The Designspace

Drupal: "Headers already sent" error

When installing a new instance of drupal, I got the error "headers already sent."
I also got this same error a few weeks earlier when installing "Gallery" (Gallery website)

In the case of Gallery, the issue was that I had created a new blank "config.php" page by control-clicking the gallery folder and selecting New File from the menu, forgetting that this creates a page with html headers. I didn't notice, because I did not open the page to look at it - I simply uploaded it. Stripping out those headers solved the problem.

In the case of Drupal, it turned out it was a problem with the theme having some extra returns, although since I simply replaced it with a new copy, i was never sure exactly where the problem was. There are several forum messages that discuss this problem. In some cases it is a problem with magic quotes.

View thread 1
View thread 2
View thread 3

Avoiding serious hand problems from using the mouse

Many of my graphic designer and computer geek friends have some form of carpal tunnel syndrome. Several have had operations, and some are nearly crippled. Women seem to be the most frequent sufferers, but I know a few men with hand problems also.

I first began having hand problems about 6 or 7 years ago, and realized I would have to get serious about changing the way I used my hands to prevent them from getting worse. The first thing that had to go was the mouse. I bought a Wacom tablet which eliminated most of the click and hold activity - you still click and hold but you do it by simply dropping the pen to the tablet and moving it across from the drop point.

The other problematic movement for me was scrolling. To cut down on the amount of scrolling I do with my right hand, I added a Kensington Orbit trackball on the left side. So I do fine detail work and precise positioning with my right hand, and big scrolling movements with the left.

On days when my hands have just plain had enough, I take breaks and relax my hands with a trick learned from a manicurist: massage the forearms by grasping my forearm near the elbow, between the thumb and forefinger of the other hand. Then draw the fingers up the arm toward the hand putting some pressure on the arm as they move up. If necessary I quit doing the offending task, for the rest of the day, period.

Using Safari with Novell Groupwise WebAccess

I use Novell's Groupwise at work, and when out of the office often use their WebAccess. There is a problem with using Safari with Groupwise WebAccess where the key buttons that enable you to write new mail or create new calendar entries are not visible - they fall off the bottom of the page. Fortunately there is a solution:
Use the terminal or TinkerTool (see versionTracker.com for this) to enable the debug menu on Safari. Then set the user agent in the debug menu to Windows MSIE 6.0 before using Safari to view the WebAccess page.

For more on this issue, see the Macosxhints discussion

How to NOT display Titles on Static Pages in Drupal

This is basically a way to style elements according to what kind of node they are in. So a title in a book page will look different than a title in a story.

This is based on some code written by Erik Hopp as shown in This thread
The idea is, we want each element to have a style assigned to it that not only makes a distinction between the ELEMENT type but the NODE type the element is in. So for example, instead of a title being styled only as

   <h1 class="title">This is the Title of a Static Page</h1>

we want the class name to specify that this title is within a "particular" type of node.

        <h1 class="title-page">This is the Title of a Static Page</h1>
or
         <h1 class="title-story">This is the Title of a Story</h1>

So if we want to hide the titles on Static Pages, we could set the styles in xtemplate.css like this:

.title-page {
      visibility:hidden;
}

which preserves the space used by the title but hides the title, or like this

.title-page {
      display:none;
}

which does not preserve the space used by the title.

Then we could also create a separate style for .title-story that shows story titles in one color, and another for .title-weblink or whatever other types of nodes are being used.

The steps are

1) in the xtemplate.theme, in the function "xtemplate_node, in the section after

 $xtemplate->template->assign(array(

add the line:

	      "node_type" => $node->type, 

2) in xtemplate.xtmpl, in the node specification, add the node_type variable wherever you need to make the class name more specific. So for instance, instead of

<!-- BEGIN: title -->
    <h2 class="title"><a href="{link}">{title}</a></h2>
    <!-- END: title -->

add the variable node_type after "title":

<!-- BEGIN: title -->
    <h2 class="title-{node_type}"><a href="{link}">{title}</a></h2>
    <!-- END: title -->

The output will be:

<h1 class="title-page"><a href="link to the node">Whatever the title is</a></h1>

Then you can create different styles for each node type if you like.

Mail.app won't reply to some emails sent from aol.com

The other day I received an email from an aol member. When I tried to reply to their note, I found that I couldn't! Hitting the reply button or selecting "reply" from the menu did not work.

I found the temporary fix here:

"When viewing the message, press [ Apple + Option + P ] or choose [ View -> Message -> Plain Text Alternative ]. You should then be able to reply / forward normally. "