a dev star

Besides the obvious web, email, and text ways to twitter there are a couple other really convenient ways as well.

Firefox add-on “twitterbar”
This add-on allows you to type your twitter update in the address bar of firefox and then click update within the address bar and it updates your status. You can use this add-on in secure and safe mode to connect to twitter. The add-on also displays how many characters out of 140 you have left to type and then gives you a confirmation message upon saving the twitter status.

Digsby (see my digsby post for more detailed information)
Digsby is a multi-client chat program and social site status update program. The program enables you to talk on all of your favorite instant message networks as well as update your twitter (also facebook and myspace) status directly from the program. Digsby also shows you your twitter updates from the people you are following.

addthis.com has an amazing social bookmarking widget that integrates every possible social bookmarking site such as digg, stumbleupon, browser bookmarks, reddit, and sooo many more. While they offer some documentation on their widget there are additional features which you can tweak with the widget besides what is mentioned. Basically they are settings within the javascript file.

social bookmarking widget addthis.com specify url
By default the widget uses the current browser url, but if you are on the the main page of your blog and want the widget to specify the actual article the widget is next to you can specify the variable ‘addthis_url’ just like you do the other variables.

specify default title
‘addthis_title’ - Swaps out what’s in the title tag with a title that you specify.

specify caption share
addthis_caption_share - specify a different title besides the default “Bookmark and Share” on the dropdown.

specify custom css file
addthis_css - takes a reference to a css file.

What is it? It is an all around chat client ( AIM, MSN, Gtalk, Jabber/XMPP, ICQ, & Yahoo) that also supports integration with social networking sites such as facebook, twitter, myspace(myspace sucks anyways) and also has integration with email (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, POP, IMAP, AOL/email).

Download Digsby | Digsby Home

Key Features

• Update your status for twitter/facebook/myspace all through the application
• View your news feeds for twitter/facebook/myspace in a fancy little panel either in your toolbar or in the actual application.
• Email directly from an account to anyone without having to use an external mail program or web based mail program. e.g. if you are talking to someone on gmail and want to send them an email about something you just click the email tab and type your message and send. No wasting time of using another application unless you need to write up an email containing any html such as bulleted lists or bold headers.
• Provides notifications for all new email messages and social networking updates.
• Make digsby widgets that you can post on any site such as facebook or your own personal blog site. Once the widget is placed on your site anyone that visits your site can IM you, kind of like instant support for a site…

Cons

• Currently only windows supported, mac and linux are on their way. Use these links if you want to be notified when digsby for mac comes out or when digsby for linux.
• Couldn’t think of any other ones at the time, if I find some then I will post them.

Useful links

• Digsby Screenshots - IM themes are very similar to adium for mac if anyone uses that.
• Download Digsby for Windows - Mac and linux versions are supposed to be on their way.
• Digsby facebook application - you can put a box on your profile so people can im you or just use it to integrate with your desktop app.
• Full list of Digsby Features
• Pidgin - Another multi-client chat application that is what I was using before I switched to Digsby. Has a great following and is an amazing application.

Firefox Extensions for Web Development
Clear Cache Button: This is an easy way to clear your cache when developing.

ColorZilla: This firefox extension for colors is amazing, it lets you use the eyedropper anywhere on a site and it gets that exact color, not just what the csssays. You can get any color from an image, background, etc. You can then get that color in several forms of Hex or RGB.

CSSViewer: With one click this firefox extension provides details about the css in a site upon hover of any of the page elements. This comes in handy when
you need to see what font a certain section is using or what the properties of a certain div are.

Firebug: Incredibly useful for so many reasons to list, if you are a web developer in any technology, download it.

Better Gmail 2: This firefox extension adds features such as row highlighting on hover, opening “mailto:” links in gmail instead of your default mail program, custom attachment icons and several others. The mailto link modification is probably the best since gmail is my primary mail client now and it’s much easier than having to copy and paste an email address. The custom attachment icon just changes any email that has an attachment from the basic paperclip to anything from a pdf icon to a word document icon.

Continue Reading »

While working on an application that creates it’s own directories on the fly and then inserts images in them I came across some safe mode errors. Basically what they were is that I was creating a folder with the script which would then set the user to be ‘apache’ and then when the script went to write in it again and it didn’t actually own that folder, apache did.

I found some other more complicated solutions on the net where you have to edit the php.ini file and one where you edit the vhosts file. I figured there had to be a way to do it through Plesk and I finally found it so I figured I would share it so that no one else has to deal with it.

This is what the error looks like:

Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 10004 is not allowed to access /var/www/vhosts/xxx/xxx/xxxx owned by uid 48 in /var/www/vhosts/xxx/xxx/xxx/upload.php on line 98

So go into plesk and navigate to here…

click Domains over on the left -> Choose the domain you are wanting to disable safe mode on -> under the hosting section choose setup -> scroll down and under services find the one that says ‘PHP support’ -> Leave that box checked but uncheck the one to the right of it that says ‘(PHP ’safe_mode’ on )’ -> click ok and you are done.

Hope this helps.

I used to develop primarily in PHP and dabbled into ASP but then I learned about Ruby and the Rails framework and now I cringe when I need to develop something new that isn’t in Ruby. There are a ton of tutorials on Rails so if you aren’t familiar or want to learn just do some googling. My intention with this post is to compare the differences in chunks of common code between php and ruby. Items such as for loops, array manipulation in ruby, various string functions in ruby and php, etc. I obviously won’t write everything so if you think of something that would be handy to know then leave a comment with it in there. Yes I realize PHP has frameworks that add some of the handy features that Rails.

Create Array:

Ruby: myArray = ["dog","cat","mouse"]

PHP: $myArray = array(”dog”,”cat”,”mouse”)

*With Ruby there’s no need to specify that it’s an array, it knows from the brackets. Also notice that PHP uses parentheses and Ruby uses brackets.

Using element of array by position

Ruby: myArray[1] = “cat”

PHP: $myArray(1) = “cat”

First Elements:

Ruby: myArray.first = “dog”

PHP: first($myArray) = “dog”

Ruby: myArray.first(2) = ["dog","cat"]

PHP: for ($i=0; $i < 1; $i++ ){$first2elements .= myArray($i);} * If there is a better way to do this in PHP let me know if it doesn’t involved a loop.

Print out elements of Array

Ruby: myArray.inspect

PHP: printr($myArray)

Comments

Ruby: # COMMENT

*Ruby doesn’t have multiline comments at the moment, just get a good editor that has a shortcut for it such as Textmate or Aptana.

PHP: // SINGLE LINE COMMENT

/* MULTILINE COMMENT */

Continue Reading »