lofton.net

Over in the menu area on the right of the standard theme is a drop down that allows you to change the design of the site. I created several designs based on the same html code to show the power and flexibility of using CSS for web design. I got the idea of course from csszengarden.com, which was the inspiration for me to finally get into using CSS back in 2001. Prior to that I was a wizard with table based design. I dabbled with CSS, but the differences between browsers was maddening. Upon finding csszengarden.com and going through several of the linked supporting sites I learned the secrets of browser quirks and standards mode and how to force them to use standards mode. It was awesome to be free of the constraints of tables. I laugh now because there are number of web designers who want to bring back tables or rather refuse to give them up.

Tables are for tabular content. If you have a series of stats, a set of values that need to add up or similar data then a table is perfectly Ok. For layouts however, I remember the frustration of tables not being able to have different vertical dividers. If you had a table with two rows and the first row had 2 columns and the second had 3 columns, then one of the cells in the first row had to span two of the columns in the second. You could get around this by adding more columns or the taboo of table inside of tables, but it was a mess. There were a number of other table snafus that one had to deal with between browsers as well. So when I hear of someone advocating the benefit of table layouts, I just shake my head.

I finally upgraded my personal system. I had been wanting to get a new Intel based Mac for quite a while now. My previous system was a powerbook g4 which has been a rock solid machine for the past 3 years. Yet since the announcement of the Intel switch I have been drooling over each new system release. As a web developer being able to run Windows and test pages in IE and yet still use a mac for developing has been managed by having two systems sit on my desk. Which is a pain in the buttox and takes up room I could use for… for what I don’t know. I was going to say laying out notes, but I rarely print things out anymore. Well I will have room to put whatever I want instead of a PC.

So I went with the white MacBook. I love everything about it… the keyboard is just fine for me a semi-touch typist. I really do not touch type but every now and then I get going and actually don’t look at the keys. I also like the built in iSight. The remote is cool, but I haven’t really needed it yet. I was originally thinking of getting the black, but after seeing them in the store, I felt the black was too much like the old powerbooks from g3 days or even like many black PC laptops. The white is actually the unique one, glossy case with a grey handrest and screen trim. It is clearly not a PC. If the black had been glossy then I would have been interested. I know it would show smudges and finger prints, but nearly everyone wraps their laptop in a case anyways.

The user interface is of course the same. I am pretty much transferred over to the new system. Just a few minor tweaks to go. I have also installed XP in a virtual space and can pop in and put of Windows when ever needed. Very nice… I tried to install Vista, and actually succeeded, but for some reason it would not connect to the internet. I will try it one more time then give it up… let me say that from what I saw initially… Vista is a disaster. From a usability perspective it is so different from previous Microsoft OSs that it will cause problems. Case in point, I could not get it to connect to the internet. I am very good with computers… I have run, used and configured most OSs including linux. But this was nuts… I could not determine if I was missing the driver or that it wasn’t configured correctly. It just kept telling me how to go about setting up wireless, which I did not want. Oh well I’ll wipe it and install it again and we will see how it turns out…

Well after going over all the possibilities, I could see that the driver was not installed. Since this is a virtual machine (vm) I was going to need special drivers from the vm system. Probably had I actually read the instructions for the vm I would have known I needed to run the tools installer to make that happen. It was just confusing because I did a XP install and it did not need the special drivers. So now I am playing around with Vista a little more and it does look nice to some extent.

This was a very good class, as I learned a lot more than I expected and took away some experiences that will significantly help me and those I work for in the future. The interest in applications that allow groups to work together has been growing, with technology being a limitation on what can be done. However, with advanced web developments, tools, infrastructure and abilities that lower the barrier for implementing this kind of application, this sector is now veritably exploding.

It was a tough quarter on a another level as I changed jobs after being in the same company for over 10 years. So I had to deal with interviewing and departure details, as well as, adjust to a new work place. Interestingly, the class had an immediate effect on my transition. In future interviews, I will be sure to enquire about a companies use of groupware and ways of collaborating virtually. As my new job has required me to work with team members who are located in different buildings and my new boss is in another state. Other valuable learning included a good overview of the current crop of groupware and the actual use of two groupware applications. This class also required a team project, which went really well, in part because of the groupware that we used.

read more

I am on the look out for another editor or hoping an update to jEdit will come soon. I had been really happy with jEdit for a while except some really annoying patterns have emerged in my use of it. The first problem is there seems to be a problem connecting via ftp. When I go to save a file it will fail giving a nondescript error. If I try several times it will eventually save the file. This can take 10 or more attempts at times.

The other problem I am having is it seems to add a character to the beginning of a file when you have certain options set. This character is used as a flag or indicator of the setting. Unfortunately, on Unix systems this causes script files to have problems. You will see an odd character display on a web page at the very top. This would not be a problem so much if you opened the file and could see that character and delete it… but when you open the file, there is no indication that this character exists. I think it adds this when you set the UTF-16 option, which is sometimes needed for foreign language character display. Or when you set the save location… or something. I am just guessing as I have no clue, if anyone knows what is going on with that, let me know. The only way to see the character is to telnet and use vi. Then you can delete the character.

