October 29th, 2008
In no particular order, here are some things that I’ve found interesting, useful, or funny. Mostly useful.
Fluid
A Site Specific Browser (SSB) that you can use to run web applications in. I use it for BambooInvoice, ExpressionEngine and Campfire. It rocks my socks. Find it at http://fluidapp.com/.
Growl Notifications with messages for campfire and fluid
I tried using Pyro as a client for Campfire, but it didn’t go so well. It looks like promising software, but for now… wasn’t working. Enter my favourite app from above, Fluid handles it like a champ, but one thing that was bugging me was the lack of Growl notifications (if you aren’t using Growl yet and are on a Mac, go install it right now). First result in Google was Growl Notifications with messages for campfire and fluid. :: sniff ::... its like they read my mind.
Also useful is the Fluid Icons Flickr group. I’ve got to get one for BambooInvoice into there…
DataMapper
DataMapper is an Object Relational Mapper written in PHP for CodeIgniter. It is designed to map your Database tables into easy to work with objects, fully aware of the relationships between each other. Well documented and with a loyal following, it looks like Simon Stenhouse has a real winner on his hands. I’m hoping to find time to really sift through the code but so far haven’t had the chance.
[edit: And D’oh! I was a fool for not also mentioning IgnitedRecord at the same time! Thanks for the comment m4rw3r.]
Sequel Pro
Sequel Pro is a desktop program for managing your MySQL databases. It runs beautifully, and I think I’ve mentioned it before, but was asked again recently about it. The only catch I found is that with Mamp I needed to set the “socket” to “/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock” when connecting.
ExpressionEngine Plugin: SS Friendly 404
The SS Friendly 404 plugin suggests relevant pages to users on your 404 page. It is used in your 404 template and returns suggested weblog entries based on the final segment of the 404 URL. Well documented and cleanly implemented. Well done!
jQuery Pumpkin
Found in the jQuery blog, the jQuery pumpkin had me smiling for 30 minutes.
Continue reading “Fluid, Campfire, DataMapper and useful links”. Posted in
Browsers, CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Mac with 11 comments 
July 04th, 2008
Or maybe… just maybe… the Firefox team has been plotting all along, and have actually taken over my site. Oh well, I can think of many worse things!
If you’re on Firefox 3, then type about:robots into your location bar.
Brilliant, funny, witty. Robots. What’s not to love? This is the second time Firefox 3 has impressed me with their wit. I also wrote about Beta software? Firefox “gets it” last year.
Continue reading “My robots have taken over Firefox 3”. Posted in
Browsers with 4 comments
May 06th, 2008
Since I gave some dap to IE for getting a developer toolkit embedded into Internet Explorer 8, I feel like I should also give kudos to Opera for releasing the top-secret and closely guarded Dragonfly. Opera annoyed the hell out of me at SxSW when they devoted an entire booth to promoting “Dragonfly”, but refused to tell me anything about it.
I’ve only had a quick look of it, but it does look like a pretty slick tool. The main problem I see for them here, is that they are fourth in the market (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera) and fourth to get a developer toolkit. Its hard to work from a position of weakness like that. I hope they prove me wrong, since competition is always good for what we do, and I have to say, I’ve always had a soft spot for Opera.
If you have the chance to play, please leave comments with what you think of it! How does it compare to Firebug? How does it compare to IE?
Continue reading “Opera DragonFly released”. Posted in
Browsers with 5 comments
March 06th, 2008
Yes the web is awash with news of Internet Explorer 8. We’re like lemmings that way, it seems like every blog I read (116 says Google Reader) has some news of IE 8. Given the mad dash to the finish line for South by Southwest, I haven’t bothered to download or play yet, but I guess I’ll have to.
For me, the big news is that Internet Explorer 8 will have Firebug. Well, not technically firebug, but pretty much an exact clone. If you visit Microsoft Developer Tools and download their PDF, you’ll see that IE 8 will ship with a near exact clone of Firebug - which is great news if you’re trying to really push IE. I’m also happy that its being produced by the IE team, and not by a third party developer. The reason I’m happy is not because a third party dev couldn’t do an outstanding job (again, hat tip to Firebug), but because so much of the internals of IE is undocumented and secret, that I think the only people who could successfully implement this is the IE team.
If you look carefully, they actually got some really, really nice things in IE 8. For example, window.location.hash. This allows you to use javascript to redirect the user, but the page gets added to the cache and history. This allows the back button to work normally with “Ajax-ed” paged. Nice! There’s also a series of DOM-compliance bugs in there, and while it’ll mean little to me as jQuery shields me from the day to day trivia of that, it’ll mean a huge deal to jQuery itself (and other javascript libraries) and I bet we can expect a nice bump in speed due to native support for things that normally needed to be reconstructed (I’m looking at you CSS selectors and getAttribute/setAttribute).
