Archive for 'Web Dev/Tech'
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.
Photoshop Elements 5.0.2 Freezes in Windows Vista
Posted on October 1, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
I recently went to open Photoshop Elements 5.0.2 on my Vista machine, and this time it just hung. The status said “Opening Catalog”, but Photoshop wouldn’t respond. I did a little searching, and came across a known issue on Adobe’s web site. Apparently the Adobe Active File Monitor service can cause Photoshop Elements not to open on Vista. The fix is to disable the service. Once I disabled it through the Services administration console, PE opened right up. With PE 6 now released, I don’t expect Adobe to spend much time fixing this, but I didn’t really rely on that service either, so no big loss. Just a tip for anyone who might run into the same problem.
Office 2007 Ultimate only $60 for students
Posted on September 13, 2007, under Current Events, Web Dev/Tech.
Microsoft is having what they call “The Ultimate Steal” on Office 2007 Ultimate. According to the press release, if you are a student who is actively enrolled at an educational institution, and have a valid e-mail address from the institution, you can purchase Office 2007 Ultimate for essentially $60! Sweet deal.
I’ve been running Office 2007 Professional at home for awhile (got it free at a Microsoft event), and really like it a lot. The only thing I really wish I had was OneNote 2007, as that doesn’t come with the Pro version, but it is part of the Ultimate edition. I use OneNote 2003 all the time at work. It’s great for dumping down thoughts or taking notes. Sort of your own personal wiki, but better - in my opinion.
All in all, super deal. Here’s what’s included in Office 2007 Ultimate:
- Access 2007
- Accounting Express 2007
- Excel 2007
- InfoPath 2007
- Groove 2007
- OneNote 2007
- Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager
- PowerPoint 2007
- Publisher 2007
- Word 2007
Thanks to Method ~ of ~ failed for the tip.
Silverlight on Linux
Posted on September 5, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Microsoft Silverlight now runs on Linux via the Mono-based implementation called Moonlight.
Send to Ma.gnolia from FeedDemon
Posted on August 22, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
To keep track of my favorite sites, I’ve been using the Ma.gnolia social-bookmarking service for quite awhile. I never got into de.licio.us, but Ma.gnolia has been working well for me. Overall the whole concept works great, they just need to make some tweaks to their search engine to make it a little speedier (*hint*hint* guys).
To keep up on the latest news and blog posts, I had been using the free Newsgator Online reader, but got enough daily value both professionally and personally that I decided to put down the money and buy the integrated FeedDemon client. I have not regretted it one bit. FeedDemon is awesome.
Yesterday, I found a tip to bring them both a little bit closer together. Sean Brady posted both on his blog, and in the Ma.gnolia wiki, a way to add Ma.gnolia in the SendTo action menu for feed posts by creating a tiny XML file in the FeedDemon install directory. Essentially, FeedDemon makes it really easy to add other “SendTo” action items. So, if you don’t use Ma.gnolia, you could tweak the XML file for your own favorite online service.
Thanks Sean!
Thunderbird Stuck in Endless Upgrade
Posted on July 25, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
The last couple of times I’ve updated Mozilla Thunderbird through the automated update, the upgrade process would get stuck somehow. I would go to open Thunderbird, and an error would popup that said:
“One or more files could not be updated. Please make sure all other applications are closed and that you have permission to modify files, and the restart Thunderbird to try again”
I would click ok, it would try to update, fail, and come back with the error message, going into an endless loop. In the past, I did a full uninstall and reinstall to get rid of the error message. This time that didn’t work. I did a little research, and found that a couple files in a particular directory weren’t getting updated, causing Thunderbird to keep thinking it needed to upgrade.
To fix the issue, without having to do a reinstall, delete everything inside this directory:
C:/Documents and Settings/<username>/Local Settings/Application Data/Thunderbird/Mozilla Thunderbird/
End of loop.
Update: Be sure to check the comments for alternative solutions.
Update II: As many of the comments point out, the primary culprit of this issue may actually be Logitech with their QuickCam software. I have a Logitech webcam as well, so that fits my scenario. I’ve had a couple run-ins with Logitech now that make me wonder if they are headed down the same path as Creative.
Update III: marcelotroubledwiththunderbird notes he had the upgrade loop issues and did not have QuickCam installed.
YSlow - Web site performance extension for Firefox
Posted on July 25, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Yahoo! has made publically available their internal web site performance testing tool, YSlow. It’s pretty slick. YSlow will show you problem areas, and include information on how to fix them by linking to different parts of their “Thirteen Simple Rules for Speeding Up Your Web Site” document.
Here is YSlow’s summary feature list:
- Performance report card
- HTTP/HTML summary
- List of components in the page
- Tools including JSLint
Yahoo’s thirteen rules for speeding up your site are:
- Make Fewer HTTP Requests
- Use a Content Delivery Network
- Add an Expires Header
- Gzip Components
- Put CSS at the Top
- Move Scripts to the Bottom
- Avoid CSS Expressions
- Make JavaScript and CSS External
- Reduce DNS Lookups
- Minify JavaScript
- Avoid Redirects
- Remove Duplicate Scripts
- Configure ETags
YSlow depends on the Firebug extension being installed, but Firebug is such a great web dev tool you should have it installed already. 
New Trick to get Browsers to Expose Passwords
Posted on July 25, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
CyberNet News wrote a post titled “Firefox Password Manager Exposes Passwords - Most Secure Browser?” which talks about a new phishing technique.
Essentially, if you use a password manager like the one in FireFox, which auto-fills the username and password fields in a form, you are susceptible to attack. Once the form is auto-populated, a web site can use JavaScript to grab the credentials out of the form. If you read the details, you understand that the attack can only happen on the same domain, but think about how many web sites that attack could happen on - Blogger (Google account info), MySpace, etc. The article gives three possible solutions, including not using the password manager and turning off JavaScript.
The third option was to use a browser extension called Secure Login. The Secure Login extension acts as hooks into Firefox’s Password Manager. All the credentials are still handled by Firefox, but Secure Login will prevent usernames/passwords from being auto-populated in a form. It will give you visual cues that it can fill in the form, and then you must initiate the populating of the fields. That gives you a stop-gap in case you don’t want the form to be auto-populated right away. I’ve used it for a day, and the extension works pretty well.
User comments in the article said Opera has had this feature built in for awhile, and suggested using Opera instead. While its great to see Opera was ahead of the game, I personally haven’t been able to get comfortable enough with Opera yet to consider a switch. It just doesn’t feel natural to me for some reason when I’m surfing.
If you happen to be like me, and use Firefox and its password manager, take a look a the Secure Login extension to help prevent this new phishing technique.