Mr. Entropy's Blog

jQuery

2011-11-03T13:59:00.001-07:00

Version 1.7 is out. #jQuery

Dark Patterns

2011-11-03T12:22:00.001-07:00

Cool article on A List Apart: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dark-patterns-deception-vs.-honesty-in-ui-design/. Thanks to HM for pointing it out.

kerning.js

2011-10-11T12:22:00.001-07:00

JavaScript filling in the gaps that CSS (currently) can’t accomplish.

http://endtwist.github.com/kerning.js/

Adobe Touch Apps

2011-10-05T10:40:00.001-07:00

I may finally need to buy a tablet.

http://www.adobe.com/products/touchapps.html

Silk

2011-09-29T13:45:00.001-07:00

I wonder if the Kindle Fire’s new browser will be a big pain for developers? http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2011/09/29/jeff-bezos-just-disintermediated-everybody-apple-employee-number-8-explains/

Great Site

2011-09-29T12:12:00.001-07:00

@Bigspaceship is awesome. http://www.netmagazine.com/tutorials/building-immersive-environment-css-and-javascript

AddThis Horizontal Share Bar

2011-09-28T12:11:00.001-07:00

I like the new “horizontal share bar” in AddThis Labs. Coolio.

http://www.addthis.com/labs/floating-horizontal-bar

CloudShare

2011-09-26T10:37:00.001-07:00

MSF was commenting recently that this service is good.

“CloudShare is a cloud computing company that makes it easy to build, manage and share any business application on-demand, in the cloud. CloudShare provides remote access to virtual machines - all you need is a web browser.”

http://www.cloudshare.com/

Flash Extension: Visual Size Report

2011-09-23T09:58:00.001-07:00

Could be useful? “Visual Size Report is an extension for Adobe® Flash® Professional that allows for easier size optimization of SWF files.”

Metro Browsing

2011-09-15T10:53:00.001-07:00

IE10 will be able to toggle between desktop and “Metro” modes. Metro mode will not allow plug-ins, such as Flash, to run. (Desktop will.) How about Silverlight?

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/14/metro-style-browsing-and-plug-in-free-html5.aspx

jQuery Full Screen Slideshow

2011-09-07T17:48:00.001-07:00

Nice!

“Supersized is a fullscreen background slideshow built using the jQuery library.”

http://buildinternet.com/project/supersized/

Liquid Typeface

2011-09-06T10:57:00.001-07:00

I love this effect. Cool!

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664898/a-liquid-typeface-melts-before-your-eyes-thanks-to-animated-gifs

Awesome = Unity and Flash: a sneak peek.

2011-09-01T16:18:00.001-07:00

Gaming in Flash just got a huge boost. From the Unity blog: “Over the last few months here at Unity, we have been hard at work on, amongst many other cool things, the ability to publish from Unity to the Flash Player. This means that next to the already existing build targets of a Unity project, one will be able to target Flash with Stage3D, announced for Flash Player 11.”

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/09/01/unity-and-flash-a-sneak-peek/

Windows 8

2011-09-01T12:49:00.001-07:00

I missed this a few months ago…I’d be curious to see a video featuring a mouse user. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I

Paths and URL Fragments from the HttpRequest Object

2011-08-29T13:42:00.001-07:00

Steve Lautenschlager has an awesome article on the properties of the request object. I’m reposting a few of his examples for my own reference, but I highly recommend checking out his article: http://www.cambiaresearch.com/c4/dfdb20ae-b335-48ae-a201-f2a5a8329342/how-do-i-get-paths-and-url-fragments-from-the-httprequest-object.aspx.

