Notes to follow.
Monday session:
Popularity: 9% [?]
Earlier this week NeatlySliced.com was transferred to a new host. Before the DNS switched, I wanted to test the new site. The new host uses virtual hosting, which means that I have to change the hidden /etc/hosts OS X file to assign the IP to blog.neatlysliced.com.
Okay, so going to Go > Go To Folder from the finder to access the hidden /etc folder can get pretty redundant. Fortunately, there is a widget that allows editing of your /etc/hosts file with quite a number fewer keystrokes. It does require usage of your admin password, but you can easily delete the password after performing your business.
Download HostsWidget. It is freeware.
Popularity: 11% [?]
I’m always eager for debug tools in different browsers so that I can troubleshoot browser-unique rendering CSS and JavaScript issues.
I am yet to uncover a decent Safari Web Dev toolbar. A simple option, however, is the Debug menu. The Debug menu features User Agent spoofing, JavaScript console (not quite as good as Firefox’s), and a view of the DOM tree, among other things.
To enable the Debug menu, first launch OS X’s Terminal. Then type the following:
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
To disable the Debug menu, simply replace the 1 with a zero:
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 0
Relaunch Safari and view your new Debug menu, next to the Help menu. Read a short bit of the JavaScript Console at Apple’s Safari Dev page.
Have you found useful Safari development tools? Leave a comment and let me know.
Popularity: 17% [?]
I installed Safari 3 Beta on my work Windows machine to test some sites. It was running fairly well, but one site that I hit crashed every time I hit a menu option. I did some googling, and the error code I received matched that of an application hitting a bad batch of memory. In other words, this is due to a memory corruption error; Aviv Raff lamented the same issue. In addition to the memory problem, MacRumors.com reports additional security breaches.
In any vein, I’m definitely holding off on installing Safari 3 Beta on my MacBook until a more stable release. Not only do I wish to avoid the problems, but the Beta overwrites Safari 2, much to an over-eager web developer’s chagrin.
Only install Safari 3 Beta if you are using Windows and if you need to quickly see how a page is rendered in Safari. Otherwise, hold your horses.
Popularity: 7% [?]
XML is the bread and butter of the so-called Web 2.0 development movement. While writing a web service to export some data to an XML file, through a few trials I learned some best practices with XML naming conventions.
These are nothing new for most programming languages, but sometimes slight variances apply (e.g., is punctuation allowed for the first character, as an underscore?). The rules according to the W3C schools guidelines:
- Names can contain letters, numbers, and other characters
- Names must not start with a number or punctuation character
- Names must not start with the letters xml (or XML, or Xml, etc)
- Names cannot contain spaces
Thus, "_" and "-" are acceptable characters.
The "-" character may be allowed, but it may lead to problems later with server-side code trying to subtract your XML element values. I used "-" in my CSS, since it is of no consequence in that language, and spread the habit to XML believing the same to be true. Use the underscore (_) and save yourself a headache.
In like manner, strive for all lower-case characters. XML is case-sensitive, just like CSS. Using camel-case will only lead to heartache when you typo that one character and your whole world explodes into hate.
Ensure you have a solid schema. Often times to display your stored XML data, you will use an XSLT. XSLTs will often work by cycling through elements of a consistent naming convention and outputting your values depending on logic or required HTML.
Just last week I absentmindedly generated an XML file with a minor schema failing. The resulting XML, with that failing exaggerated, could have resembled the following:
This would be impossible to transform with an XSLT, as "rock" and "folk", in the structure of the XML, have no correlation. In a similar vein, the artist inside the genre could be anything - there is no way to know that "radiohead" and "matt-costa" are both artists.
Follow a schema with generic, semantic names, and either use elemental content or attributes to display your pertinent values. A refined XML file follows:
Ah, how much easier this is to transform with an XSLT. Rather than analyzing element depth - which is vicious as it is inconsistent with larger XML files - one could process based on each genre, each artist, et cetera.
Get a naming convention down before you start processing your data; sometimes one of the tougher parts of programming is coming up with appropriate names. Be universal, be sustainable.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Lost data, tearshedding, massive re-writes
Moronic failure to back-up your data on a regular basis.
Write your drafts in word documents so that you have a backup on your machine even after publishing an article. Additionally, or concurrently, run regular backups of your database.
Just today, I learned that my database had been switched over to a new server weeks ago and that the site was still pointing to the old server's database. Today, the old database was shut down, leading to downtime and the erasing of recent posts. The recent posts were easily restored via the cached copy in my feed, but the unpublished drafts waiting for publish are, sadly, lost.
So, be smarter than me and don't rely on your server's database to protect your data.
Popularity: 8% [?]
My brother sent You're A Standardista If... to me before I left. I had to nod and smile at a few of the items listed. My personal addition:
You're a standardista if... you draw with pen and paper the various id and class selectors and elements of a page before ever laying a finger on your keyboard.
Popularity: 3% [?]
