Monthly Archive for May, 2008

My Top Firefox Extensions

Published on May 30, 2008 in Firefox. 0 Comments

A lot of people ask me “What are your favorite Firefox extensions?” Ok. Actually, they don’t. But if they did, here is what I would say:

Firebug
Firebug is arguably the best extension out for web developers. I use it mainly for inspecting the HTML of pages, viewing CSS styles that are applied to HTML elements, and editing CSS styles and HTML text in real-time. It’s also really helpful for debugging JavaScript, viewing Ajax calls, and inspecting a web page’s DOM.

Web Developer
If Firebug is the not best extension out for web developers, then the Web Developer extension is the best. It has so many useful tools: disable styles, view cookies and session information, the ruler, and so on.

Colorzilla
I have this extension mainly because it allows me to find out colors on a web page without opening Photoshop. Though, I wish it would work with embedded Flash files.

FireFTP
I love the convenience of having an fully-functional FTP client in your browser.

Live HTTP Headers & Tamper Data
Pretty self explanatory. View and modify the HTTP headers of your web pages. Great tool.

del.icio.us Bookmarks
This is a must-have extension for anyone who uses del.icio.us. View your bookmarks in your sidebar. Bookmark a page directly to del.icio.us. Hide your browser’s bookmarks menu. It’s a great complement to del.icio.us.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
I started using Foxmarks before I opened my del.icio.us account. Eventhough I removed all my bookmarks saved in my browser since, I still use it to keep my bookmarks toolbar synced up.

Mouse Gestures
I probably use mouse gestures too much. It’s now a habit for me to use a mouse gesture in any browser I work in, only to find out it doesn’t work. Mouse gestures just make things easier.

Download Statusbar
Another convenience extension. All current downloads in the statusbar. Pretty simple.

PDF Download
Once again, another convenience extension, mainly because for a while, I only had the trial version of Adobe CS3, and it wouldn’t let me open PDFs. Plus, a PDF auto-opening in your browser is just annoying.

CakePHP and WAMP: Configuring CakePHP to Handle Multiple Apps Around One Core Cake Library

Published on May 28, 2008 in CakePHP. 0 Comments

I recently decided to start developing some applications based on the CakePHP MVC framework on my local machine using WAMP. The CakePHP default installation allows you to create one application for one set of core Cake library files. I wanted to separate my application files from the core Cake library files, so if there are any library updates, I wouldn’t need to mess with the application files. After some quick research, I found that this was pretty easy.

First, the CakePHP documentation provides instructions on an advanced installation of the framework. For my installation within my WAMP stack, I refered to this post over at the CakePHP Google Groups site.

The main file to modify is the ‘[app root]/webroot/index.php’ file. Here is a snippet of how one of my apps is configured:

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if (!defined('ROOT')) {
    define('ROOT', 'C:'.DS.'wamp'.DS.'www'.DS.'concepts');
}
if (!defined('APP_DIR')) {
    define('APP_DIR', 'cake_app1');
}
if (!defined('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH')) {
    define('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH', 'C:'.DS.'wamp'.DS.'www'.DS.'concepts'.DS.'cake_core');
}

Switching del.icio.us Account Names

Published on May 28, 2008 in Applications. 0 Comments

A couple of days ago I realized that I have inconsistency between all my social networking website account names (the OCD kicked in). I decided to switch all my ‘cjsharp1′ accounts over to a ‘cjsharp’ account name (pitiful, huh). Funny thing is that between all the social networks sites I am involved in, the only one I wanted to switch was my del.icio.us account, which is also the most complicated to switch.

Here is what you have to do to switch del.icio.us accounts. Unfortunately, this will not transfer your network along with it, so if you have a large network, be prepared to handle that accordingly. This also will not transfer your profile settings or your tag bundles.

  1. Create your new account through del.icio.us.
  2. Log into your old account. Export your old account’s bookmarks (Settings > Bookmarks > Export/Backup). Be sure to include the tags and notes. It will export it to an HTML file.
  3. Log out of your old account, then log into your new account.
  4. Import the HTML file into your new account (Settings > Bookmarks > Import/Upload). By default, the ‘imported’ tag will be appended to each bookmark. If you don’t want this tag appended, just remove it. (Or you can leave this as it is and delete the tag later). It may take some time for the bookmarks to import. It took about 5-10 minutes for my bookmarks to import. It all depends on the incoming traffic to del.icio.us and the number of bookmarks you are importing.
  5. When the import is complete, view your new account’s bookmarks. You will see that all of the imported bookmarks are not shared by default. To make things more complicated, del.icio.us does not offer a ‘share all’ function, due to a couple reason listed in their FAQ. To work around this, I found this option which involves pasting some JavaScript in the address bar of your browser. The quickest way to do this is to view your del.icio.us page showing as many bookmarks at one time (100), paste the JavaScript in the address bar, confirm how many bookmarks will be shared (via a JavaScript pop-up), sit back and relax. A delay is set between the requests in order to prevent del.icio.us from blocking your requests. I set my delay to 4 seconds (delay=4000) with no problems.
  6. Finally, once all of your bookmarks are imported and shared, you’ll want to delete your old account. Log out of your new account and log back into your old account, and delete your account (Settings > Account > Delete Account).

JS table_to_array and Scroller Lightbox

Published on May 28, 2008 in JavaScript and Projects. 0 Comments

I just uploaded the two previous JavaScript-related projects: JS table_to_array and Scroller Lightbox. Nothing has changed from the previous site.

JS table_to_array
A script that takes a well-formed table and converts the data into a multi-dimensional array. The script will maintain all HTML tags within the table’s <td> tags.

Scroller Lightbox
A quick mashup of Thumbnail Scroller and Lightbox JS v2.03.
Update: It appears this is no longer working in some IE browsers. Since this is a mashup of two scripts, both of which are not created by me, I cannot provide support for any cross-browser issues.

Time for Something New

Published on May 24, 2008 in News. 0 Comments

Ya. So… every once in a while, I get tired of my old [micro] blogging tool, and decide to switch to another one. Well… that just happened. Gelato CMS was fun for a little while, but it wore off quickly. So I’m back to WordPress.

Where is the rest of the stuff?
It’s all still around. Ratings Tools is going to get overhauled so it is easier to maintain. I might also look into storing data, but we’ll see what comes of that. The various JS Hacks are also still available, and will be posted sometime in the future.

In the meantime, check out my del.icio.us page.