Flash Upload, HTTP 406 and Frustration
December 8, 2006
I know I'm supposed to pepper in some "normal people" posts here and there, but what can I say, right now we are on a nerd streak.
In the latest alpha of SlideShowPro Director, we are implementing a Flash based uploading architecture, mainly for upload progress and multiple file uploads. When the first build got out to a few testers, we immediately saw issues with the uploader silently failing.
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Widon't you just use Ruby?
September 22, 2006
I recently came across a post by Shaun Inman describing a term I had not heard before (at least with regard to typography): Widowing. Widowing is when a word flows to the next line only to end up all by its' lonesome. See Shaun's post on the matter for a spiffy visual aid and a PHP function (in the form of a Wordpress plugin) to give those widows some company.
We needed a function like this in a Rails project currently underway, so I cooked up a Ruby solution using Shaun's PHP as a guide. I chose to extend the String class, placing the file in the lib directory of my rails project and including it via the application controller.
# lib/string_utils.rb
class String
def widont()
space = self.rstrip.rindex(' ')
return self if space.nil?
self[0, space] + ' ' + self[space + 1, self.size]
end
end
Now we can use it on any HTML bound string when we need to prevent widowing.
>> a = "This is sort of a long string that might leave a widow."
>> a.widont()
=> "This is sort of a long string that might leave a widow."
I'm sure some Ruby whiz could pare that down to a single line, but it does the trick.
Disclaimer: I am well aware that this very post may contain widows, and can appreciate the irony.
SSPAdmin is all grown up now....
May 21, 2006
Well, one of the many excuses reasons I have been quiet around here over the past 6 months has been my work on SSPAdmin. Today, that work finally enters the light of day, as a brand new product.
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SSPAdmin, Brackets and New Material
March 14, 2005
Just a random update to the loyal few. Here is what is happening in my neck of the woods:
- SSPAdmin has passed 70 downloads in just 2 weeks, better than I could ever have imagined.
- My Brackets are filled out, are yours? More thoughts on that before the tourney starts...
- A new article over at Step Away from the Tables entitled Playing the Percentages.
That is all for now, check back Wednesday for my NCAA predictions!
SSPAdmin
February 26, 2005
Last week, Todd Dominey released the much anticipated SlideShowPro, a flash component for making dynamic, really slick slideshows. After purchase, I wanted to be able to control my photos a little more so I got to work developing a simple PHP/MySQL backend to work with SSP. The result: SSPAdmin.
For just $5 US, you can have an easy to install backend that works seamlessly with SlideShowPro. Visit the SSPAdmin Minisite for more info.
Get to Steppin'
February 25, 2005
After over a year or so of putting it off, Doy and I have finally gotten a project off the ground that we are pretty excited about. It's called Step Away from the Tables and is a web development/design blog targeted at people who do their designing/developing in a church setting. We're excited to be back writing about this stuff again, and I know that it will be good for me to separate some of my ultrageek posts from here, and make this more of a Tech/Sports/Stupid Things I Have Done kind of blog. Sound Good?
So it's out there (are you listening, Google...Spider I Say!) so feel free to check out Step Away from the Tables and my kickoff article, "Divine Inspiration?". Back to regular programming soon...
The New Telemarketers
November 29, 2004
I have always hated talking on the phone. There is just something awkward about it to me, and I always seem to forget the things I needed to say. That is why I love email. I can ponder over a note for a few minutes, read it a few times, make sure it gets my point across. Because of this, the ratio of emails I send and receive far exceeds that of phone calls. Some stats to back that up: Since last February, when I first started using the new PowerBook, I have received some 2000 emails, excluding junk and auto-generated stuff like Word of the Day. In that same period I have sent around 1000 emails, proving I do in fact have twice as many ears as mouths. Now, on to my point...
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The Devotional Tales
November 17, 2004
Recently completed, thedevotionaltales.com is the latest work from bradleyboy productions. Young Georgian author Nick Shelton contacted me around a month ago for a site to be launched alongside his book at the beginning of December. Teaming with Doy Cave (Art Direction), we banged out a site we are pretty proud of in a little under three weeks. Not bad for late nights and weekends!
