other developer) carried on through the card process, checking that all the objects were being displayed correctly and that everything functioned as we expected it to.

Given that the site was a demo, and thus the checkout process didn't actually have to work, I modified the button code in the basket to display a message box whenever the buttons were clicked, instead of the existing functions that the buttons executed. It was also suggested that I might as well attach the same function to the buttons in the header, since only the Home button actually did anything, and it was better to have a message box show up, than nothing happen and whoever was testing the demo at B&Q assume that that button was broken.

Next up was going through the photo uploader code and removing all references to HelloTurtle or replacing them with references to B&Q. it was also necessary to change the code that generated the header text of the card editor so that it include B&Q instead of HelloTurtle.

With all the references to HelloTurtle removed, all the code in place and (theoretically) working, and the skin also fully in place and functioning, we then spent a fair amount of time testing the system to root out any residual errors, and ensure that the system was not too complex for someone who had never seen it before, or too easy to break if someone clicked the wrong button.

With testing done (by Darrel, Alex and myself) and the consensus reached that everything appeared to be working, and seemed foolproof, we declared the demo complete, and let the directors know that it was all working correctly and it was ready to be shown.