I use Adium for Chatting on my Mac. It is a great little App that allows you to connected with multiple Account types like MSN, Yahoo, Google Chat ( or gmail ), MySpace, Facebook and more… all in the one cool customisable messenger.
Today I looked at writing my own Message Theme as a quick learning exercise.
I have released the theme for free and you can download both Adium and any themes at Adium Extras.
I noticed when installing the SPAW Editow recently that on the Design tab in SPAW, the HTML was showing as converted HTML Symbols like < and > rather than < and >.
After a bit of playing, i found this hidden piece of information on the SPAW FAQ’s.
You should use getHtml() method instead of show(). It returns the code which you can store into variable and use whenever you need it.
SPAW getHTML() Rather than show()
When I looked at Ryan Stemkoski’s technology blog about 11.26 javascript frameworks I though oh yeah, I have used a couple of those, and there was a couple there that I havn’t.
But today I came across this site, Zazzle.com, this site uses some AMAZING javascript ideas, you can create your own mouse pad and when you hover over portfolio or gallery images, there is some great interactivity.
I think for fun I will be trying to reproduce some of these effects, it will be a fun task as I am not going to look at their source code, nor see what libraries that they are using, if any.
I will post some examples as soon as I have even a semi bug free version working, in the mean time, check out the site, and give me some ideas on what to try re-creating first.
This morning, much like every morning, I wake, prepare for the day, walk my partner to work, get home and read through my emails and RSS subscriptions before I start my working day.
This morning I came across a post from Ryan Stemkoski about How IE 6 is Dead and a comment from that post how Ryan gets 23% and Thomas J Brown gets ~2% of IE 6 visitors. I checked out my statistics and I get 37.7% of my visitors using IE 6.
Top 6 Browsers to visit my Blog.
I can’t believe that IE 6 is kicking around in such high percentages, and worse still is some IE 5 visitors! On a recent website we blocked all support for IE 6 and below, it directed to a splash page with links to download the decent major players. Generally I just let the visitor browse the site as is.
You have an Old Browser - Upgrade
For the first time I loading this blog with this new theme in IE 6 and it does display well, although there is nothing fancy with the design.
http://sheldon.lendrum.co.nz In IE 6
Why do so many people use these old browsers? Because of lazy IT departments, yes, Because of illegitimate copies of Windows that stop windows updater, I bet. But surely with Safari and Firefox both being free?
Do it for us Developers and upgrade ! Please!
I have released an updated version at http://sheldon.lendrum.co.nz/codeigniter-spaw-editor-tabs_411/10/. This new version allows CodeIgniter and SPAW TABS !
Recently I have been working on a large project for a National Sporting team, It has been a process and it is almost finished.
As part of this system, we have developed an extended custom content management system.
Finding a WYSIWYG Editor for these types of sites is a tricky thing. Your editor of choice needs to be complex enough to let the user Manage their site, but not too hard that they can’t and don’t manage it, yet not give them so many options that your beautiful design gets listed on some of the ‘worst’ design sites due to ‘Crazy Customisation’, bright, huge highlighted words, 5mb images on every page and so on… like a ‘Client goes Crazy’ Video.
WordPress uses TinyMCE editor from MoxieCode, which is what we first implemented, but the design agency requested that they can add inline images in to the content. ( Bad thoughts crept in to my mind of a horror site coming out ) but I decided this would be a nesscarry change.
I went back to an old faithful that Ryan & I have used for years on other CMS’s.
The issue with this is it uses it’s own class, and interferes with CodeIgniter, the PHP FRamework that we are developing this site in.
After some googling, I found a solution on the CodeIgniter Wiki. After installing it, I first found I needed some small customizations, and that it wasn’t a new version, and didn’t have Safari support, which both us developers, and the advertising agency use. So I went to work on repackaging SPAW 2.0.8.1 for CodeIgniter with a few extra plugins.
Download it for free and let me know how it works 
check the new version with TABS
[download#6]
Anytime you visit a website or do any other kind of DNS (Domain Name System) lookup, the IP address conveniently gets cached. Well today a Graphic Designer I was working with to finish up a site, just couldn’t access the site to see that changes.
He could access every other domain on ether of our servers, just not our staging domain. I remote connected to his computer, and ping’d first our primary domain and got the expected IP in return, then I ping’d our staging domain and got ’10.1.1.3′ which was the machine I was using. I reset the DHCP, with no help. So I figured it was a DNS Issue.
Flushing your DNS cache in Mac OS X is actually really easy, and there are two different commands to use, one for Leopard and for Tiger. Depending on your version of OS X, open your Terminal and follow the appropriate directions below:
Launch Terminal and issue the following command:
dscacheutil -flushcache
All done, your DNS has been flushed.
On a side note, the dscacheutil is interesting in general and worth taking a look at, try the -statistics flag instead for some stats.
Type the following command in the Terminal:
lookupd -flushcache
That’s it, that’s all there is to it. Now your DNS settings should be as you intended them to be.
A couple of weeks ago I posted about setting up a web gallery for my friend Jessye Thompson.
Well after me being really busy, slack and all of the above, It is now up and running smoothly and you can visit the site at www.jessthompsonphotography.com. If you live in the North West USA, and are looking for a good photographer for any event, Contact Jess.
The site uses valid xhtml and CSS plus some pretty Mootools effects including Slimbox lightbox by Christophe Beyls.
I have tried using lots of bright colours on a dark background to give it a clean and modern look with a bit of fun and colour to go with the great photos.
Let me or more importantly Jess know any feedback.
As I mentioned in a previous post about Jess Thompson Photography http://www.jessthompsonphotography.com, I have recently found this great AJAX|PHP Gallery system Minishowcase.
The Administration system plugs in and works pretty seamlessly with the front end.
Some features are;
» plug and play
» no editing original ‘minishowcase’ files.
» adding galleries,
» editing gallery text/html files in a WYSIWYG editor
» adding images to each gallery
» moving images between galleries
» previewing,resizing,rotating images ( while keeping their transparencies (gif|png)).
» multiple users
It is free to any one who wants it,
I have a demo on www.lendrum.co.nz for the front end, and the minishowcase administration plugin.
» Read the read_me.txt included with the download.
» upload to the root directory or your gallery.
» add the supplied ‘.htaccess’ file to the /admin/ direcotry.
.
» chmod(0777) the /galleries/ directory recursively
» chmod(0764) the users.inc file /admin/lib/users.inc
Basically that it!
Check it out and let me know your thoughts.
Free Download:
[download#4]