Examples based on the following URL: http://localhost:96/Cambia3/Temp/Test.aspx?q=item

Request.ApplicationPath: /Cambia3

Request.CurrentExecutionFilePath: /Cambia3/Temp/Test.aspx

Request.FilePath: /Cambia3/Temp/Test.aspx

Request.Path: /Cambia3/Temp/Test.aspx

Request.PhysicalApplicationPath: D:\Inetpub\wwwroot\CambiaWeb\Cambia3\

Request.QueryString: /Cambia3/Temp/Test.aspx?query=arg

Request.Url.AbsolutePath: /Cambia3/Temp/Test.aspx

Request.Url.AbsoluteUri: http://localhost:96/Cambia3/Temp/Test.aspx?query=arg

Request.Url.Host: localhost

Request.Url.Authority: localhost:96

Request.Url.LocalPath: /Cambia3/Temp/Test.aspx

Request.Url.PathAndQuery: /Cambia3/Temp/Test.aspx?query=arg

Request.Url.Port: 96

Request.Url.Query: ?query=arg

Request.Url.Scheme: http

Request.Url.Segments: /

Cambia3/

Temp/

Test.aspx

Adobe AIR Color Picker

2011-08-24T11:42:00.001-07:00

Handy Adobe AIR color picker.

http://code.google.com/p/aircp/

Proxino

2011-08-22T15:25:00.001-07:00

From TechCrunch: “Developers pass their JavaScript application’s through Proxino’s proxy server, which automatically wraps each part of the application with code that generates exception reports, so they get pinged any time a user’s browser has an issue.”

https://www.proxino.com/

These Bootstraps Were Made for Walkin

2011-08-22T10:53:00.001-07:00

Sounds cool. From Twitter: “We are happy to announce Bootstrap, a front-end toolkit for rapidly developing web applications. It is a collection of CSS and HTML conventions. It uses some of the latest browser techniques to provide you with stylish typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation and everything else you need in a super tiny (only 6k with gzip) resource.”

https://dev.twitter.com/blog/bootstrap-twitter

HTML 5 Test

2011-08-19T10:27:00.001-07:00

Fun. I’ll bet hardly any browser gets a particularly high score.

http://html5test.com/

Article: Mobile Video 3 Ways to Improve the User Experience

2011-08-12T10:39:00.001-07:00

Great article on Mashable by Jeroen Wijering. Definitely one of the people I listen to about web video.

http://mashable.com/2011/08/11/mobile-video-ux/

Adobe Edge

2011-08-01T14:21:00.001-07:00

I tend to agree with the comments in the thread below taking place in the @Adobe Forums about the new Adobe Edge and the future of Adobe Flash. There’s a place for both products, really. http://forums.adobe.com/message/3833237#3833237

More than HTML5

2011-08-01T11:11:00.001-07:00

Pretty impressive. http://html5.hadw.com/.

HTML5 Boilerplate

2011-07-26T18:35:00.001-07:00

What a generous site: “A rock-solid default template for HTML5 awesome.” Thanks guys.

http://html5boilerplate.com/

haz.io: What does my browser support?

2011-07-22T17:40:00.001-07:00

A very handy utility by Philipp Bosch for showing which HTML5/CSS3 your browser supports.

http://haz.io/

The Noun Project

2011-07-20T18:40:00.001-07:00

“The Noun Project collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world's visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way.”

http://thenounproject.com/

Camtasia Studio Learning Center

2011-07-20T16:42:00.001-07:00

I ran across this resource this resource for learning how to use Camtasia Studio 7:

http://www.techsmith.com/learn/camtasia/7/default.asp?cmp=cs7tf

IE9 vs. SharePoint InfoPath

2011-07-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

I learned today that if you upgrade to IE9, and then click on a link to an InfoPath document stored in SharePoint it will attempt to open it in a browser. Sheesh. Thank goodness for this article that explains Compatibility View is needed for your Intranet.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ieitprocurrentver/thread/30506a8a-b368-4873-ad32-e931341e6e0e

SharePoint: Presence

2011-07-07T16:02:00.001-07:00

Hey, cool: pasting the following into a content editor web part displays a user’s presence.

Popcorn.js

2011-07-05T18:28:00.001-07:00

An “… HTML5 javascript library for integrating the web into video production.” Looks interesting. <rant>I still wish that open source advocates weren’t telling me I have to support three kinds of video files.</rant>

http://popcornjs.org/demos

Custom GoToWebinar Registration Page

2011-07-05T17:48:00.001-07:00

Nice trick, courtesy of glenndcitrix.wordpress.com (@GlennDCitrix).

https://www.gotowebinar.com/en_US/island/webinar/registration.flow

?Template=island/webinar/registration.tmpl

&Form=webinarRegistrationForm

&WebinarKey=123456789

&Name_First=John

&Name_Last=Doe

&Email=email@ddress.com

Note: other required fields may apply, such as “Organization.” Viewing the source will tell the tale.

