By uskatpayday loans
There are two keystrokes related to the built-in Firefox search box that I love.
Ctrl-k on Windows, Cmd-k on Mac, and Ctrl-j on Linux selects the search box. Until I found this I would do Alt-D/Cmd-L to select the Location Bar, and then Tab to the search box.
Once you are in the search box you can use Ctrl-Up/Down Arrow (Cmd-Up/Down Arrow on Mac) to cycle through the search engines.
It’s been reported today that Yahoo! is going to start offering unlimited email storage starting in May.
Now, when GMail came out Yahoo! and Hotmail only offered something like 20-50MB of storage. GMail’s offering of 1GB of storage blew those other limits away. As it stands now I have +2.8GB of storage in my GMail, and I’m using less than 10% of it. It’s going to take me a long time to even reach 1GB of usage, and add to that the perpetually increasing amount of storage that Google gives means I’m probably never going to max it out.
Sure, unlimited is…well…unlimited. But I’m guessing that only the top 0.01% of GMail users are anywhere close to maxing out their storage. My cynical side is saying that this move by Yahoo! is them grasping at straws to show that they are just as innovative and savvy as Google. The massive storage thing has been done before. Ho hum.
One thing I am regularly frustrated with is the lack of ability to enter a TAB into a web form. There are times when you want to use TAB spacing, but are relegated to hitting the spacebar a bunch of times. With Tabinta — Tab In Textarea — that problem just disappears. One obvious drawback is you will no longer be able to tab through forms with a textarea element; you’ll have to grab for that mouse.
One commenter of the plugin says, “Cntrl-Tab should insert a tab if Firefox follows the MS multi-line programming SDK.” This comment would be perfect if we hadn’t just discussed that the Ctrl-Tab keystroke cycles through tabs in Firefox and IE7. I tried a bunch of keystroke combinations, but nothing worked. I was a little excited when I found Option-Tab created a tab space in the OS X Spotlight search field, but that’s pretty much it. It kinda works in Safari text fields, but not textarea fields.
If anyone out there is game, I’d love to see a Firefox plugin similar to Tabinta, but one that used the Ctrl-Alt-Tab (and Ctrl-Cmd-Tab on Mac) keystroke — or something along those lines — to add a tab. I’d be forever indebted to you, especially if it works with the Web Developer plugin for editing CSS. Just figured I’d throw that out there.
Most people in the tech industry are familiar with the accronym LAMP (if not, follow that link). MAMP is a variation on LAMP, but for Mac.
I need to preface this post with the advice that the product I’m about to show is not for “production” type environments. The official word is:
MAMP was created primarily as a PHP development environment for Macintosh computer and should therefore not be used as Live Webserver for the Internet. In this case, we recommend that you use Mac OS X server with the provided Apache or a Linux server.
That out of the way, this is THE BEST web development environment when working on a Mac. To install, drag the MAMP folder to your Applications folder. You don’t have to install Apache, PHP, and MySQL separately, and configure them to work together; it just works.
You don’t have to run any scripts to get it to load, you just launch the MAMP application and Apache and MySQL services start (it does require you to enter your Administrator credentials). The configuration is done through a simple preferences menu, allowing you to modify Apache and MySQL ports, whether to use PHP4 or PHP5, and the Apache document root folder, plus some other minor settings.
Everything is local, so you can use your favorite PHP/HTML/CSS editor (I use Smultron), save your changes, and immediately check the results. I love WordPress, but the native template and plugin editor forms are just basic textarea form elements. With MAMP I’ve got a WordPress installation where I can do my template/plugin work in Smultron, and instantly see the results without having to upload anything to a server out on the interwebs.
A Top 10 Free Mac Apps list was just made over at Lifehacker. I was satisfied with their list, but was a little sad to not see MAMP on it. Check MAMP out, you won’t be disappointed. It’ll probably make your top 10 list, just like it’s on mine.
I’ve mentioned this other places, but it’s definitely worth repeating. In some applications with tabs you can cycle through the tabs with a simple keystroke: Ctrl and Page Up or Page Down. Page Up will cycle you left, and Page Down will cycle you right.
I want to create a “definitive” list of applications where Ctrl-PU or PD switches tabs, so I’ve started that here. If you have an application to add to the list please leave it in the comments, and I’ll make sure it gets added to the list.
This is one of those features that I’d love to see designers standardize across all platforms. I recognize, however, that this is a request that will probably never come true. I can still dream of UI utopia. Not to leave out the other applications that use a different keystroke to move between tabs, this second list is for them.
Ok, my initial list is a little sparse. Show some love and help fill this thing out.
EDIT: Here is a new list based on Brett’s comment, for applications where Ctrl-Tab cycles through tabs.
