Month: April 2010

Style Confluence with CSS using a back-door approach

Posted on by

I recently had the task of creating a new theme for a Confluence-based corporate wiki in time for a big launch date.

There were a few restrictions on how I could do this, including:

  • There is no user access to the Space’s Page Layout features, which means that any changes needed there must be sent to an administrator to be added to the site. 
  • There is no user access to the server, so editing stylesheets would have to be through the application or by giving them to the admin to upload. We could put assets on another server but sometimes this can cause security issues with browsers, coming from mixed security level domains. Similarly, every image to be used at the Space Page Layout level would have to be sent to an admin for upload. 
  • The Documentation theme was not available to us yet. 
  • ThemeBuilder was not available yet. 
  • And – it goes without saying – the schedule was tight.
Our first challenge was to add a collapsible navigation tree on the left side of the page, similar to the Documentation theme does, but without using the Documentation theme, since we do not have that option yet.

Continue reading

Use SC Plugin for OS X to browse Subversion repositories in the Finder

Posted on by

If you need to browse source code repositories to get the latest build of some application (e.g. the JW Player), one of the easiest ways is to use the SC Plugin for OS X by Tigris.org.
Picture 13.jpg

The SCPlugin is a free system extension that allows you to use the Finder’s “Connect to Server” command to connect to the repository as if it were another drive.

FinderScreenSnapz001.jpg

Continue reading

Umbraco installation error: The virtual path ‘/install/steps/welcome.ascx’ maps to another application

Posted on by

After installing “Umbraco,” you may get the following error:


The virtual path ‘/install/steps/welcome.ascx’ maps to another application, which is not allowed.

Screen shot 2010-04-21 at 2.57.47 PM.jpg

This is because you have installed Umbraco in a virtual directory (not at the web root of the “Default Web Site” in IIS terminology). It is a path problem, easily corrected by fixing the paths in the web.config file.

Continue reading

Add features to your Canon Camera with CHDK

Posted on by

Screen shot 2010-04-21 at 5.53.22 PM.jpg

Images from a flickr gallery devoted to CHDK (these are not my images!)

I’ve experimented with all the features on my Canon point-and-shoot camera, but one thing it is missing that would be very nice to have is auto-exposure bracketing, so I could create HDR images more easily.

It turns out there is an alternate operating system, CHDK, or “Canon Hack Development Kit,” that you can install on an SD card. When the camera boots up with it, lots of new features are available. It doesn’t hurt the camera, and disappears the minute you boot up without the special SD card.

CHDK makes it possible to do some camera hacking by writing scripts in BASIC that can be run on your camera.

Continue reading

Remove mouse-click sounds in Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter and Articulate

Posted on by

Adobe Captivate, Articulate and Adobe Presenter can all add annoying clicking sounds or “pops” between slides when there is narration. These clicks often are associated with either picking up the actual mouse-click used to switch slides, are added in by the application by design, or added in as an audio artifact. The solutions vary depending on the application and cause.

  1. Adobe Captivate: the clicks can be mouse-click sounds added by Captivate. To silence these generated mouse-click sounds, you may want to try this suggestion from the Paul Dewhurst’s “RaisingAimee” site. Replace the standard mouse-click sound with a silent sound file from Paul’s site:

    Continue reading