Archive for 'General'

CoolUri plugin for typo3

This is perhaps more of a convenient place for me to store install instructions than anything… BUT:

Installing CoolUri in Typo3 on linux / apache2 / php5

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apache2ctl and apache2 virtual host blah blah

Gary pointed me to apache2ctl the other day and now I cant live with out it.

Useful things:

apache2ctl – t (check the syntax of virtual host files BEFORE reloading and breaking apache)

apache2ctl – M (show all the loaded modules – ie. check if rewrite is enabled and working)

apache2ctl – E (log startup errors to file)

apache2ctl – h (show the rest of the options)

Also, I was having issues getting a “real url” module called cooluri working for a typo3 site. In the end it was because my virtual host file was missing (link) :
AllowOverride All

Thats one of those things thats happened before but was forgotten along the way …. hopefully it will be useful for someone out there searching for why mod_rewrite isn’t working the way it should do….

One bash prompt to rule them all

I stumbled across Daniel Robbins blog (the creator of Gentoo) and he had an OK article on how to config your bash prompt.

While he makes a good point for using just ‘>’ and putting everything else in the window bar, that just doesn’t cut it for me.

So – heres my suggestion which I have hacked from a CentOS server I ssh into on occasions:
PS1=”\[\033[1;31m\][\$(date +%H):$(date +%M)]\[\033[1;34m\][\u@\h:\w]#\[\033[0;37m\] ”

Just whack that into bash to try it out. To save it put it into your .bashrc file

Filler

the idiocy of clocks

this blog is dragging along to no-where.
so.
i am going to give it one more burst of effort.

i’ll try 20 posts in 20 days… or give up and resign it to the google archives forever

Pubstandards – Melbourne

Drink and argue about the extent to which myspace sucks at PubStandards Melbourne.

Based on pubstandards.co.uk its basically like going to Web Standards or PHPMelb, but without the presentation – just the beer. Great.

Reboot

Rebooted to a reliable and decent server (we changed hosting companies). Also I stole the design from Hugeobject (Helena did the initial design, I just changed the colours).

Ax

Ax stands for Actionscript XML

Please note: This is a work in progress………

In XHTML there is a standard which is used by all coders which enables browsers to render the code into viewable content.

For example, this sentence in XHTML is within paragraph tags <p >exmaple</p >

XHTML (when done properly) is seperated into three conceptual layers.

• Content
• Presentation
• Behaviour

Flash however is generally quite different. In Flash its very common to see the content seperated out (in xml or via loadVars), however the presentation and behaviour are often grouped together. It could be argued that with Flash this makes more sense. There are obvious advantages to this but there are also disadvantages.

What is Ax?

Ax is an attempt at seperating Flash movies into three layers: Content, Presentation and Behaviour.

But more than that, Ax is attempting to develop a standard for Flash.

The most important feature of Ax is the way that content is stored (The Ax file). This is a XML file which has set standards (similar to XHTML) for storing content. Like XHTML this standard is simple and caters for all types of content.

With a content standard, it is then easy to develop a contentRenderer class. The contentRenderer class talks to the presentationClass to work out how to display the different content elements. There would also be a behaviourClass that would handle things like navigation etc.

This means that you could have a working application as soon as you have the content in a Ax standards based XML. You could then extend the base classes to make the content render and behave as you want.

Advantages

• Very fast to develop
• Very easy to change how an application looks or behaves.
• External tools would be available to make development easy: For example, it would be possible to create a PHP renderer that took a Ax file and turned it into XHTML. Or a basic CMS could easily be build to handle updating Flash movies.
• Users could switch style sheets while viewing the movie. This means you could create a vision impaired presentation stylesheet (eg. high contrast, big font size)
• Plugins could be coded and shared. For example if someone created a Ax compatible drop down navigation system, it could be shared and other coders could drop the class straight into their app and it should work.
• You could have different behaviour and presentation for different devices.
• Standards are really good
• Easier to develop.

 

Example

This is an example of how Ax may work in its simplest form

function Application(){
    // load fancy stuff only for those who can handle/want it

    if(user == "someone who needs content to be accessible"){
          presentation.setStyleType("highContrastStyleSheet");
          navigation.setNavigationType("simpleList");
          behaviour.setBehaviourType("none");
    }else{
          presentation.setStyleType("fancyStyleSheet");
          navigation.setNavigationType("dropdowns");
          behaviour.setBehaviourType("fadeIn");
    }

    // load content
    contentRenderer.loadAx("myContent.xml");
}

IS this MVC??

No. Not really.

ASForms bugs and features to add

Todo: need to create a ASForms submit button

Testing: The checkbox has not been tested extensively with more than one checkbox item in a group. One checkbox item is working fine and has been tested heaps.

Download ASForms

ASForms FAQ | Download ASForms | How to use ASForms

 

 

 

 

Download ASForms.zip Version 1.2

Version 1.2 (21th April 2006)

Have added a button class and included an example of the EventManager. Still need to fix accessibility and tabbing issues.

Version 1.0 (20th April 2006)

This is the first public version of ASForms. Most of the elements are stable and tested except for the Checkbox class which has only been tested using one checkbox. The next version will have built-in accessibility as well as a button class. Released under the GPL.