Phantom Flex

2011-07-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

Drool…I now want a Phantom Flex!

http://vimeo.com/19819283

Google Swiffy

2011-06-30T17:48:00.001-07:00

Swiffy is another utility that converts Flash SWF files to HTML5. Bummer that it only supports SWF 8 and ActionScript 2.0, though.

http://swiffy.googlelabs.com/

View All Email Headers in Outlook 2010

2011-06-23T17:08:00.001-07:00

Common knowledge? Probably. But I didn’t know! So here it is:

1. Double-click the email of interest.

2. Choose the File tab.

3. Click the Properties button.

“Internet headers” is one of the items shown. Phew!

Dynamic Dummy Image Generator

2011-06-22T18:48:00.001-07:00

Not that you couldn’t do it in Photoshop in 30 seconds, but still….

http://dummyimage.com/

Word 2010: Watermark is Better Than Header/Footer

2011-06-21T14:25:00.001-07:00

MB was just pointing out how much less hassle it is to use a full page watermark image for a custom-themed document versus monkeying with headers and footers – which just seem to fight images and text muchhhh more than they should! Great tip MB!

CSS Lint

2011-06-20T10:25:00.001-07:00

HM pointed out this neat utility to me.

“CSS Lint is a tool to help point out problems with your CSS code. It does basic syntax checking as well as applying a set of rules to the code that look for problematic patterns or signs of inefficiency.”

http://csslint.net/index.html

COMPASS

2011-06-15T10:40:00.001-07:00

I was just reading on Mashable.com about COMPASS – an open-source CSS Authoring Framework. It seems like an interesting project!

http://compass-style.org/

WeatherSpark

2011-05-23T10:24:00.001-07:00

Interesting. Looks like they use a lot of Flash, too.

WeatherSpark is a new type of weather website, with interactive weather graphs that allow you to pan and zoom through the entire history of any weather station on earth.

Get multiple forecasts for the current location, overlaid on records and averages to put it all in context.

http://weatherspark.com/

Zurb

2011-05-20T10:19:00.001-07:00

Some fun/interesting apps from an “interaction design and strategy team” called Zurb.

http://www.chopapp.com/ - Sharing Code Samples

http://www.bounceapp.com/ - Commenting on/Sharing Web Screen Shots

http://www.strikeapp.com/ - Task List

iSpy

2011-04-20T12:06:00.001-07:00

The iPhone keeps a record of where I’ve been?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/20/iphone-tracking-prompts-privacy-fears

The Evolution of Web Design

2011-04-18T16:26:00.001-07:00

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/evolution-of-web-design/?wide=1

CSS Formatter and Optimizer

2011-04-12T17:48:00.001-07:00

Based on “CSS Tidy” this online script will clean up and optimize a CSS file.

http://cdburnerxp.se/cssparse/css_optimiser.php

Adobe Acrobat Text Recognition

2011-04-12T16:41:00.001-07:00

Awesome!

Choose Document > OCR Text Recognition > Recognize Text Using OCR.

An Early Look at IE10

2011-04-12T14:47:00.001-07:00

Three whole weeks of development! :) Although, as Marc points out it is still very proactive that they are shedding their old, slow development cycle.

“We’re about three weeks into development of IE10, and based on the progress we’ve made, we want to start engaging the development community now.”

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/04/12/native-html5-first-ie10-platform-preview-available-for-download.aspx

Frame Wars

2011-04-11T11:13:00.001-07:00

An interesting article on CrunchGear about framerate standards.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/04/08/frame-wars/

Microsoft's answer to DropBox?

2011-04-07T10:27:00.001-07:00

“SyncToy 2.1 is a free application that synchronizes files and folders between locations.”