Fine Tuning
November 10, 2004
Not a big update here, just some fine tuning to the Photo section of northoftheborder. Updated the look and functionality of the albums, including a little javascript fade-in that went flying around the blogosphere yesterday (it can be found here). Look for more interesting stuff later this week...for now, check out the new and improved photo section.
The Flash Video Jukebox, XML Style
October 2, 2004
Recently a question was posted at ChurchMedia.net about a flash application that would allow the user to select from several videos within one interface. I recently completed a similar project over at ccsb.ca called the video vault, and provided the source file to the folks at CMN. I quickly realized two things...
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In the Light of Day
September 14, 2004
Well after a rant against the internet followed by a brief absence of writing here, some of you may be wondering if the internet struck back with a vengeance against this little one who dared shake his fist at the giant. Not so. Things have piled up around here, and this is always one of the first things to get pushed to the back burner.
But a sleepless night over the last night or two provided me a chance to finally implement version 3 of northoftheborder, code named "In the Light of Day".
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Why I Love the Internet (to be Followed Closely by Why I Hate It)
August 25, 2004
First, the love. I like many of you have been watching the Olympics off and on, and as always I am just about as interested in the commercials as I am in the Games themselves. I find I get a lot of design/creative inspiration while watching what others are doing with television production, particularly surrounding a big event like the Olympics.
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bradleyboy 4.5...or 5.0, I lost track
August 21, 2004
If you have been following the Web Process series, you know that I have been undergoing a makeover of bradleyboy.com. There are more articles to come, but I didn't want my business site to be down too long as I have been getting good referrals of late. So take a look, it is a little rough around the edges I am sure. I will be adding more to the portfolio in the coming weeks as well as other tweaks here and there. Feel free to let me know if something is off (likely) or something is spelled wrong (very likely).
UPDATE: After looking at this on Internet Explorer this morning, I pulled half my hair out. It is doing some weird stuff on the main page, but it will have to wait for Monday. Meanwhile, why not Browse Happy?
Web Process V coming Monday...
Web Process: Part IV
August 16, 2004
Ok, I gave you the rest of last week to digest the quick hitting Part I, Part II and Part III of the Web Design Process series. Now we get into geekier territory, as we ditch table-based design and lay out a clean, semantic XHTML document. Why? I'm glad you asked.
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Bye Bye Omnis, Times Have Passed You By....
August 11, 2004
I have moved servers. Omnis was great, but better things are now available. If you are seeing this message, everything has happened already. If you notice any quirks please let me know. Look for Part IV of the Web Process series come Monday.
Web Process: Part III
August 11, 2004
We got the ball rolling last Friday with the basics of hosting, domains and DNS. Yesterday we got to the heart of the matter by outlining the vision of the site. Finally, we can design. Note I said finally. The mistake I always used to make was jumping right into what the site should look like, without even thinking about what the site should accomplish. But we're past that now and we're ready to bring together a web composition.
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Web Process: Part II
August 10, 2004
This is the second installment (first one is here) on the development process of a web site. Part II is all about vision. What will the site be? Why is the site even there? What part of the content drives the site? And finally, what it should look like.
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Hoverless Current Links sans Titles
August 9, 2004
Recently, Mike Rundle wrote one of those articles that makes you slap your forehead and say, "How in the world did I not think of that?". Mike's idea was to use the CSS cursor rule to make a link to the page you were currently view appear not to be a link. By using cursor:default there is no change to that ever telling hand cursor, making the user think there is no link to be found. As Mike states, nothing is more frustrating than clicking a piece of the navigation, only to see the same page load again. UPDATE: Through the comments on Mike's article, some are suggesting using cursor:text to show the text selection tool instead of the cursor. Works too, I still prefer the default cursor.
I started applying this to a site I was working on and quickly ran into a new issue, what about the title attribute?