The good folks over at Digital Web Magazine have more news in IE8 Beta 1 released!, including links to Jonathan Snook‘s smoketests. I’d like to extend my gratitude to the IE development team for its frank and open communication, particularly via the IE blog. While I’ve not dealt with them directly, all accounts are that they’re listening to the geeks.
Continue reading “Internet Explorer 8 will have Firebug”. Posted in
Browsers with 2 comments
December 28th, 2007
Well, it seems official that Netscape is dead. I wish it meant more to me to read that, but Netscape lost relevance so very long ago. We all owe a great deal of gratitude to it however, for: pushing browser boundaries; making the “internet” relevant for a large number of people; keeping Microsoft honest; giving us Firefox.
I’ll always thinking back fondly of you Netscape, but I’ll try to remember you as you were… not not who you became.
Continue reading “Goodbye Netscape, we hardly knew ye”. Posted in
Browsers with 5 comments
September 17th, 2007
Leslie Camacho and Derek Jones deliver what might well be the funniest thing I’ve seen in months. A funeral for Internet Explorer 6.
I personally believe that internet ISP users are unable to do so… um… because some people out there in our internet don’t have browsers… and ah… I believe our education such as Firefox… for the children
Classic!
Go watch it now.
Continue reading “I personally believe, like, such as, and… Internet Explorer 6 is dead!”. Posted in
Browsers, ExpressionEngine with 1 comment
June 11th, 2007
Beta and bleeding-edge software has become something of a joke in “web 2.0”. I think Paul summed it up nicely when he said he loved you. But “beta” does serve a really important role - to allow interested users to advance test software that they love. In a world where so few organizations “get it”, I was grateful to see that Mozilla understands.
First sign of brilliance - the “beta” or test version of Firefox 3 is called “Minefield”. And the logo is equally great.
Nothing says “things just might go wrong, use at your own caution” like an image of the world represented like one of those exploding balls from the old Looneytunes cartoons.
Continue reading “Beta software? Firefox “gets it””. Posted in
Browsers, Noteworthy with no comments
June 08th, 2007
Courtesy of lifehacker comes this brilliant Firefox tip.
If you’ve ever tried copying and pasting a multi-line address into Google Maps just to realize that an input box will only take one line at a time—meaning that you have to copy and paste each line individually—there’s a simple Firefox tweak that will solve this problem:
Type “about:config” in the location bar. In the “Filter” field type “singleline.”
You can set the value to 2 for editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines, which will allow pasting of multiple lines to input boxes.
Continue reading “Firefox line paste trick”. Posted in
Browsers, Quick Links with 2 comments
April 27th, 2007
Ever been working along and say to yourself “whoa, where’d the time go”? Then you look back and can’t believe how much you’ve got done? Sometimes it just magically happens to be sure, but I think the tools I’m using must play a big role in it (and turning off my email and cell). These are the tools I find myself using in those spontaneous moments.
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Firefox and plugins, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Coda and the interweb.
Notice how the operating system is not there? I haven’t found any noticeable difference between operating systems, as long as my macbook is plugged into a nice big monitor. I do notice a decline as my screenspace goes down. That said, there is something psychological going on there, since I want to use the Mac more then I ever wanted to use a pc. I must be influenced by all those ipod and “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials. I’m such a slave to media…
I’ve always liked Dreamweaver (yes its expensive, but feature for feature as good as any editor I’ve ever seen including Textmate), but I absolutely hate it on my Mac - and truthfully, its only 1 thing… I hate all those dopey floating panels. I’ve been spending a bit of time with Coda. Yeah there’s a lot of hype, but it isn’t undeserved. I like the integrated environment, I have absolutely no need for a CSS editor (its nice that its included, but I don’t use it anyhow), and I find the terminal completely adequate. I might just buy it since the trial runs out in a few days.
CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine have completely revolutionized the way I build sites in the last year. Fireworks has been my “go to” image editor for a long time now. Its combination of vector and bitmap tools have been ideal for me, although a switch to Illustrator might happen if I find the right project.
What tools do you find yourself using when the magic moment strikes?
Continue reading “Productivity Tools”. Posted in
Browsers, CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Mac with 10 comments
April 11th, 2007
Ugh... that just might be the worst title I've ever written...
For a "ultra-top secret"™ web application I've been working on, I need to take all focus away from the browser screen, and allow/force the user to interact with a window before being able to continue. Commonly, these are called modal windows, and gained some credibility for having practical uses with Lokesh Dhakar's wonderful Lightbox script (incidently, I use a variation of it on this script on DerekAllard.com).
There are many variations of modal windows running around, but I wanted a simple, unanimated "overlay" would would require a user's interaction, so I set about to build my own. The first thing I needed, was an alpha transparent div to sit on top of the whole screen. I stole was inspired by Matthew Pennel's great article on Easy Cross Browser Transparency, and began building from there. The ultimate alpha transparent solution I chose was a pure CSS base.
Continue reading “Inspired by Lightbox: Anatomy of a Modal Window”. Posted in
Browsers, How-To, Javascript with 5 comments
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