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=c26efa36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52

XSL for Formatting pubDate from RSS Feed

2011-04-04T11:38:00.001-07:00

A really handy bit of XSL for converting an RSS feed pubDate to a regular date.

http://blog.beacontechnologies.com/xsl-for-formating-pubdate-from-rss-feed/

Photoshop for the Ipad = Awesome

2011-03-31T14:32:00.001-07:00

A sneak peak and video from Adobe by way of Gizmodo.

http://m.gizmodo.com//5787574/why-photoshop-for-ipad-marks-the-end-of-the-desktop-computing-era

Flash Player Video: Hardware Acceleration Woes

2011-03-30T11:33:00.001-07:00

Useful tidbit to remember: if someone viewing your Flash video complains that it is choppy, it’s probably hardware acceleration. From Adobe:

“Flash Player 10 and later can use your system’s graphics hardware to accelerate video decoding. Flash Player 10.2 and later can also accelerate video presentation on some sites, accelerating all aspects of video playback. If you are experiencing video playback issues in Flash Player, it is possible that your video adapter driver software has incompatibility issues.”

To disable hardware acceleration:

1. Right-click the Flash movie

2. Choose Settings from the context menu.

3. Deselect Enable Hardware Acceleration (on the Display tab), then and click Close.

Amazon Cloud Drive

2011-03-29T16:40:00.001-07:00

Heh. Cool.

http://gizmodo.com/#!5786720/what-is-amazon-cloud-drive

Regular Expression Generator

2011-03-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

What a great utility! It generates allows you to enter a string to use a regular expression on, and then build it for Perl, PHP, Python , Java , Javascript, ColdFusion, C, C++, Ruby, VB, VBScript, J#.net, C#.net, C++.net, and VB.net.

http://txt2re.com/

IE9 Font Rendering Issue

2011-03-24T18:00:00.001-07:00

I experienced an unusual problem after installing Internet Explorer 9. Some web pages were rendering strangely in all bold fonts. After some searching I came across the solution in a Microsoft Forum.

Problem: after installing IE9, many websites were displaying fonts in bold.

Solution: Reinstall all Arial fonts.

Fix MS Office programs using Office Diagnostics

2011-03-24T15:51:00.001-07:00

This is a really handy tool. The funny thing is that it fixed a problem I had with IE without officially finding any issues.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/diagnose-and-repair-crashing-office-programs-by-using-office-diagnostics-HA001234076.aspx

Adobe Lens Profile Creator and Downloader

2011-03-24T10:28:00.001-07:00

I saw this in a Ben Willmore class yesterday. Pretty cool!

“Lens Profile Creator is a free utility that enables the easy creation of lens profiles for use in the Adobe Photoshop® family of products, such as Adobe Photoshop CS5, the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom®. A lens profile describes the types of optical aberrations that exist in a particular lens and prescribes how to correct the lens distortions in an image captured from the same lens.”

"Outlinify" It For Me

2011-03-18T10:48:00.001-07:00

“Topicmarks summarizes text documents for you electronically. Get a smart synopsis in minutes instead of reading everything yourself.”

http://topicmarks.com/

IE9 Will Support WebM?

2011-03-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/03/16/html5-video-update-webm-for-ie9.aspx

“Today IE9 can play HTML5 video in both the industry-standard H.264 format and the newer WebM format. With the WebM Project’s release of WebM Components for IE9 (Preview), Windows customers running IE9 can play WebM videos in Web pages. IE9 is the only browser today committed to supporting both formats directly.”

SharePoint: Search-As-You-Type

2011-03-14T12:54:00.001-07:00

I ran across a nice piece of code on Jan Tielens' Blog that allows you to quickly create a “search-as-you-type” option using a Content Editor Web Part. Aweome!

IE9 Launches on March 14th

2011-03-09T12:52:00.000-08:00

Interesting…IE9 will be released on Monday night.

http://windowsteamblog.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2011/03/09/a-more-beautiful-web-launches-on-march-14th.aspx

Information Overload

2011-03-08T15:52:00.001-08:00

A thoughtful article JB pointed out about information overload. I don’t think I can part with my filters!

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/03/situational_ove.php

If, as Shirky argues, improved filters will reduce overload, then why haven't they done so up until now? Why don't we feel that information overload is subsiding as a problem rather than getting worse? The reason, I've come to believe, is that Shirky's formulation gets it precisely backwards. Better filters don't mitigate information overload; they intensify it. It would be more accurate to say: "It's not information overload. It's filter success."