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Web Process: Part I
August 6, 2004
All 7 of you who regularly come by here will forgive me for not posting over the last week or so, I had a bit of a writer's block. Also, we are gearing up for a big move, bradleyboy.com and I. After some time at hosting provider Omnis, I am shifting bradleyboy.com et al (that means northoftheborder too..) to my Dreamhost Account to save me money and headaches, mostly the latter.
As I was doing this, and going through writer's block as well, I realized I get many questions to the effect of "What do you do anyway?". The ways of web development usually are reserved for the uber-geek, and it is usually in the interest of the geek for it to remain that way. After all there is nothing better than job security, right? Well here we go, part one of a series on the making of a web site from the very beginning in laymen's terms.
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Armchair Quarterback
June 3, 2004
This has been an exciting week for me, with two (1, 2) listings on public sites that made my head swell even bigger than its' natural proportions (Right, Doy?). It has, however, introduced me to a relatively new idea I have been getting to know over the past year: Public Scrutiny. As a Communications Director, I often have pieces of my work floating about through Canada and even the US, whether it be on the web, in print or in the form of a video. What have I learned? A couple of things....
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The Garden
June 1, 2004
For the second time in a week, some of my work has been featured in a fairly public arena. Off the heels of the CSS Beauty listing, Dave Shea has chosen my design, entitled Invitation, as an official entry into his CSS Zen Garden. (Obviously this has been heavily influenced by my wedding plans). For you web developer geeks, you know what this is and you can see it here.
For those of you who don't know what this is, I will briefly explain. You enter a file known as a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), which controls all elements of a single web page. You are not allowed to change the html file, only the CSS. In the end, everyone's page has the same content, but all look different. It makes for challenging work and I am honored to be chosen as an official design. Check it out here.
Hide the Valuables...
May 29, 2004
Well, you are bound to see some new folks around here. I am flattered to have been listed on a new site called CSS Beauty. The site showcases designs featuring good ol' standards based code.
Many thanks to Alex and the folks at CSS Beauty and welcome one and all. No kool-aid on the carpet...
When Will They Ever Learn...
May 25, 2004
In my work with the CCSB, I run into all kinds of people who use PowerPoint, some rather religiously (pardon the pun). Obviously I see the whole spectrum of quality in these presentations, depending on the user's ability and experience with the program. The rather shocking thing to me is how often I see old school clip art (circa 1992) creeping into today's presentations which, without such graphics, might look halfway decent design-wise.
Well, after taking the new Office 2004 for the Mac for a test drive, I know why these little buggers continue to plague us...
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northoftheborder :: Take 2
May 24, 2004
This has been in the hopper for some time now, I have really been wanting to redesign this sucker. When I first decided to blog, it was a typical "Brad" decision, take the fastest route possible to accomplish the task. What was left behind was a poorly laid out, hard to manipulate site that resembled a mullet. Looking good in the front, trouble in the back...
I wanted to retain the black and white feel, but add some more shades. I pulled a nice pic off of istockphoto (my favorite new resource) for the banner image and utilized inner shadows (since everyone seems to be using outer shadows these days) to give some depth. I decided to use Trebuchet MS for type, even with the recent outcry against it in the web community.
Next was to decide to use or not to use the new Movable Type 3.0. At first I balked, seeing the new pricing structure and limits on the free version made me run into the arms of other women (figuratively of course), mainly Wordpress and Textpattern. I spent quite a bit of time in both, but in the end just didn't click with either. Two really fine products though. At last I downloaded the new MT3 and I must say I'm pleased. Not a ton of new features, but the new administration interface alone is worth the upgrade.
So here it is, northoftheborder v2. New to the site are archives of all previous entries by both date and category and a new in-page commeting system. Enjoy....
Like It? Hate It? Indifferent?
The Chicken or the Egg
April 28, 2004
I am not sure what precipitated this, my wanting to post some pictures of our recent trip to the Canadian Rockies or the need to find a custom way to create an online photo album. Either way, both can be seen here. Hopefully I will post more galleries soon as the process is pretty easy now that it is set up. Anywho, if you want to see a few snaps, click here. Geeks might want to read on...
