Entries Tagged as “Software”
LESS/SCSS Syntax Highlighting in Dreamweaver
I started using less css a short while ago and really like having variables and nesting options for css. The only real downside was Dreamweaver's inability to apply syntax highlighting to files it does not understand. Thankfully the solution is pretty easy and takes only a few seconds.
NOTE: This technique modifies the core configuration files used by Dreamweaver so be sure to make a copy of the file and store it in a safe place until your certain things are working correctly.
We will be modifying the document called MMDocumentTypes.xml located here:
Macintosh HD/Applications/Adobe Dreamweaver CS?/configuration/DocumentTypes/MMDocumentTypes.xml
Windows users, the configuration file is called the same thing, and is located here:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS?\Configuration\DocumentTypes\MMDocumentTypes.xml
Edit the file in a plain text editor. You can use Dreamweaver if you like. You will need to restart Dreamweaver before the changes take effect.
Do a find for "CSS" and modify the either macfileextension="css" and/or winfileextension="css" to include the less file extension. it should look like macfileextension="css,less" when your done.
Also note. If you use Sass you can also add in the scss extension and use the longer scss notations, but the shorter sass extension offers no syntax highlighting since it does not contain the curly braces like css does.
Now save the file and restart Dreamweaver and open your less file and you will see all the syntax highlighting just as you would with traditional css.
→ Respond NowTags: CSS · Software
Redesigning the Desktop Calendar
Most people use a calendar of one form or another in their day to day lives. With so many people using calendars I am really surprised that nobody has gotten annoyed by their functionality to the point where they felt that they needed to rewrite the way calendars work. Maybe I am alone on this idea but stay with me.
It seems to me that the computer calendar was simply a copy of the old paper calendar. The ones that hang on the wall in your cubical with the last month still in view because you never look at the thing except when you finally remember to flip the thing to the next month. Yeah that one.
It seems to me that when designing the desktop calendar programmers took the tried and true route. They built the calendar to look just like our old trusty friend the paper calendar. Granted they gave us more views like week view, day view, and even year view. But I think their needs to be one more view. "Rolling Month View"
Rolling Month View is for people who like the birds eye view of the month, but also want to see the next three or four weeks in addition to the current week. The problem with the traditional calendar system is that if I am at the end of the current month I have to click over to the next calendar month to see what's going on in two weeks. flipping back and forth counting days, trying not to count those extra days that are dimmed out but added in there to complete the boxes in the grid.
I just want to see what's happening in the next week or two. I never care about what happened last week unless the police are asking me "Where were you on the night of…" Anyway, you get the point.
Below is a screen shot of my calendar for the month of May. Assuming today was the 25th of May, it is nearing the end of the month. Granted I can see a few days ahead, but what if I want to see what's happening the week after? I have to toggle to the next month. Meanwhile the calendar is happy to show me what I did 4 weeks ago. What a waste of space! And totally useless in my opinion.
Rolling Month View might be the solution. It continues to roll the calendar forward a week at a time so you always have the next two or three weeks ahead of you displayed in the familiar monthly grid view.
Here is a very rough screenshot for conceptual purposes. There is probably a nicer way to do the rolling calendar, but this took me all of 1 minute to put together. The point is, it makes sense even if the presentation needs some work.
If your a developer for Apple, or know a developer for Apple, can you please get this worked into the next version of iCal? I will love you long time.
→ Respond NowTags: Design · Opinions & Rants · Software · usability
Reconnecting Mac OS X 10.6.3 to Windows Shares
When Apple released their update for 10.6.3 it caused mac's to stop seeing or being able to connect to windows shared drives on the network. If you had a shortcut saved, you could still connect to those windows shares, however if you lost your shortcut—or were starting fresh—it seamed there was nothing you could do.
Previous versions of OS X showed your windows computers in your sidebar listed in the "SHARED" section. But not in 10.6.3. The other method of connecting to shared drives is to go to the "GO" menu and select "Connect to Server" (CMD-K) type in the IP address and hit Connect. For some reason Apple has defaulted the connection type to afp, which is a mac networking protocol. This results in an IP address like afp://192.168.0.10 That will not work for connecting to windows shares.
The solution is simple, change the afp:// protocol to smb:// and life will be good.
→ Respond NowTags: General · Software
Snow Leopard Firefox Fonts Fix
I had a strange problem today when I upgraded my office computer to the new Snow Leopard OS. Upon launching Firefox I noticed that all the fonts in the user interface got really fat and bold looking. I immediately started checking the preferences for a default font selection thinking the font choice had been changed. Tried resetting the preferences, tried checking the about:congig for FF thinking there might be something there. I was turning up empty handed. I had already updated my home machine without incident, so I knew it had to be localized.Here is a screen shot below of the offending UI:
After turning up empty handed in my search for a changed or damaged preference, I turned to Suitcase. I noticed that I had a lot of duplicate fonts that were not there before. I keep a tight library and instantly recognized the issue. After turning off and removing duplicate MS Office fonts both from Suitcase and from Apples Font Book — I was able to determine that the missing font was LucidaSans and/or Lucida Sans Unicode. After reactivating these two fonts the problem was fixed.
Also worth noting: On my home system I used Suitcase Fusion, and at the office I am using Suitcase Fusion 2 Other than that the systems are the same. I know Suitcase Fusion 2 has a different way of handling fonts. So this might be the root problem, but I am not really sure.
I hope this will help someone else just upgrading to Snow Leopard.
Update
I was alerted by Jason Reed that there is another possible fix for this issue. Interestingly enough also involving the font "Lucida". Design blog Stucel, has this alternate fix posted on his site: Firefox bold font UI problem in Snow Leopard So there are at least two possible fixes for this issue. If you find another solution to this issue that works for you, feel free to comment or shoot me an email.
→ Respond NowTags: General · Software
Configuring CF8 to use Google Apps
The biggest issue I have with running my own server is dealing with spam blockers, email servers, DNS servers, etc. For some of you this is easy, and a no brainer. I personally run from it like a screaming banshee. I use google hosted services for all my email needs. They make it easy, rarely ever have downtime, and the spam filtering is second to none!
Google works fine for sending email from my desktop mail client or through the web, but sending mail via scripts programatically has always been a pain in the butt in my experience. That is until today.
I started getting a lot of undelivered emails and decided it was time to look for another option. After much research, I found an article on TACFUG: ColdFusion 8 likes Google Apps. The article is incomplete and only shows some code for step 2. Not very helpful. I assume it had photos but they may have been deleted at some point. It lead me to my own testing and discovery so I guess it did help in some way.
Here is what I found. Google can accept email from your CF server but it must support SSL and TSL Connections. Coldfusion Server versions previous to CF8 did not support this. So If your using an older version of CF there is a workaround using Doug Boude's sTunnel method. Since I discovered that CF8 supports SSL and TSL connections, I will talk about that here.
Configure ColdFusion Admin
This is actually super simple and I wish I had discovered it before. It would have saved me so much heartache and pain in the past. Here is a screen shoot for reference.
- Go to the Server Settings for "Mail" and set the Mail Server value to smtp.gmail.com
- Set the Username field to a valid username in your google account.
- Add the obvious password for this account
- Lastly check the two boxes to enable SSL and TSL connections and submit.
Thats really all there is to it. Now when your server sends an email it will pass it off to Google for delivery and you will see the email appear in your sent mail folder in google webmail. Easy as pie!
→ Respond NowTags: ColdFusion · Software