Adobe Wallaby: Convert Adobe Flash FLA files into HTML

2011-03-08T10:27:00.001-08:00

This sounds really promising! I was just reading a Mashable article that Adobe is previewing its new tool, code-named “Wallaby,” that converts FLA files to HTML5.

From Adobe:

“"Wallaby" is the codename for an experimental technology that converts the artwork and animation contained in Adobe® Flash® Professional (FLA) files into HTML. This allows you to reuse and extend the reach of your content to devices that do not support the Flash runtimes. Once these files are converted to HTML, you can edit them with an HTML editing tool, such as Adobe Dreamweaver®, or by hand if desired. You can view the output in one of the supported browsers or on an iOS device.”

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/

SharePoint Designer: Limit of 200 Controls?

2011-03-07T12:44:00.001-08:00

Using SharePoint Designer, I ran across this error: “This page allows a limit of 200 controls, and that limit has been exceeded.” The weird thing is I am not exactly sure how SharePoint calculates the number of controls…I certainly don’t have that many DVWPs. In any case, Mossable.com had a fix. I didn’t end up using it, but it seems handy to file away for future reference.

“Go to IIS Manager, right click on the SharePoint Web application you are having the issue on and select Open. This will take you to the root folder on the filesystem. Then right-click on the web.config file and search for “MaxControls”. Change the default number from 200 to say 500. Make sure to reset IIS (go to dos prompt and type IISReset).”

Do Codecs Matter?

2011-02-25T11:38:00.001-08:00

Great blog post from longtailvideo.com. Phones and tablets will determine the future.

“…The odds are against WebM for now. H264 is available on nearly any phone, tablet and settop out there and WebM isn't available on any device. Only after the launch of WebM hardware decoding can we expect to see announcements that can influence the uptake of WebM versus H264. Who will support WebM decoding? How good will it be (performance, streaming, protection) compared to H264? And who (besides Google) will dare dropping H264 decoding support?”

Bacteria Will Replace Your Hardrive

2011-02-23T10:30:00.001-08:00

Does this mean I could get food poisoning from my hard drive one day?

http://www.psfk.com/2011/02/bacteria-will-replace-your-hardrive.html

When can I use...

2011-02-16T13:46:00.001-08:00

A pretty exhaustive list!

http://caniuse.com/

“Compatibility tables for support of HTML5, CSS3, SVG and more in desktop and mobile browsers.”

Is IE9 a modern browser? (No)

2011-02-16T13:42:00.001-08:00

A harsh stance on whether IE9 is a modern browser:

http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/ie9/

Seeing Red

2011-02-15T15:34:00.001-08:00

A very cool data visualization of Obama’s 2012 Budget Proposal courtesy of the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119-budget/index.html

Bing Copying Microsoft's Search Results

2011-02-02T10:41:00.001-08:00

Pretty damning evidence from the Google Blog:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google-search.html

By now, you may have read Danny Sullivan’s recent post: “Google: Bing is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results” and heard Microsoft’s response, “We do not copy Google's results.” However you define copying, the bottom line is, these Bing results came directly from Google.

Molehill 3D Flash vs. Unity?!

2011-01-28T10:57:00.001-08:00

Interesting.

“Adobe believes its imminent Molehill 3D Flash technology will present a real rival to Unity in the web game development space.”

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32405/Adobe_New_Molehill_3D_Flash_Tech_Will_Rival_Unitys_EaseOfUse.php

Essential SEO & SEM Tips for 2011

2011-01-26T14:18:00.000-08:00

A nice post from dailyseotip.com.

http://dailyseotip.com/essential-seo-sem-tips-for-2011-%e2%80%93-a-comprehensive-collection/

tidypsd

2011-01-12T17:05:00.001-08:00

Interesting service. For $9 “tidypsd” will create a nicely organized PSD from any messy, disorganized one!

http://www.tidypsd.com/

Adobe Flash: A Look At Browsers, Codecs, And System Performance

2011-01-11T12:09:00.001-08:00

A very impressive and thorough article on tomshardware.com.