I just recently added the Digg It buttons on here. I had to do some debugging to try to get it to work properly, so I figured I’d pass along my work for anyone else to use. There are two things that I did to make it work right:
This snippet of code below is what you will want to put in your posts loop, right above the <?php the_content(); ?> function call. I chose to include the digg_url and digg_title JavaScript variables.
The digg_url variable is required if you are going to place the badge in your index.php template, or any template where it is possible to see multiple posts e.g. archives.php. What it does is encodes each badge with the permalink for the appropriate post, rather than using the URL of the page you are currently viewing. I decided to include digg_url on single.php and page.php for consistency. The digg_title variable pre-populates the Story Title field for the first person to Digg the post.
<div class="diggit"><script type="text/javascript">
digg_url = '<?php the_permalink() ?>';
digg_title = '<?php the_title(); ?>';
</script>
<script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
<?php the_content(); ?>
Now for the CSS stuff. For my template I only needed to float the DIV to one side — I chose left — and modify the padding options to get it in position.
.entry .diggit {
float:left;
padding: 20px 5px 0 0;
}
The general information for this came from the Digg Tools Integration section. I added in the necessary WordPress PHP functions in order to fill in the JavaScript variables. Try it out and let me know how it goes.
I writing this post not from my home in Oregon, but from Boise, Idaho. Some colleagues and I are in Boise visiting our campus here for work. When we setup this trip last week I got to thinking about airport wifi, and how I was very glad that the airports in both Portland and Boise offer free wifi.
My first thought was that I could put together a list of airports around the country, and their wifi offerings. I had even decided that I was going to get some group participation going on, with readers sending me information about their local airports. As I mentioned this to my wife she gently — as to not crush my brilliant idea — told me that someone has probably already done that.
Sure enough. The helpful people over at TravelPost.com have compiled “the definitive guide to US airport wireless connections and free airport wifi.” They’ve even compiled lists for international airports and airport clubs/lounges.
While that would have been fun to put something together like this, they did a bang-up job that’s not worth duplicating. Happy traveling.
A while back I was given a book to read on blogging, aptly title “Blog.” In the section I was reading last night I was struck by some of the things Hugh Hewitt was saying, and how I completely overlooked “leadership blogs” in my Web 2.0 at Work series.
Every single day a blog gives talented executives an opportunity to communicate with their troops: to inspire, inform, cajole, or plead. Mostly to inform. In the first person, it will be read. It will do everything the newsletter can’t because it is authentically your voice.
Of course this is a top-down blog from an executive (or executives) to the masses. Hugh also talks about a mid-level management blog.
It is important to assume that everything posted will be read by everyone. But even with that excellent caution in the back of your mind, the blog you start can be the blog that draws the attention of the senior management and wins the loyalty and extra effort of the employees or members downstream.
These are good things to think about, regardless of where you are in the hierarchy at work.
I was just having troubles getting into Google Reader to check my feeds, and once I was able to get in I noticed something different right away.
There used to be a Refresh link at the bottom of the subscriptions section of the page, next to the Manage Subscriptions link. This button at the top of the subscriptions section is brand new. When you click on it the text changes to “Refreshing” and the button is grayed out until the refresh is finished.
This change is at the top of the posts section. Another great modification. This refresh updates the list of posts for the subscription group you are viewing.
This is a minor change, but a beneficial one. I didn’t like the Refresh link being at the bottom, and now it shows the status of the refresh process, too.
EDIT: I completely looked over another new feature, that I’ve just been playing with. In the first photo you see “Show: updated – all”. This toggles between showing you all of your feeds and folders, and only those feeds and folders that have unread content. This was a nice all-around update by Google.
UPDATE: The feature I failed to see in my initial haste to get this post out (read the EDIT just above this) is the new feature that I’m enjoying the most. I’ve got it set to show the updated feeds only, and it feels like my browsing is quicker. Completely subjective and non-scientific, but it still counts for something.
I’ve been following Joe Tan‘s plugin development for WordPress for quite a while. I initially checked his stuff out for his Flickr Photo Album plugin, but found my favorite plugin of all-time (behind SpamKarma2 of course): Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports.
Obviously this plugin only benefits you if you use Google Analytics and Feedburner on your blog. Since both are free I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t use them. A nice side benefit is that you don’t have to visit those two sites for an overview of your statistics anymore.
The plugin adds a new menu to your WordPress admin panel which shows an array of dashboard-type reports. With the latest version of the plugin Joe added three new report options: Rising Sources, Rising Content, and Falling Content. Add those to the other nine reports and you have yourself a one-stop-shop for blog statistics.
Oh, I almost forgot. This plugin will also enter the necessary code for Google Analytics into your blog, including what’s needed to track outbound links. Try this plugin out. You definitely won’t regret it.