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.

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.

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.

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;
	});
});

But if I try to spin up a new application using

$rails new_app

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:

$rails _1.2.3_ new_app

Where 1.2.3 is the desired version of Rails I want new_app to run. Note the underscores before and after the version.

<%= @my_array * ", " %>

The comma and space in your string will be added to the end of every string in your array except for the last one. Beautiful! I love rails.

Now for the reason for my post. While I’ve known this little trick for a while, I came across the need to titleize the outcome because my array contained all lowercase strings and I wanted to diplay them as titles.

It took a little trial and error, but the solution is rather simple:

<%= (@my_array * ", ").titleize %>

To apply the titleize method, you simply wrap your multiplication is parenthesis and add the .titleize as you normally would.

(Note: I still have not upgraded to Rails 2.0, so I cannot guarantee any of this will work in newer versions)

Today I devised a nice, quick method for getting a printable report that looks identical to the report you see on your screen. The one downside, no selectable text for copy/paste later. But if that’s your concern, rather than printing, you probably aren’t worried about format as much anyway.

The solution I created involves downloading a FireFox extension called Pdf It! and Omniture’s own print feature.

Once you have Pdf It! installed and your report you wish to print is on the screen, simply click the print icon in SiteCatalyst’s toolbar at the top of your report. This will open a new window with limited browser chrome (toolbars, status bars, etc.) and will load your report without any of the extra navigation at top or left of your report. Basically a nice printable report. Only to print from this screen doesn’t always give the result you desire as browser to printer support isn’t always the greatest. You will still run into issues with missing images, cut off edges, etc.

So, the next thing to do is cancel the print job that automatically appears. Now you are left with just the print window. Right click somewhere in that print window and select Pdf It! > Save as PDF > Whole Page. Pdf It! will open a save dialogue and you can save that page to your desired directory. From here you can simply open that newly created PDF and print. Or if you prefer, attach it in an email to the people who care.

Apparently in Flash Player 10 the clipboard can only be invoked by user interaction. My copy/paste deterrent—that I previously blogged about and subsequently became my most popular and most frequently visited post—was based on the idea that the clipboard would be written to several times per second because it was fired in the EnterFrame event. So, needless to say, it will not work in the latest version of the Flash Player Plugin.

Here’s what Adobe has to say about it on their website:

“In Flash Player 9, ActionScript could set data on the system Clipboard at any time. With Flash Player 10, the System.setClipboard() method may be successfully called only through ActionScript that originates from user interaction. This includes actions such as clicking the mouse or using the keyboard. This user interaction requirement also applies to the new ActionScript 3.0 Clipboard.generalClipboard.setData() and Clipboard.generalClipboard.setDataHandler() methods.”

Maybe someone will be able to take my idea and figure out a way to detect “user interaction” outside the 1px by 1px flash file I was using to accomplish the task. Then maybe we can get it working again.

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!

Upon checking the Windows System Logs (Event Viewer -> Application), all it would tell me was “Product: Adobe Anchor Service CS4 — Installation operation failed.” With no other explanation.

After spending a bunch of time trying to find the answer with Google and on Adobe’s website, I finally came across the solution. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that CS4 is so new there isn’t much help out there for it yet. In the end, the solution is for CS3 but works beautifully for CS4 as well.

Basically you need to complete 2 simple steps.

1) Download and install the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

2) Download, unzip, and run the Adobe Windows CS3 Cleanup Script (which relies on the Windows program mentioned above to run) here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs3clean.html

I only had to run level 1 of the cleanup script to make it work.

As I said before, even though the Cleanup Script says it’s for CS3, it did work for me in installing CS4 as well.

I managed to come up with a very clean working solution by hacking the controls.js file that comes with scriptaculous. The solutions requires replacing the markPrevious and markNext functions and adding a small line of code to the updateChoices function.

Currently, markPrevious and markNext are telling the page to jump around like that, and I’m not sure why! As far as I can tell (please let me know otherwise) this solution could be included in the scriptaculous without breaking a thing (hint, hint to the scriptaculous team).

To implement the solution, replace:

markPrevious: function() {
 if(this.index > 0) this.index--;
  else this.index = this.entryCount-1;
   this.getEntry(this.index).scrollIntoView(true);
},
 
markNext: function() {
 if(this.index < this.entryCount-1) this.index++;
  else this.index = 0;
  this.getEntry(this.index).scrollIntoView(false);
},

With:

markPrevious: function() {
 if(this.index > 0) {this.index--;}
 else {
  this.index = this.entryCount-1;
  this.update.scrollTop = this.update.scrollHeight;
 }
 selection = this.getEntry(this.index);
 selection_top = selection.offsetTop;
 if(selection_top < this.update.scrollTop){
  this.update.scrollTop = this.update.scrollTop-selection.offsetHeight;
 }
},
 
markNext: function() {
 if(this.index < this.entryCount-1) {this.index++;}
 else {
  this.index = 0;
  this.update.scrollTop = 0;
 }
 selection = this.getEntry(this.index);
 selection_bottom = selection.offsetTop+selection.offsetHeight;
 if(selection_bottom > this.update.scrollTop+this.update.offsetHeight){
  this.update.scrollTop = this.update.scrollTop+selection.offsetHeight;
 }
},

Now find the updateChoices function and just after the code this.stopIndicator(); add this.update.scrollTop = 0; so that it looks like this:

this.stopIndicator();
this.update.scrollTop = 0;
this.index = 0;

I’ve tested in FF 2.0.0.4, FF 3.0.5, Chrome 1.0.154.43, Safari 3.2.1, Opera 9.5.1, IE 7.0.5730.13 and IE 6.0.2600 without problems.