Removing recent workspaces in Eclipse menu
Posted on March 29, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
When Eclipse 3.2 launches, it asks you which workspace you would like to work in. To help you remember the workspaces you’ve been in, Eclipse provides you a drop-down menu of workspaces you have recently been in.
If you ever find that you have a defunct workspace listed in the menu, as I did, here is how you can manually remove it.
- Find the following file:
(eclipse-home)\configuration\.settings\org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs - Open the file, and look for the line that starts with:
RECENT_WORKSPACES - The workspaces are separated by commas, so delete whichever workspace you no longer want in the drop-down menu.
- Save the file.
Enjoy a clean startup menu!
Firefox - Opening searches in a new tab
Posted on March 28, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Best Firefox tip I’ve seen in awhile.
GoodSearch: Powered by Yahoo! - Stat Tracking by Google
Posted on March 21, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
I came across GoodSearch today, which is a really cool concept. Select the charity of your choice, and for every search about $0.01 will be contributed to your chosen charity. I debated on a couple different organizations, but am currently choosing Tiny Stars.
The weird thing is, the GoodSearch search engine is powered by Yahoo, but I happened to notice they are embedding Google Analytics for site tracking. Weird! That reminds me of a kid in junior high who used to deck himself out in complete Nike outfits, and then wear Reebok shoes. This is exactly like that, but not.
Use Adblock Plus without Filterset.G Updator
Posted on March 12, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
In a previous post, I mentioned what I thought was an issue with the Adblock Plus extension for Mozilla Firefox. The extension’s author, Wladimir Palant, was kind enough to post a comment in response. He tracked down the issue to a faulty rule in the Filterset.G adblocking ruleset, and had submitted a bug report with the Filterset.G group.
However, he also pointed me to part of the Adblock Plus FAQ that says it’s not good to use the Adblock Filterset.G Updater extension with Adblock Plus, and that there are actually some conflicts. I had been using them together for quite some time and didn’t realize this! The recommendation is to pick a different, supported list to subscribe to inside of the Adblock Plus extension.
After reading Mr. Palant’s comment, I uninstalled the Filterset.G Updater extension, cleared the existing rules in Adblock Plus to start over, and subscribed to EasyList (USA) inside of the Adblock Plus options. Things look good!
QuickTime 7.1.5
QuickTime 7.1.5 has been released, which addresses about eight security vulnerabilities, so you might want to upgrade to the new version.
Ford Expedition Pulls Semi Out of Snow
Posted on March 3, 2007, under Entertainment.
Some of my co-workers caught footage of a Ford Expedition pulling a stuck semi out of the snow on an on-ramp across from our office building. Here’s the video:
Trying out Feedburner
I’m testing out using FeedBurner with this site’s RSS feeds. This is more just a trial to see if I want to use their service on another site’s feeds. If you have any issues with the RSS served up from FeedBurner, please post a comment and let me know – thanks!
Think before you embed hosted YUI
Posted on February 27, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Recently, Yahoo announced they would allow free hosting of their Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) JavaScript and CSS libraries to any site which used them. Yahoo promises gzip compression, smart caching, and the stability of the Yahoo network if you embed their javascript and css files. After seeing the announcement, I read several posts which declared this the best thing ever for JavaScript libraries, and that this meant Yahoo had “won” the library wars.
If you use YUI, or were thinking about it, this may all sound great! Just reference their hosted files in your site and you’re good to go! However, be careful. You are opening up your site to issues you may not have considered. For example:
Security
If you embed something hosted third party into your web site, you are giving that web site first-class access to your web site and all visitors to your web site. Yahoo can now access your scripts on your web pages. Yahoo can now access any cookies you set on visitors’ browsers.
Sometimes you actually do want to allow access like this to certain third parties. For instance, to track web statistics for your web site, you can embed WebTrends’ own script from their servers, and they in turn can then create a ‘first-class’ cookie to act as though it is coming from your domain. WebTrends does this so more users will allow the cookie since it appears to be only being used from your domain. This type of access is actually a feature in this case, and could be a selling point for you as you look for web analytics services.
However, in the case of something like a hosted, UI-based JavaScript library, you need to really think about whether the domain hosting the file needs that kind of access to your web site and your visitors.
Reliability
If Yahoo changes their API and it conflicts with your scripts, or introduces a bug into their hosted files, your web site is horked. If Yahoo changes their files, and those changes cause problems with your web site, those problems will be immediately live on your site. There is no ‘dev’ environment in this scenario to test changes. You have no control.
Privacy
This is related to the bullet on security, but Yahoo can now track all of your visitors for their purposes. They can track any information available through regular web traffic logs, since the files are being pulled from their web site. They potentially also have the ability to read and set cookies.
Yahoo has a paragraph at the bottom of the blog post making the announcement that says:
“Usage of this service will be recorded in Yahoo!’s Web traffic logs. We can assure you that our intent is simply to provide a convenience to the YUI developer community. If the record left in Yahoo!’s logs would compromise the privacy of your users, do not use this service.”
This sounds fairly low-key. However, on the embed page, there is this paragraph under the Terms of Use headline:
“Yahoo!’s hosting of YUI files is covered by all applicable sections of the Terms of Use governing Yahoo! APIs; your use of YUI files from Yahoo!’s servers constitutes an agreement to those terms. Access of YUI files from Yahoo!’s servers will be recorded in Yahoo!’s Web traffic logs. Please be sure that this usage is fully consistent with your own user privacy agreement before deploying YUI files from Yahoo! servers as part of your application.”
Make no mistake; Yahoo plans to garner usage information from your site’s visitors. They even say that you should make sure your site’s privacy statement agrees with theirs before serving their files. You may be alright with this, and it may not bother you or your site’s visitors. However, make sure you understand these privacy issues before embedding their library. Trust is an easy thing to lose, and hard to gain back.
Redundant
Why do you need Yahoo to host script libraries for you? If your server has downtime issues, it’s not going to matter if your visitors can download the YUI or not. If your site is down, it’s down. Considering some of the potential ‘costs’ of embedding from Yahoo’s servers, make sure you have good reason for doing it.
Declutter Your Desk
I really like this example of how to Declutter Your Desk. Practical and cheap.
Installing PHP 5 on Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6
Posted on February 13, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
If you have the need, here is a great guide on How to install PHP 5.x on Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6.
My experience with PHP has always been on Linux, but now I have PHP 5.2.1 running successfully on a Win2003 machine, talking to a remote SQL Server.
Update: Using the guide above, I could use PHP’s OBDC functions to connect, but I couldn’t use the mssql functions or libraries like MDB2. To get those to work, I needed to make sure I had a recent version of ntwdblib.dll in both my PHP installation directory and C:\Windows\System32 directory. After running an iisreset, I could connect using both mssql and MDB2.