For the past month or so I purposely took my self off the GraphicAholic grid and I'm slowly getting able to re-connect. Just before heading to Boston's Joomla Day in March, I was diagnosed with both malignant & benign skin cancer. As treatments were scheduled and consultations held I continued my plans to attend Joomla Day Boston in large part so I could visit with my Mother and New England family to tell them the news 'in person'!

As my healing process is still in the early stages I am coming to grips with the fact that this will be a life long battle. I could easily resign to this fact and wallow in my own self-pity but that won't turn the tide of my fortunes nor would it be beneficial or healthy. It is... what it is. Understanding it is not totally curable yet treatable does provide a fair amount of solus to this aging creature of Earth.

As I begin to reaccumulate my life's twisted fate, I promise to all my GraphicAholic extension users that your support questions and issues will be addressed. Along with new extensions developed and the current library upgraded to the best of my ability and talents. With all this please accept my sincere apologies for any delays in meeting your needs.

In warm regards,
Ed Hathaway
GraphicAholic.com

Part #1

Developing or porting over a jQuery extension for Joomla is a lot of fun and can be quite easy. Mostly because the majority of the 'hard-work' is already done with the specific .js files or the jQuery Library itself. However, I run across a good number of jQuery extensions for Joomla that don't provide a basic 'Load jQuery' option within their programming. The very first lines of code I insert into all of my jQuery extensions is this option before developing any user features or unique code specific to the extension. Why... because it is the right thing to do! Remember, your not the only programmer writting jQuery extensions for Joomla. Providing this option says to me, this developer cares! Below you'll see some real basic code instructions on how to make your jQuery extension user and Joomla friendly.