Archive for 'Web Dev/Tech'
Convert PHP Eclipse projects into PDT projects
Posted on May 20, 2008, under Web Dev/Tech.
Found a great quick tip on converting existing Eclipse projects into PDT projects from the globalways Developer Blog.
Essentially you just add a few elements to the .project XML file, and then you have a PDT project! I’d recommend running the “Clean Project” task afterwards just to make sure your project is refreshed.
Free Photoshop Book from SitePoint
Posted on May 14, 2008, under Web Dev/Tech.
SitePoint is giving away their 278 page book The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques for the next 30 days in PDF format. You do have to give an e-mail address, but then you can download the PDF directly.
The chapters are:
- Getting Started with Photoshop
- Basic Skills
- Creating Buttons
- Creating Backgrounds
- Working with Text
- Adjusting Images
- Manipulating Images
- Designing a Web Site
- Advanced Photoshop Techniques
New HTML and DOM Standards Compliance in IE8 Beta 1
Posted on April 11, 2008, under Web Dev/Tech.
The IEBlog lists new HTML and DOM standards compliance ehancements in IE8 Beta 1. If you mess with JavaScript or the DOM at all, this is good stuff to keep aware of. I’m a little removed from this level of web development as compared to my old role, but I know I would have been pretty excited overall with the enhancements that IE8 brings to the development arena. Hopefully it doesn’t take years to get adopted by IE users once released. 
Apple pushes insecure web browser on computers
Posted on March 31, 2008, under Current Events, Security, Web Dev/Tech.
Apple pushes Safari on Windows via iTunes updater (posted 3/21)
Apple has started offering Windows users its Safari 3.1 Web browser through the same online updater it utilizes for iTunes and the QuickTime video player.
Not just offering, but pushing. As in you must manually un-check the install or ignore it, or Safari will be installed the next time you run the updater to bring your iTunes up to the next release.
MacBook Air hacked in security contest (posted 3/27)
A team of security researchers has won $10,000 for hacking a MacBook Air in two minutes using an undisclosed Safari vulnerability.
Bad decision, Apple. I don’t want that accidentally pushed out on my machines, or any of the family members I help support.
If you want to prevent this from happening on your machine when you run the Apple updater, make sure the Safari option is checked, and then in the top menu, select “Tools > Ignore selected updates”.
Microsoft WorldWide Telescope
Posted on March 7, 2008, under Current Events, Web Dev/Tech.
FeedDemon and other NewsGator RSS clients now Free!
Posted on January 9, 2008, under Current Events, Web Dev/Tech.
NewsGator and Nick Bradbury (primary developer behind FeedDemon, TopStyle, HomeSite) announced today that their line of RSS clients, including the stellar FeedDemon, are now free! That is awesome!
I have been using FeedDemon as my primary RSS aggregator for over a year, and have loved it. Very quick, responsive, and a nice interface to read and manage feeds. I also subscribe to the (not free) NewsGator Online service to sync my feeds and clippings across 2 FeedDemon clients and the NewsGator Online client. Makes it very easy to stay on top of a lot of information.
Here are the available NewsGator RSS clients that are now free:
- FeedDemon - Windows client
- NetNewsWire - Mac OS X client
- NewsGator Inbox - Microsoft Outlook client
- NewsGator Go! - Mobile client
- NewsGator Online - Web client (has always been free)
They also posted some FAQs to address how this change fits their business model and isn’t NewsGator dumping their the RSS clients.
Update: Turns out they are making their synchronization service available for free as well - cool!
Outlook 2007 Gadgets for Windows Sidebar
Posted on November 30, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Always visible tasks and appointments. Sweet.
Fwd: Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore
Posted on November 14, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Thanks to Eric Kintz for posting an entry I’d been thinking about doing myself since last year:
Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore
My particular favorites:
- #3- Loyal readers coming back daily to check your posts is so Web 1.0
- #4 - Frequent posting is actually starting to have a negative impact on loyalty
My daily web reading is mainly facilitated through RSS feed subscriptions (point 3), and I have actually unsubscribed to several feeds who just posted too often (point 4). They were clogging up my RSS reader, and making me feel constantly behind. So out they went!
Generally speaking, I think the frequent-post mentality is old school, so please don’t do it. I might unsubscribe.
Framework Hype
Posted on October 3, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Tony Bibbs wrote a post entitled “Fed Up of Framework Hype“. He wrote it from the perspective of a PHP developer, but I think it applies to any language. A good, realistic view of how frameworks should be approached.
Compress your Photoshop Elements Catalog
Posted on October 1, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Photoshop Elements 5 introduced the embedded catalog where you can tag your photos based on pretty much anything - people, places, events, etc. I love the whole concept of being able to tag photos, and Adobe did it right in PE5. I’ve spent hours tagging the pictures we’ve taken, so the catalog is pretty valuable to me since it represents quite an investment of time. Since it’s something I wouldn’t want to lose, I include it in my off-site backups that I routinely run. One thing I noticed is that my catalog seemed very large. For around 6,000 photos, not all of them tagged yet, my catalog file was pushing over 90MB. That just felt… big! Turns out I was right. While trouble-shooting a problem with Photoshop Elements freezing in Vista, I discovered a little tip to shrink the catalog.
Before you launch Photoshop Elements in “View and Organize Photos” mode, press and hold the Control key. Then click the menu to launch the organizer view. You will see a prompt to compact and recover the catalog. Click OK.
You should see a progress bar, and then a confirmation that the process was completed.
Once I did this on my 90MB catalog file, it shrunk down to 20MB! Excellent! Now the backup routine is a little more zippy.