Adobe Flash: A Look At Browsers, Codecs, And System Performance

SharePoint Web Part Page: Contents=1

2011-01-10T11:33:00.000-08:00

An oldie, but a goodie piece of SharePoint advice. Eloquently put on blogs.msdn.com:

“This is probably the most useful of querystrings. Using this on any "Web Part Page" will take you to what is called the "Web Part Page Maintenance" page (screenshot below) which allows you to delete web parts from both personal and shared views. This feature is especially useful if you have added a misbehaving web part. In this situation you can find yourself in a "chicken and egg" situation, whereby you can’t access the page to remove the web part because the web part you have added is causing an error on the page.”

SharePoint: jQuery Library and XSL Templates

2011-01-06T13:42:00.001-08:00

Really cool! Two great resources I was just noticing that Marc Anderson (Twitter : @sympmarc) posted.

jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services

This is a jQuery library which abstracts SharePoint's Web Services and makes them easier to use. It also includes functions which use the various Web Service operations to provide more useful (and cool) capabilities. It works entirely client side and requires no server install.

http://spservices.codeplex.com/

SharePoint XSL Templates

This project is a place to share useful XSL templates that can be reused in SharePoint Content Query Web Parts (CQWPs), Data View Web Parts (DVWPs), and other XSL-based Web Parts.

http://spxslt.codeplex.com/

Adobe Flash: Publish to AIR for Android

2011-01-04T15:21:00.001-08:00

Very cool. I hadn’t noticed this before.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashpro_extensionforair/

“Adobe® Flash® Professional CS5 Extension for Adobe AIR® 2.5 is a prerelease technology that enables customers to leverage the latest AIR 2.5 release to publish content and applications to the Android, Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, and including new profiles for TVs. This extension builds on the value of Flash Professional to enable customers to create once and deploy on various platforms and devices, increasing the reach of their content to many of the latest Android mobile devices.”

Woz on the FCC and Net Neutrality

2010-12-21T14:03:00.000-08:00

The Woz , via Daring Fireball, on FCC and Net Neutrality.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/12/21/woz-net-neutrality

Generations Online in 2010

2010-12-16T11:28:00.001-08:00

An interesting snapshot of online activities across generations by the Pew Internet & American Life Project:
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Generations-2010/Overview/Findings.aspx

SharePoint: DualLayout? Cool!

2010-12-15T12:16:00.001-08:00

Wow. Serge van den Oever writes some of the best SharePoint articles out there. In his latest post he discusses a technique he developed that allows you to publish HTML that is unconstrained by SharePoint styles/HTML.
http://weblogs.asp.net/soever/archive/2010/10/19/duallayout-complete-html-freedom-in-sharepoint-publishing-sites.aspx

“When you want to make your design work together with the SharePoint stylesheet you need a lot of knowledge of SharePoint. Especially with MOSS 2007 people like Heather Salomon became famous for dissecting and documenting the SharePoint CSS files to prevent designers from a branding nightmare.”

“… We created an approach where we can introduced an additional mode to SharePoint Publishing pages. Besides the SharePoint Publishing WCM mode with its edit and display modes, we introduced a view mode. The view mode is a mode that gives you a view-only version of the page where you don’t have to bother about the page going into edit mode, and also don’t need the plumbing to enable your page to go into edit mode.”

Infopath: Get The Current User Without Writing Code

2010-12-14T18:35:00.001-08:00

A handy article from Itay Shakury's blog:

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/itaysk/archive/2007/04/05/InfoPath-_2D00_-Get-the-current-user-without-writing-code.aspx?from=ClayCobb

EFF: Appeals Court Holds that Email Privacy Protected by Fourth Amendment

2010-12-14T15:36:00.001-08:00

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Awesome.

“Given the fundamental similarities between email and traditional forms of communication [like postal mail and telephone calls], it would defy common sense to afford emails lesser Fourth Amendment protection.”

Storytelling 2.0

2010-12-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

What a cool article from newscientist.com: “Storytelling 2.0: When new narratives meet old brains.”

