Category: Web Building

Our complete set of customized site files for new dotproject customizers

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For all the dotProject newbies out there, this is the kind of thing I wish I’d had when I got started – it would have saved me a lot of time. I’m posting all the files for a dotproject site I manage, since it seems it may help people get started in customizing dotProject.

Download Files (5.8 mb zip file)

To find my changes, search across all the files for the phrases “ellen added” or “ellen changed” in various comments.

One note of caution! I am not an expert in php or dotproject so the fact that something has been done doesn’t necessarily mean it is done in the best way, nor even that works. But these files should help to get you going. This is presented “as is” and I will not fix things for you or document things beyond what is in the articles I post here (Browse all my dotProject posts)

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AS3: TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert flash.display::SimpleButton

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If you get an error like this in an actionscript 3 Flash file: TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert flash.display::SimpleButton@61422481 to [symbolname]. at flash.display::Sprite/constructChildren() at flash.display::Sprite() at flash.display::MovieClip() at classname()[/path_to/as/classname.as:34] Check the symbol

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How to tell which Amazon items interest your visitors

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One of the things that I always wondered about Amazon Associates reports was that it the reports display what has been ordered but not the items that were clicked on but not ordered.

Recently I stumbled on that information by accident, so here it is:

Go to your Amazon Associates Orders Report.

Picture 43.jpeg

Select a date range and scroll down to the report. Items with orders will be shown. But Items with no orders will be hidden, and if there were no orders during the period you select, there will be a very final-looking and misleading message “There was no activity in this period”.

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CVS error: server reported an error while performing the “cvs add” command. common: cvs server: [filename] added independently by second party.

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When trying to replace some old files in my local workspace, then commit the new ones to CVS, I got this error:

    The server reported an error while performing the “cvs commit” command. myproject: cvs server: failed to create lock directory for `/cvsrepositories/path_to/myproject’ (/cvsrepositories/path_to/myproject/subfolder/#cvs.lock): No such file or directory common: cvs server: lock failed – giving up myproject: cvs [server aborted]: lock failed – giving up – did not match any documents.

It turned out that the files had been previously stored in another CVS repository, with a different directory structure. Some of the directories still had CVS folders with pointers to the old repository directories and hostname.

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An Actionscript 3 Drag and Drop Medical Treasure Hunt Game

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This game is a framework to create a simulation of a crash cart in a hospital. A crash cart is a red metal tool cart with 6 drawers, filled with the items used by the Cardiac Arrest team to save people’s lives when they have a cardiac arrest. Speed is of the essence in an arrest, so the people on the team need to know exactly where each item is in the drawers. The goal of this game is to help train team members to find the items they need.

VIEW DEMO

An item to be found is randomly chosen, and the player clicks on a drawer and looks through the items to find the one they are looking for. When it is found, they drag the item to the target (which will probably be animated and a whole lot cooler looking in the final game. If they get it right, they get positive feedback of some sort and another item is chosen. If not, the item pops back to its last position before the drag and they get another chance to find the correct item.

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Drupal module Feed Aggregator escapes HTML tags in feeds

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Drupal’s Feed aggregator has a problem displaying some of the escaped tags in Google Alerts Feeds. For example, see the screenshot below:

Picture 31.jpeg

The fix is to alter the code in
modules/aggregator/aggregator.module

Search for

 function aggregator_save_item($edit)

In both the UPDATE statement and the INSERT statement:

replace $edit['title']

with 

strip_tags($edit['title'])
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The role of search in corporate learning programs

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Enterprise Search as Learning Technology

With the current training industry interest in elearning trends like informal learning, social and collaborative Web 2.0 learning technologies, it’s easy to overlook the importance of the humble search box as a learning tool.

More important now than ever

As companies seek to increase productivity with fewer people and resources, one way to improve efficiency is to create better connections between people and the information they need to do their jobs. It’s not hard to make big improvements in the search situation companies’ internal networks: the barriers that exist between knowledge workers and and information resources within company intranets are profound and economically significant. They fall into several categories:

  1. Information is hidden away in personal folders in documents that cannot be accessed through the web, and are not searched by a search engine.
  2. Web-based information that could have wider access is locked down to a small group of people.
  3. Information is available, but not located where people think to look for it.
  4. Information is available and can be searched but there are problems with the search engine’s judgement or display which prevent the user from finding it.
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