One of my very favourite-est Firefox extensions, Firebug, has a security update
About an hour ago I received word of a 0-day security exploit that has been discovered and reported. I have just released a new Firebug (version 1.03) with a fix for this bug, and I recommend that everyone install it as soon as possible.
BambooInvoice has been released for almost a year now, and I have to say that its picked up much more momentum then I ever thought it would. The lowly “proof of concept” application has grown so much. I have no idea how many people use Bamboo to keep their invoicing straight, but I do know that those who choose to use it are a very diverse group. We seem to run the gamut from hard-core developer to freelance writers. I’ve been contacted by artists and programmers, designers and architects (well ok, only 1 architect). There are “Bamboo-ers” in at least 7 countries, and at least 5 languages. And if my “request for translators” post showed me anything, its that there is interest there for many more.
But now I’m up against a hard decision. I desperately want to enable users to use Bamboo in their native languages - and not force English on them. But I’ve learned a huge lesson here about software development. Namely, internationalizing cannot be an afterthought as it’s just too difficult.
To know more about why styles are disabled on this website visit the Annual CSS Naked Day website for more information.
I only wish this story was an April Fools joke.
I’m still in the process of moving everything over to my Macbook. I’m nearly there, but one of the lingering tasks has been getting my invoicing system (BambooInvoice*) up and running properly. I’ve been putting it off, mostly because I’ve got so many other “more important” things to do. What could be more important then collecting money you ask? Um… well… actually I got nothing - I guess its just a case of putting off my own stuff while I get other obligations out of the way.
Today, I had a chance to start migrating that stuff, and so at 4 o’clock I turned on the Dallas/Phoenix game (go Steve Nash!) and started tinkering. As it turns out, I wouldn’t finish until nearly 7 o’clock. As the author of Bamboo, I’ve installed it literally dozens of times on many, many different environments. I figured this would be a 30 second process, then another 30 seconds to migrate over my data and I’d be done. Unfortunately, things never go that smoothly do they? The opening page loaded up, but no stylesheets would render, no images were visible, and darn it… the links didn’t work. This is the first CodeIgniter site I’ve set up on my Macbook, so I figured it was probably just a little setting somewhere. No problem, let’s go down the list.
Video tutorials are a great way to learn, which is why I built my own video tutorial for CodeIgniter, and made it available online as a working demo application.
Well active CodeIgniter member, Elliot Haughin, has decided to raise the bar, and has started releasing a series of CodeIgniter video tutorials. The first one basic pages module had some audio trouble, but overall looked great. The second, Dynamic Routing, Models and Page Navigation has none of these problems, and the app is starting to come together nicely.
Another fantastic contribution, thanks Elliot! As in my tutorial, its great to see how other people do things, even if you might choose to differ away slightly.
Waaaaaay back in 1999 I started a small consulting business. I mostly did teaching of web related courses, html, dreamweaver and some javascript. Ah… good times. Man… back in 1999 I remember teaching the <font> tag and using tables for layout!
This posting is about the rebuild of the humble site, into its new version.
The paint isn’t dry yet, and there are still many more things to do, but its still much better then the bastardized site that was up there. I’d love to hear your thoughts, criticisms or insights into the new look.
This is one of those “a little bit of everything posts”. I’m re-writing my business site, building an ExpressionEngine tutorial and impressed by beautiful javascript, and I’m too sexy for my shirt (so sexy it hurts). Let’s tackle these in order shall we?
So I’m rebuilding my business website (no links right now, but its not exactly a secret URL). Through a series of unfortunate events (that would seem much funnier if they had happened to someone else) I lost every non-textual asset from my site 3 months ago. Every image, pdf, a few flash files… gone. Backups you say? Of course I had backups... and I can prove it. I’ll just get them out… I know they’re around here somewhere… maybe in this directory… no, well I know they must be… hmmm… Found them! And you doubted me? Oh wait, it seems this backup (and all my backups) have images from my site from 2 generations ago! Sigh… so now, only html pages, which means text and styles intact only.
So I took it as an excuse to rebuild, but then I got sidetracked when I was hired by Ellislab, and other work picked up, and I started getting really active bug squashing in CodeIgniter and well, you know how these things go. So I finally finished off the design, rebuilt the site using CI on my test server, and now all I have to do is drop in the content. The problem is of course, that the only content I have right now is probably 4 years old, and I’m not happy with what I wrote. So I’m off to re-write it now.
Let me just say that writing content for a website is hard work. No wonder getting clients to hand it over is always such a struggle. And writing for your own website is twice as hard. On top of all the normal “extra things to think about” when writing for the web (be brief, summarize, use headings and bullets) when you’re writing your own content you have to walk that fine line between “promote yourself” and “I’m a self aggrandizing attention whore”. Its a finer line then you’d think at first.
Digital Web Magazine has posted a great interview entitled Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site with Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain about his resdesigns of EllisLab, ExpressionEngine, CodeIgniter and EngineHosting (I mentioned these earlier). Sure, the title of the article isn’t very creative, but the designs sure were!
In it, Jesse walk through the full process discussing workspace, wire-framing, concepts, mockups, typography, icons and more.
Just a quick tip for those of you working away in Flash. You've probably noticed that the source fla files get really big, really fast. In fact, Here's a fun little exercise for you.
Your instincts would tell you that since you removed all that information, that the file should be smaller, but in fact, its the opposite...
I’ve re-started this post three times now trying to think of something witty to say. Bottom line, I’m typing this post on my sexy new Macbook. Yup, I’ve succumbed to the allure of the Mac. I’m not sure if its those clever but over-played “Hi I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” commercials that I always skip through for some other cosmic factor, but here I am.
I figured it would be a pretty easy transition. I frequently flip operating systems (Windows and LInux). Pretty much every app I rely on is either open source (Firefox, Tunderbird, Open Office, Apache, etc), or is available on the Mac (the Adobe suite). The ones that aren’t have nice Mac equivalents (I liked HeidiSQL on Windows. The Mac has CocoaSQL).