For the development of this, I used a single php file for display (index.php) and a single php file for data (data.php, I am so creative...). I also used a super nifty plug-in for iPhoto by the name of betterHTMLExport. BHE builds upon the web exporting features of iPhoto and probably would have done about the whole album, but what fun would that have been?! I utilized the "Export Images Only" option to resize and compress my album of pictures from the Rockies. BHE exports them (fairly quick I might add) in a numbered sequence which makes it much easier later on. One small caveat: BHE starts with zero, which can be very confusing later on. I ended up putting a dummy image as the first pic in the iPhoto album then discarding it so that my photos started with one.
As for the php, it is pretty straightforward. The index page reads a variable to see where you are in the sequence (or puts you at the beginning if you just got there) and fills in the image url with the corresponding number (remember that numbered sequence?). It then calls upon the data file to get the caption for each picture along with the title of the album. The links just post an addition or subtraction to the variable and refresh the page. Quick, easy and light and it can be used over and over again. Just change the captions and the title, and drop a new set of pictures in.
The layout is controlled by a master css file in the root "photo" directory so that it can be used for all future albums. And of course XHTML on the ground level...
The Wedding Site...Finally..
April 16, 2004
I know I said it would be up oh....three months ago or so, but like fine wine....oh nevermind. It's done. Head on over to learn a little more about us and the wedding, as well as some travel tips (hotel info coming very soon It is up now, check out the travel page).
bradleyboy 4.0
April 16, 2004
Two web sites in one day! Actually this one has been a long time comin'...
I finally had some time recently to wrap up a major re-design of bradleyboy productions' online home. It is now up and ready for your scrutiny at bradleyboy.com. Let me know what you think...
As If I Don't Have Enough to Do: Part Deux
December 18, 2003
Well, I am at it again. With other projects and responsibilities looming (*cough...Christmas shopping...cough*) I decided to start designing our wedding invites. Hey, only like 4 months until we need to send them! Anywho, here is a first draft...tell me what you think.
voici venir l'hiver...
December 13, 2003
For my monolingual friends (who are just like me by the way), that's "Here comes winter...". Much thanks to my friends and family in the midwest who just received a touch of snow themselves, for someone down there gave the nasty weather pattern a quite detailed map to my place. That storm is bearing down on the northeast and we are to get our first major snow (8-12 inches Sunday and another 5 or so Monday) of the season. Not to mention that it is downright cold here as well. That is no typo at the top of the screen, it is really that cold (9 degrees Fahrenheit at the time of this writing).
Be sure to check back Monday, as there will be a big wedding announcement and maybe a few pictures of the snow.
Geek Alert: I have received some questions about how this page always displays updated weather. Well, I obviously don't jump on here every time there is a change and update it myself. The new kid on the block in terms of web data (and everything else for that matter) is a format called XML (Extensible Markup Language). It stores data in custom tags, making it easily tailored for any application. Well, the weather channel outputs XML weather data for thousands of cities every 30 minutes and, using PHP to parse the XML data, this page always has updated weather. Check out this site for more info.
As If I Didn't Have Enough to Do
December 6, 2003
Well, I thought I would never give in. Not for me. Didn't have time. Well, the newest craze to hit the web since the Flash intro has enveloped me despite my greatest efforts. The Blog (short for weblog) is everywhere, allowing any pundit with a keyboard and a server to blab on about just about anything on his or her mind, assuming they ran it through that filter in the first place. Even the president has a blog. So why not me?
The purpose was really two-fold. First, my family is always on my case because I cannot seem to latch on to the e-mail ring that flies around to different members far and wide (especially when everything I do revolves around the internet). This will give both them and close friends a way to keep up with this ever wandering son in his days north of the border. Secondly, this will act as a sounding board for myself and others I know in this business to throw ideas, problems and solutions around. So come by, sift through the geeky stuff (or the family stuff; depending on who you are) and feel free to respond if something tickles your fancy.