Really the first problem is what is bothering me most. As I changed the settings for the characters and save pointer location or some such, and that seemed to go away. But I am going back to DreamWeaver for my code editor, at least part of the time, until I can find a solution for the FTP problem. I really like jEdit, but the FTP problem is too annoying to continue to deal with. However, I will also look at some other editors and see if there is anything new out there.

This is to go along with every other “MS should buy X” story out there… Ok this sounds crazy, but really this is the best strategy that MS could have… buy Sun. It would probably end-up being a hostile takeover, but it would make sense for MS whatever the cost. MS keeps talking about their current strategy to run a command line interface (cli) on top of windows. In fact they already have it and are working to make it robust enough to woo unix types over to the windows platform. But this is a joke of the largest proportions as the problem with running windows with the cli on top is that it does not solve the code problems with both security and performance underneath.
read more

Recently, I’ve had conversations with a few of my developer friends who are all a twitter about AJAX. Saying how great it is and all the cool things Google is doing with it. Honestly, after taking a real close look at it, I find it to be hardly more than another buzzword. It simply does not offer anything of real value for web development. Yes, it can make interfacing with certain web applications smoother, and it solves some problems inherent in web applications. However, it introduces a whole set of other problems, that in my opinion, make it widely unsuitable for most work.
read more

I worked a little more with automator (when I should have been studying regression analysis)… and have come up with a cool new automator. This incorporates an undocumented aspect of automator, so it took some trial and error to figure out. Basically, I wanted something that would allow me to turn a request to view a man page into a pdf file for easy printing and viewing in the gui side of Mac OS X. Only a unix geek could love the man page as it is… for unix newbies though, it can be quite frustrating. Personally, I am use to man pages, but I still like to print some out now and then and converting them to pdf allows me to access them without opening terminal (not that you wouldn’t probably have terminal open anyway).

So I wanted to find a way to make a man page into a pdf. Of course you can do this from the terminal, but where’s the fun in that (plus you have to remember the commands each time you want to do this). There is a free GUI utility called ManOpener that allows you to view man pages easily as well, and is much more featured than this automator tool. But if all you want (as I did) was a man page made into a pdf, then this is what you need to do;

1. Open Automator, from the Library column select TextEdit. From the actions drag “Ask for Text” over to the workflow area.
   
   • In the question field type “Enter man page name?” or something to indicate what you need to enter
   • You can leave the default field empty or enter something that will serve as a reminder of what to enter
   • Check the require answer box
2. Next, from the Library column select Automator, then from the actions drag over the “Run Shell Script” to the workflow after the previous item. Type or copy & paste the following as one line, modifying the paths so that they point to your preferred locations (include the quote marks this time);
   

   man -t $@ > /hardrive/Users/Shared/manpages/$@.ps | echo -n “harddrive:Users:Shared:manpages:”$@”.ps”

   Set the “Pass Input” to “as arguments”
   
   Note: The $@ takes the value entered in the “Ask for Text” and runs it as a shell command. The first part which calls the man page then passes it to a postscript file named with the name of the man you are looking for, then it echoes out the path to the next function. The echoed path has to be in the style of the Mac OS drive path reference which uses “:” instead of slashes “/”.

3. Last select Finder from the Library column and drag “Open Finder Items” to the workflow in the last place. Set the “open with” field to the Preview application. The path passed from the previous action will be opened in Preview converting it into a pdf.

You are ready to test, click the run arrow and try it out. If everything works, the requested man page will be open in Preview at this point. You can either save it or discard it after use. You can get fancy and do things like check for existing ps files or remove the ps file after it is converted. But this gives you the idea of what fun you can have with automator and how it can make working with unix fun. Be sure to save your workflow and make it readily accessible on your dock or wherever you like to put things to be accessed often.

When I first heard about Automator it sounded cool, but I wasn’t sure what I could use it for personally. After I had upgraded to Tiger, I got around to looking at automator and to be honest, I didn’t see anything that would really help me. I looked at the sample workflows and there was nothing that applied to my everyday or even once in a while tasks.

However, the other day I was in need of combining a couple of pdf files. I knew there was a way to do this in Mac OS X, so I set about searching the internet. I thought I had seen a terminal command process to combine pdfs, but I found instead some instructions on how to do it with automator. So I am posting here in case the reference gets lost from somewhere else…

1. First open Automator, select Finder in the Library and drag “Ask for Finder items”, check the multiple option.
2. Then select PDF in the Library and drag “Combine PDF Pages” set to Appending pages
3. Then go back to the Finder listing in the Library and drag the “Rename Finder Items” set things the way you would like here
4. Then drag a “Move Finder Items” and set it to where you would like the new file to end up

Save your workflow and then run it. Pretty cool. Other variations could substitute Get Folder Contents for step 1. Then you can just drop files you want to combine into that folder and run the command. You can include the Sort Finder Items to change the order the pdf files are combined (or you could just rename them in the finder). Now that I have a taste and feel for what Automator can really do, I have something else to play with/do in my non-existant free time. Here is the forum where I found this http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=239682.