“State-of-the-art neuro-imaging and cognitive neuropsychology both uphold the idea that we create our ‘selves’ through narrative.”
.
.
.
“If we create our selves through narratives, whether external or internal, they are traditional ones, with protagonists and antagonists and a prescribed relationship between narrators, characters and listeners. They have linear plots with a fixed past, a present built coherently on it, and a horizon of possibilities projected coherently into the future. Digital technologies, on the other hand, are producing narratives that stray from this classic structure. New communicative interfaces allow for novel narrative interactions and constructions. Multi-user domains (MUDs), massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), hypertext and cybertext all loosen traditional narrative structure. Digital narratives, in their extremes, are co-creations of the authors, users and media. Multiple entry points into continuously developing narratives are available, often for multiple co-constructors.”

Clear InfoPath Form Cache

2010-12-06T12:26:00.001-08:00

What a handy bit of information:

Infopath /cache clearall

Taken from a great article at “All About SharePoint.”

HTML5 Video Minus Ogg and IE < 9

2010-12-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

A great description and solution for an issue that I agree is tedious for web developers.

“Firefox and Opera are essentially forcing websites to offer two versions of each video: an Ogg version and an MP4 version. In my opinion — and the opinion of many others — this simply will not do. Providing two different video files is not realistic, Ogg’s quality is inferior to H.264, and many computers and mobile devices have direct hardware support for H.264 but not Ogg. In reality, without MP4 support, HTML5 video is rendered useless for most site developers in Firefox and Opera.

http://pipwerks.com/2010/03/19/html5-video-minus-ogg/

SharePoint Calculated Field: CLEAN()

2010-11-30T11:22:00.001-08:00

Wow. I wish I knew about this function years ago!
=CLEAN([myMessyTextField])
From endusersharepoint.com:
“The “CLEAN()” function is useful when moving data from one type of system to another in that it allows you to remove any characters that do not directly represent a written symbol (“Non-Printing”, or “Control” characters), but rather, represents a specific action or formatting on the data itself. Examples of this would be “line feeds” and “tabs” (or anything that doesn’t fall in the Decimal 32-127 and 128-255 ASCII ranges – “Printable” and “ASCII Extended” respectively – http://www.ascii-code.com).”

The Three Threats to Creativity

2010-11-24T10:37:00.001-08:00

A compelling article from the Harvard Business Review.

http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2010/11/the-three-threats-to-creativit.html

Flash Ads Are Broken

2010-11-22T12:18:00.001-08:00

An interesting cause: asking advertisers who use Flash to learn how to use wmode.

http://www.flashadsarebroken.com/

XSLT - Sorting Alphabetically and Numerically

2010-11-10T12:01:00.001-08:00

An awesome bit of XSLT at Stack Overflow for sorting alphabetically and numerically using just one xsl:foreach statement :

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2670214/xslt-sort-alphabetically-numerically-problem

JavaScript: Formatting Numbers for Dollars and Cents

2010-11-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

More JavaScript goodness. This time from pageresource.com: Number.toFixed(x).

“Formats any number for "x" number of trailing decimals. The number is rounded up, and "0"s are used after the decimal point if needed to create the desired decimal length.”

Here’s a function I’m using to format several numbers on the fly.

function addDecimalPlaces(myCash) {
       myCash = myCash * 1; // Confirm that myCash is a number
       myCash = myCash.toFixed(2);
       return myCash;
}

Sorting a Multidimensional array in JavaScript

2010-11-05T13:07:00.001-07:00

I’m noting this for myself, but I’d recommend it to all: a very useful routine courtesy of Stack Overflow:

var arr = [.....]
arr.sort((function(index){
    return function(a, b){
        return (a[index] === b[index] ? 0 : (a[index] < b[index] ? -1 : 1));
    };
})(2)); // 2 is the index

Social Web Security Report Card

2010-11-04T16:57:00.001-07:00

Wow…thought provoking stuff courtesy of OH:

Facebook and Twitter have received failing grades from Digital Society, a "digital think tank," that created an "Online Services Security Report Card" ranking "which websites protect your account and which don't."

The report card examines how vulnerable services such as eBay, Flickr, Amazon, and Facebook, are to a security breaches and provides each a grade. The ranking is particularly timely in light of concerns around Firesheep, a Firefox plugin that enables users to obtain the login information of others who may be browsing non-secure websites on unencrypted WiFi networks.

Facebook received an 'F,' as did Twitter and WordPress (no SSL). Hotmail and Flickr fared only slightly better, earning a 'D-' each. Digital Society's George Ou writes, "Permanent fixes from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft are long overdue."

