Developer Blog
March 10th, 2010 | Posted in Developer Blog
It seems that Marketing and IT departments are always at odds. Having worked for a substantial amount of time in each division, I have come to my own conclusions as to why this is the case. I believe there is a misperception as to the root cause to the problem and I believe that I have a solution.
The common accusation is that Marketing is too right brained and doesn’t understand the technical side of things that IT must face every day. In reverse, the accusation is that IT is too left brained and has no creativity. I believe both to be false. Sure, they are true to a certain extent, but I do not believe this to be the root of the problem. I’ve known very analytical people working in Marketing and I’ve known very creative people who work in IT. Heck, we hired a back-end ruby programmer to work in our marketing department at one point. It didn’t “bridge the gap.”
The difference is this: Marketing wants things done fast, IT wants things done securely, and neither trusts the other because of it. Yep, it’s that simple. Marketing departments need to be more security minded, to the point that IT trusts them to have access to the stuff they need. IT needs to figure out how to deliver on the fly, to the point that Marketing trusts them to be tasked with something. If this were to happen on a global scale–if Marketing were security experts and IT were lightning fast–it would create world peace. I’m sure of it.
January 25th, 2010 | Posted in Developer Blog | Tags: Firefox, Google, Google Chrome
I’ve been using FireFox as my primary browser since version 0.9 and have admittedly grown quite attached to it. On the other hand, I’m quite fond of Google as well, so the prospect of making the switch to Chrome seemed almost inevitable as FF continues to grow into a resource heavy machine. The first deterrent however, was the lack of extension support in Chrome. The main reason I love FireFox (or so I though, as you’ll see in a moment) was for the extensions that make my day to day so much easier and that I cannot live without—such as Web Developer Toolbar, XMarks, AdBlocker Plus, pdfIt, and more.
Now that Chrome supports extensions, I really thought I was making the transition. I installed many extensions, and got Chrome to the point where I really felt like I could use it on a daily basis to accopmlish my tasks. It loads much, much faster and I thought I was in love! To my surprise, however, there are many nuances in Chrome itself that I feel make it lacking enough to the point that I cannot use it, in spite of extension support. In other words, I have complaints about the browser itself, not about the lack of extension support. These are things that extensions might possibly fix at some point, but I feel they belong as part of the browser’s base. Hopefully Chrome adopts many of these seemingly simple features as it graduates from Beta and beyond.
Here is my list of things I depend on in FireFox that are missing in Chrome:
- Several right click menu options
- “View Background Image” – While Chrome does have support for viewing a forground image in a seperate tab, I need the ability to view a background image. It’s a feature I use a lot in FF.
- “View Selection Source” – I understand the advantage of using the “Inspect Element” feature in Chrome, but the behavior is something quite different. I love that FireFox will show me only the code I’ve selected and highlights it in the popup window.
- Minimal frame options – Chrome has a few options to aid you within frames, but Firefox’s options are so much richer and I find myself missing them quite a bit
 Chrome Frame Options  Firefox Frame Options
- Customization support – Simply plugging “about:config” into the FF browser offers a vast amount of customization settings. Enough to let you really screw things up if you aren’t careful. As of yet, all I’ve seen in Chrome is the ability to set a few startup switches.
- A perplexing inablility to use Google Bookmarks in a meaningful way – So I can synchronize bookmarks across browsers, fine…but where do they get stored if not in Google Bookmarks? Even extension support is weak at best.
- Bookmark dividers – I’m an organization freak, what can I say?
- Search as you type
- Good visual representation when the word you are searching for cannot be found – Chrome simply says “0 of 0″ where FF changes the box to red.
I’m sure I’ll find more with time. These came about in a matter of a couple of days.
What about you? Have you found yourself having a hard time making the switch as you develop or use Chrome in your day to day? If you’ve found things in Chrome that you wish Firefox had, please share those as well.
November 30th, 2009 | Posted in Developer Blog | Tags: BB Press, PHP
It appears that the BB Moderation Hold plugin hasn’t updated for newer versions of BB Press. The moderation links are not appearing in the admin navigation and when you click “moderate” from within the post itself as a moderator it redirects to the homepage rather than taking you to the moderation pages.
The fix for both issues is rather simple, but requires editing the php code in the plugin itself. Simply open up moderation.php and make the following tweaks:
Change:
149
| bb_admin_add_submenu(__('Topics for Moderation'), 'moderate', 'bb_moderation_hold_topic_admin_page', 'content.php' ); |
To:
149
| bb_admin_add_submenu(__('Topics for Moderation'), 'moderate', 'bb_moderation_hold_topic_admin_page', 'topics.php' ); |
Change:
150
| bb_admin_add_submenu(__('Topics for Moderation'), 'moderate', 'bb_moderation_hold_topic_admin_page', 'content.php' ); |
To:
150
| bb_admin_add_submenu(__('Topics for Moderation'), 'moderate', 'bb_moderation_hold_topic_admin_page', 'posts.php' ); |
You are basically changing both instances of ‘content.php’ to ‘topics.php’ and ‘posts.php’ respectively.
Now when you replace moderation.php on your server you should see extra links under the posts and topics sections and you should be taken to the appropriate pages when moderating.
September 9th, 2009 | Posted in Developer Blog | Tags: JavaScript, jquery
The slideUp() method in JQuery is intended to hide the element rather than reveal it. It is basically the opposite of slideDown() which “unhides” your element by sliding it down.
As you can see on this blog, I have an “About Jason Gill” tab in my heading. When clicked, this tab reveals information about who I am by sliding upward. In figuring out how to do this, I of course consulted the Google gods and came up with a lot of people asking how, but few people providing answers. So, I’ve decided to post the solution I finally came up with hoping it will benefit others.
Basically, I am using two different effects to create what looks like one effect. What you are seeing is essentially a slideDown() in conjunction with an animate() effect. The animate() is literally moving the info box upward at the same speed it is sliding down (in my case, “slow”). I just had to measure the height of the #about_me box and animate it upward exactly that many pixels (in my case it was 171 pixels). To close the box, I simply animate downward at the same rate I slideUp. Technically, I’m using animate in conjunction with slideToggle(), but you get the idea.
You can take a look at my source, but I’ll post the javascript here for your convenience:
$(document).ready(function(){
var opened = false;
$("#about_tab").click(function(){
if(opened){
$("#about_me").animate({"top": "+=171px"}, "slow");
}else{
$("#about_me").animate({"top": "-=171px"}, "slow");
}
$("#about_content").slideToggle("slow");
$("#about_tab .close").toggle();
opened = opened ? false : true;
});
}); |
June 5th, 2009 | Posted in Developer Blog | Tags: gems, Ruby on Rails
I have multiple versions of the Rails gem installed on my development server. We’ve been using Rails long enough now that we have many apps created for many versions. As I make changes to each app I need to test them in their specific version (the version listed in the environment.rb file) so having multiple Rails versions installed is a necessity.
But if I try to spin up a new application using
I get a rails app created specifically for the latest version of Rails installed.
But what if you need to create a new app for an older version of rails that is also installed? The following easy command does the trick:
Where 1.2.3 is the desired version of Rails I want new_app to run. Note the underscores before and after the version.
|
|
|
|
Subscribe to