My current workplace wants to get started doing podcasting. So I am setting up a podcast rss file. The unique thing here is that it will be dynamically updated. The audio will be saved to the server automatically. Then a script I am writing will check the directory for the 30 most recent files and then pull from a database a title and a description/summary that is entered by the production staff. All of this will be formatted into a rss feed that is usable by iTunes or other podcast aggregating software.
read more

I just finished HCI 430 Prototyping and Implementation. This class involved designing interfaces for windows applications and writing the code to make them work. I was a little nervous about taking this class because although I can write code, most of it is procedural scripting; PHP, VBscript, JavaScript and all of that is focused on web applications. Despite that, I wasn’t sure how I would handle this… it turned out to be trivial. I have never written a formal windows application in any great detail (I’ve done “hello world” and temp converter tutorials, but that’s it), yet this turned out to be only slightly more complicated than developing web applications. Especially when using the Visual Studio IDE.

read more

We’ll I’ve been busy commenting on message boards everywhere that the move by Apple to use Intel is a good thing. And since I have my own part of the web, I figured I should comment here as well since some may know that I am a Mac fan/user. But I am one, who even when it was thought to still be a rumor, was arguing for the move to be made and why it makes sense for Apple to do it.

read more

I have used Windows for my work system (it is required) for over 8 years now. I have migrated through a number of code editors as my abilities and needs have changed over time. I have used WebEdit, HomeSite/ColdFusion, and now UltraEdit. On the Mac it has been BBEdit all the way. Yet, especially in the last year or so, I have been looking for something on the Mac that would work more like UltraEdit on windows. Specifically, something that would allow opening more than 1 file via FTP at a time. And didn’t require pallettes to access common code snippets (I like keyboard shortcuts). Simply, the macro features of BBEdit just don’t cut it for me. I should mention the version of BBEdit I have is v6.0… and it is a great editor. So perhaps if I weren’t too cheap to upgrade, I may find some of these features added in the most current version.

read more

Ah, being a Mac user today was a sweet day… Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, announced a New Mac in a Keynote presentation at Macworld Expo in San Fran. This was a totally new creation for Apple, as it is a low end system that people have been begging for several years now. Previously, the low end consisted of the eMac, a system with a built in CRT monitor. The eMac was meant for the education market—hence the “e” in the name, but as Apple’s next lowest costing system was $999 for an iBook (and if you didn’t want a laptop, it was the $1299 iMac), they made the eMac available to the general public.

read more

Usually, I start out creating my designs for this site by testing them in Safari (yes, I am a Mac user… so consider this my first contribution to the holy war of mac vs pc). I also test Mozilla on the Mac and feel that if it looks good in those two I am generally on track. Eventually, I get around to checking in IE on Windows and then IE on the Mac (although, I don’t know why anyone would still use IE on a Mac). Here, I typically find some fatal flaw that IE just craps on. If it were not for the fact that Windows forces users to use IE (software update with Moz, I don’t think so), most everybody would have chucked it a long time ago. Now, only due to the security lapses in IE, has Firefox (Mozilla’s light and fast version) begun to claim some users back from IE… but you still have to use IE. And most users still do…

read more

Since wordpress layout is based on css, I wanted to do something similar to the CSS Zen Garden. I hope to create a new design every week… but all you get right now is two (ok I have added a couple more, but I think the new design every week was a little ambitious… more likely I will do a new design every 3 months). None of the code in the index file is changed when switching between designs (although I did modify the code from the original WP install). I was going to write my own feature to handle this, when I decided to look and see if wordpress had a plugin… and wouldn’t you know, there was one created by Alex King. He has done a great job, and so why reinvent the wheel… you should check out his site and browse the site designs. Between CSSzengarden and Alex’s site, there are hundreds of designs, so the challenge is for me, to try and do something fresh (or personal, which should be fresh). To change the design just select a different one from the dropdown on the right…

Standard
This is the default (guess you figured that out already). It uses the Mt Fujii covered with snow for the banner.

Bluejean
This one uses a Macromedia Fireworks pattern with a shot of the Pacific ocean. I took the picture of the Pacific from the hotel in Ito city Japan. Sorry you can’t see much more, the full image has a little island that is offshore about 1500 meters.

NueType
Ok, so it took a couple weeks to get this one up… having a couple of kids, a full time job and going to grad school takes some time. Well this one is not finished, but I wanted to get something out. It is kind of inspired by early 20th century typography… but it doesn’t do justice to what I was thinking of… Jan Tschichold, El Lissitzky… et al.

Splok
Splotch or blocks, something bright and colorful. This was created using some filters in Fireworks. I wanted to create something that looked a little like water color painted blocks.

ItoBay
Used a photo taken from inside the Denny’s in the city of Ito, Japan for the head (taken in 2003). The concept basically was to have the water fade into the page content.