XSLT Grouping: the Muenchian Method

Jeni's XSLT Pages has an extremely useful article on how to take a list of XML elements and arrange them into groups.

http://www.jenitennison.com/xslt/grouping/muenchian.html

“The Muenchian Method is a method developed by Steve Muench for performing these functions in a more efficient way using keys. Keys work by assigning a key value to a node and giving you easy access to that node through the key value. If there are lots of nodes that have the same key value, then all those nodes are retrieved when you use that key value. Effectively this means that if you want to group a set of nodes according to a particular property of the node, then you can use keys to group them together.”

An example from her article:

<xsl:key name="contacts-by-surname" match="contact" use="surname" />
<xsl:template match="records">
       <xsl:for-each select="contact[count(. | key('contacts-by-surname', surname)[1]) = 1]">
              <xsl:sort select="surname" />
              <xsl:value-of select="surname" />,<br />
              <xsl:for-each select="key('contacts-by-surname', surname)">
                     <xsl:sort select="forename" />
                     <xsl:value-of select="forename" /> (<xsl:value-of select="title" />)<br />
              </xsl:for-each>
       </xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

The Future of Silverlight

The Silverlight Team Blog has an interesting article on Silverlight and HTML 5. Many of these issues have already been raised by Adobe Flash develoeprs and others, but I think it’s worth a read.

http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/the-future-of-silverlight/

 

Appcelerator

Titanium looks awesome. I really must set aside some time to really check it out: http://www.appcelerator.com/.

jQuery Slideshow

A really simple, elegant and cool slideshow example by Jonathan Snook using jQuery.

Web Fonts and Stylebot

Two interesting Web Design articles on Mashable.com:

Change Any Web Page’s Design Instantly with Chrome Extension Stylebot

“One of our favorite web browsers just got a cool new tool in the form of Stylebot, a new Chrome extension that allows you to access and modify the CSS for any web page from within the browser.”

Top 5 Web Font Design Trends to Follow

“…Five of the biggest trends taking place with web font and web typography design.”

Adobe AIR - Upgrading to 1.5.3 and Higher

I have an AIR 1.0 application that I like to deploy updates to. I have been gradually trying to update said application. However, after attempting to publish to AIR 2.0 the update would suddenly not recognize the previously installed version. The explanation is on Adobe’s site:

“Prior to AIR 1.5.3, AIR secured application updates signed with renewed certificates by comparing the publisher ID computed from the old and new certificates. Due to flaws in the definition of publisher ID, many customers found that this mechanism was not compatible with their renewed certificates. This method is now discouraged in favor of using migration signatures.”

Here are the steps that need to be taken if you wish to salvage your application (also from Adobe’s site):

Determine your application's current publisher ID. In an installed application, this is found in the META-INF/AIR/publisherid file.

1.       Add a <publisherID></publisherID> element in your descriptor, and copy your publisher ID into it.

2.       Update your application's namespace to 1.5.3.

3.       If you are creating a new AIR application you should not use the <publisherID> setting.

21 Creative Blogger Bio Pages

A fun Mashable article showcasing “about me” pages on blogs. I must confess I didn’t read the entire article; I just enjoyed some of the innovative designs.

http://mashable.com/2010/09/15/creative-blogger-bio-pages/

 

Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word 2010?

Word 2010? According to Adobe, it looks like it’s not officially yet. It takes FOREVER to generate on my Windows 7 machine….

“Adobe has not formally tested Acrobat 9 software with Microsoft Office 2010 applications and does not certify the behavior of using the two together.”

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/faq/#item-9

Adobe Illustrator CS5 HTML5 Pack

I just read that Adobe has released the “Adobe Illustrator CS5 HTML5 Pack.”  From Adobe:

“The Adobe® Illustrator® CS5 HTML5 Pack provides initial support for HTML5 and CSS3, extends SVG capability in Adobe Illustrator CS5, and helps you easily design web and device content. In combination with the HTML5 features available in the Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 11.0.3 updater, these new tools allow web designers to take advantage of the latest advancements in HTML5.”

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/illustrator_html5.html

Current User Name or ID in SharePoint Using SharePoint Designer

A great explanation by Josh Gaffey on how to add the current user name or ID in SharePoint via SharePoint Designer. (Funny that Microsoft makes us have to do it this way, rather than making user name a built-in offering.)

 

 

http://www.colorpicker.com/

An HTML-based color picker. Simple. Useful. Elegant. Easy to remember. I like.

 

InfoPath - User Information Sans Code

There’s a great article on Itay Shakury's blog describing how to get current user information out of InfoPath without using code. (With a dash of web services, of course.)

CSS Text Rotation + HTML Tables = Blech

I was attempting to rotate table header text with CSS transforms and ran across a few interesting pages. First, I ended up not actually doing it because of the reason eloquently described here (from Stack Overflow)

“Crucially, transforming an element doesn't change how its content size is calculated (or how its parent's layout is affected by that size). CSS's algorithms for vertical and horizontal sizing are different and difficult enough to get right to being with; there's no real consistent way they could accommodate content with arbitrary rotation. So ‘transform’ is like using ‘position: relative’: it changes where the content is rendered, but not anything to do with layout size.”

However, for text rotation tips in general, there is a great tutorial at snook.ca that illustrates how to do text rotation with CSS:
-webkit-transform: rotate(-90deg);
-moz-transform: rotate(-90deg);    
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=3);

IE9 - The Beauty of the Web

It looks like IE9 Beta will be released on 9/15/2010.
http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/

 

Google Analytics Data API - Useful Links

Some useful resources I’ve run across as I dive into the world of exporting Google Analytics data.

Data Feed Query Explorer
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/gdataExplorer.html

Data Export API Documentation
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/home.html

Let’s Authenticate with ClientLogin
http://gdata.briefer.net/10/lets-authenticate-with-clientlogin/

Attemps via ActionScript 3!
http://www.zedia.net/2009/connecting-to-google-analytics-data-api-using-as3-my-failures/