Widget Development: I need to develop a specific countdown widget

Question

I have a client who needs somebody to develop a "countdown widget" for their main public website.

It has to do with graduation dates.

So, any customer not registered with the widget would see "Start your Graduation Countdown". Clicking on that would do something like provide them with an input form that includes name and graduation date.

Then, every time they visit the website (from that IP address at least) they see the countdown to their graduation date.

I'm not sure if this should be tied to a cookie, an IP address, or a user account... but it sounds like the client wants it to be tied to a cookie or IP address.

I have zero experience dealing with widgets, but I'm fluent in php, ASP, html, and css so hopefully it wouldn't be too bad.

How should I go about creating this widget? Specifically, I need to know about how long it would take me so I can provide an estimate. I have too much other stuff on my plate, otherwise I'd just make one of my own to learn how to do it.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Answer 1

Why not use a jquery plugin like this one http://keith-wood.name/countdown.html

Looks like you can style it in anyway you like. I'm not sure why your getting caught up in the terminology of 'widget'. Its really just a bit of self contained code you can drop in.

Right, so you can use the above for the client side code. Then all you have to do is remember the date for each user.

If this ties to a user account then this bit is easy. When the user is logged in, you can store the graduation day in a database somewhere (same as where you store the log in credentials) and just set the timer with that each time.

If not, then you are stuck with cookies. Just store the date a cookie and get that out each time to set the date in the countdown 'widget'

hope this helps