Silverlight x 6 = 0

2010-11-01T15:13:00.001-07:00

LOL! “Silverlight. Silverlight. Silverlight. Silverlight. Silverlight. Is dead. Long live Silverlight! Or something.”

http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/01/silverlight-silverlight/

Adobe Air 2.5

2010-10-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

Nice summation from Mashable:

http://mashable.com/2010/10/25/adobe-air-2-5/

“Adobe is set to reveal the newest version of Adobe AIR at its MAX Conference in Los Angeles on Monday. The newest version will include major upgrades to bring the runtime platform to Android and mobile devices everywhere.”

Adobe Flash > Apple App Store

2010-10-21T11:51:00.001-07:00

Adobe’s take on how to create submissions for the Apple App Store using Flash. I definitely want to try this.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/app_store_guide.html

40 Useful Online Generators For Web Designers

2010-10-20T17:59:00.001-07:00

A nice list of online generators; some could potentially save a lot of coding time. Courtesy of Noupe Design Blog.

http://www.noupe.com/tools/40-useful-online-generators.html

“Generators can be a great way to save time in your web design projects. High-quality generators can create graphics or code or even layouts in a matter of seconds or minutes, things that might take an hour or more if done by hand. Below are some useful generators to help you speed up your web design process. There’s everything from color scheme tools to complete layout generators included.”

Microsoft Unveils Office 365: Productivity Heads to the Cloud

2010-10-20T17:56:00.001-07:00

Wow, sounds like Microsoft is really moving to “Cloud City.” From Mashable:

http://mashable.com/2010/10/19/microsoft-office-365/

“Microsoft is doubling down on its commitment to the cloud with the launch of Office 365, a service that combines Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online with the cloud.”

jQuery: Slide Elements in Different Directions

2010-10-15T15:51:00.001-07:00

A nice, “slidetastic” tutorial on learningjquery.com: “Slide Elements in Different Directions.”

http://www.learningjquery.com/2009/02/slide-elements-in-different-directions

Ai -> Canvas

2010-10-13T10:33:00.001-07:00

Wow!

http://visitmix.com/labs/ai2canvas/

“The Ai->Canvas plug-in enables Adobe® Illustrator® to export vector and bitmap artwork directly to an HTML5 canvas element that can be rendered in a canvas-enabled browser. The plug-in provides drawing, animation and coding options such as events so that you can build interactive, well-designed canvas-based web apps.”

GotoWebinar WMVs - How to Edit the Content

2010-10-07T18:16:00.001-07:00

GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar offer the ability to generate a Windows Media Player file at the conclusion of the broadcast. Nice feature, right? Except that GTM and GTW produce a file that requires their proprietary codec AND the file cannot be edited in programs like Adobe Premiere and Camtasia Studio. Thanks to a very useful post on geekfactor.charrington.com, here is a workaround that seems to do the trick

1. Download the Codec:
http://www.gotomeeting.com/codec

2. Download Microsoft Expression Encoder 4. Set the encoder to the highest output quality and create a new WMV. This should repair the file and allow it to be modified in your favorite video editing tool.

Microsoft Buying Adobe?!

2010-10-07T14:27:00.001-07:00

Whoa. Interesting!

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN0721049120101007

The New York Times reported that Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer had met secretly with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen at Adobe's San Francisco offices "recently".

The two discussed Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) dominance in mobile phones and considered several options to counteract that, including Microsoft acquiring Adobe, the newspaper reported, citing employees and consultants involved in the discussions.

in XSL

2010-10-06T18:19:00.001-07:00

Non-breaking spaces were breaking in my XSL output. Thanks to a comment on stylusstudio.com, I ran across this handy little method:

<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&nbsp;</xsl:text>

W3C: Hold off on deploying HTML5 in websites

2010-10-06T14:12:00.001-07:00

From an article ER pointed out on InfoWorld:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/w3c-hold-html5-in-websites-041

“The problem we're facing right now is there is already a lot of excitement for HTML5, but it's a little too early to deploy it because we're running into interoperability issues,” including differences between video on devices, said the official, Philippe Le Hegaret, W3C interaction domain leader. He is responsible for specifications like HTML and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics).