KILLTHEMESSENGER

Mine is the only advice I ever listen to

Back to Delicious

Since I made the transition to Chrome from Firefox, I forgot about my old friends at Delicious. I started getting used to having different sets of bookmarks on different machines, and it didn’t bother me too much that I’d have to look up a link again at home (one I might have saved on my work computer). Enter Chrome’s bookmark syncing, a wonderful way to sync your bookmarks among all of your Chrome browsers simply by being logged in with your Google account. There was one problem though, no social aspect.
One of the reasons I really enjoyed using Delicious was that I could find new links and information daily from friends and complete strangers in the Delicious community. Well, now I’m using both. There’s something to be said for the bookmarks toolbar and it’s quick access to frequently used items, and the social aspect of Delicious. I don’t think it’s too much work to install the extension and use both services, and there’s a definite benefit to using both. The key here is to utilize the plug-in for those links you’d tweet or buzz or even email to another person, in order to get the most out of it.

Here are a few links for you to get set up.
At the time of this post, you need the Beta version of Chrome to use extensions.
Chrome Beta
Delicious Extension
Syncing in Chrome

Alpha Transparency for PNG’s in IE6

“Internet Explorer 6, I hate you. Alas, I must work to correct you.” – Craig McRae

If you need to use a 24 bit PNG in IE6 and want it to work, you’re going to need a little help. First, start by creating a new stylesheet just for IE6, call it ‘f**kYouIE6.css’ or whatever you’d like. Then call the css with the following code after all of your other CSS calls.

<!--[if lt IE 7]>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/ie6Blows.css">
<![endif]-->

Then, in your CSS file, add the following property to whatever class/id/object will be using the alpha layer transparency.

img {
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader("images/button.png");
}

please keep in mind, that if you’re making a website for anybody other than yourself, the aforementioned naming conventions for css files is strongly discouraged.

MVP – Lebron James

Well deserved, now get that title ‘Bron!

Certificate Errors

To save you the trouble and frustration, if you’re unable to log into GMail or any type of secured site with a legitimate security certificate, ensure your date and time is correct on your machine. Do this by checking your cell phone, or asking someone nearby what the correct ‘date and time’ are. My issue happened to be that one of the time servers I was using wasn’t updating properly, so I switched it and all was well.
If that’s not your issue, try Windows Update for any new security patches.

Note: This is targeted towards Windows users; this will affect all browsers.

Shut the fuck up about HTML5 vs Flash and evolve.

RCN Chicago. (Suck My Balls)

I went to the RCN comments section of their site. I was trying to play a trailer on Hulu for the new Karate Kid movie. It kept stopping. A two minute trailer kept stopping. I just started typing and this came out…

WTF? http://www.speedtest.net/result/736463270.png

My internet is shit again, and again, and again. Check my support calls. I’ve had a service technician come out twice, he told me everyone in my area is suffering. It’s been over 6 months. You can keep cutting my bill down, but it doesn’t prevent my internet from sucking. I can’t even watch a goddamned movie trailer for Christ’s sake. I pay for 10mbps, and I’m getting 1. That’s 1/10th of what I’m paying for. Get your servers straightened out, and your shit together. If you piss the wrong people off you’re going to end up like Coca Cola did when they changed their formula. Nobody’s going to buy your service and everyone is going to run to Comcast. EVERYONE I know with Comcast has great service. It costs a little bit more, but they GET SERVICE THAT THEY PAY FOR. I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m insanely irritated. I’m a professional web developer, how in the hell am I supposed to get work done when I’m getting speeds like this? If you can’t fix the problem, I’ll drop my cable and internet from you, and switch to wimax service/Comcast and go back to hulu + Netflix. then I’ll make sure everyone I know, and all of the people in my condo know what the best resolution for their problems is and maybe make a fun viral video about how HORRIBLE your service is and publish all of my recorded results and see how that works out. That seems to get people’s attention. Because for over 6 months of NOBODY DOING ANYTHING I don’t know what to do either.

encodeURIComponent (PHP Motion)

I was having some trouble with comments in phpmotion. Turns out the genius developers over there don’t understand that not all users of the internet forget how to punctuate. After burrowing deep into the code, I found where the key value pair was being created for the POST. At this point all I needed to do was convert the special characters in the string.

204. url += chiave + "=" + encodeURIComponent(valore) + "&"; //encodeURIComponent removes special characters that may break the key/value pair.

If you enter an apostrophe, it thinks the string has ended. If you enter an ampersand it thinks you’re joining a new key/value pair. So we just encode those (and all) values that would otherwise break the code.  Pretty simple solution to an annoying problem.

Further documentation: W3Schools – encodeURIComponent

Organize Incoming Mail in Outlook 2007

A simple way to organize incoming mail in Outlook is by setting up a rule. Recently I was receiving a lot of mail from a specific discussion group at work, and wanted to organize this mail specifically to one folder outside of my Inbox.

The first step is to open up the rules window.

Go to Tools > Rules and Alerts…

Create a New Rule…

The example above is a completed rule, in order to achieve this you will need to select the conditions of your rule.

Since the incoming mail was sent to a discussion group, I simply select the ’sent to people or distribution list’ option, and below in the Step 2 window I click the highlighted links to open up my Global Address Book and select the distribution list (or user if you like). Then select the folder I want it to go to.

Additional options are available in this process, such as marking the item as read. It is important to note that these will only work as client side rules, so if you’re on the road and you’re receiving emails via your mobile device, the rules will not apply unless you have this machine running and checking for incoming mail.

Forms in IE vs FF (and the rest)

If you’re trying to prevent the default action of a form to do some JavaScript validation, or for whatever reason, you may have to make some adjustments for Internet Explorer. The key here is capturing the event and telling it what you want, and not letting the browsers default actions take over.

The button on your form should look something like this:

<button id="submit" onclick="validate(event); return false;">Send Email</button> the return false prevents the default action here

The validation code might go something like this:

function foo(evt){

evt = evt || window.event;

var theform = document.contactForm; //this is how I capture my form, by using the form's name

/* validation code can go here */

if (isvalid){ //a test i'm using based on validation requirements

theform.submit(); //will submit the form
}

//the following test will cancel bubbling and default actions across the form, we use this for IE.
if (evt.stopPropagation)

evt.stopPropagation();

else

evt.cancelBubble = true;


}

Essentially what you’re doing is stopping the browsers natural reaction to an event, such as clicking the submit button on the form and letting it run through your validation code. The added lines at the bottom prevent certain browsers from continuing on with the default actions even though you’ve coded return false; in your button click. Thanks Internet Explorer.

This is some knowledge dropped on me by my good friend Lawrence. Check his site out for some other useful tips.

‘Cleaning’ Designer Denim

You’ve got some expensive jeans, the guy at the store warned you about washing them and how the dye would come out, there might have even been a warning label. You’re not quite sure how to keep your jeans from smelling without washing them. Here are two tips that are tried and true.

1. Freezer Time: 15 mins in a freezer (or more if you desire) will kill off the bacteria, and neutralize any odor.

2. Dryer Sheets: Put your jeans in the dryer with a couple of dryer sheets, they’ll come out smelling great and the heat will tighten up your jeans if they’ve become a bit too loose as you’ve worn them in.

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