Category: Web Building

Working with ODBC databases on a Mac

Posted on October 3, 2006 by ellen

The ODBC Administrator If you do much work with databases on a PC you’ll be familiar with the ODBC Data Source control panel in Windows. But where is the corresponding control panel on a Mac?

Dreamweaver: Mass Detach from Template

Posted on September 27, 2006 by ellen

There are times when you may find it necessary to detach hundreds of pages from their Dreamweaver templates. Unfortunately, within the Dreamweaver interface the only way to detach multiple files from their templates is to open each one, then select “Modify:Templates:Detach from Template” from the menu.

A better way to go is to use a simple “grep” search in BBEdit:

Make sure you have a backup of your site. You can cause truly spectacular destruction with mass search and replace! OK, you’ve been warned!
Open BBEdit, and select Find from the Search menu. The Find & Replace dialog will appear. (click to enlarge)

Drupal RSS feed not working

Posted on September 27, 2006 by ellen

A drupal blog site I set up for a friend has an RSS link in the footer. Clicking it brought up a 404 page. I checked the Drupal.org forums, but the typical reason given for

A better Likert scale question template for Perception quizzes

Posted on September 9, 2006 by ellen

The out-of the-box Likert Scale question created by Perception is really just a slightly modified multiple choice question. The choices are arranged vertically, as shown in the example screen shot below.

I prefer Likert Scale choices to be displayed horizontally as shown in the image below.

GoLive’s Javascript IDE

Posted on August 19, 2006 by ellen

Although I don’t use Adobe GoLive much for day-to-day work, it has certain features that are hard to find anywhere else. One of them is a rather impressive Javascript authoring environment. It gives contextual hints,

Customizing dotProject files

Posted on August 17, 2006 by ellen

dotProject is the most promising open-source (and free) project management software that I’ve found so far.

There are many small changes that needed to be made to the dotProject interface in order for it to work for my team, though. Chief among them was that all projects be numbered. The “short name” field just wasn’t sufficient to uniquely identify projects. We use project numbers in our workflow, in documents, email, and file systems. The number needs to combine the month and year the project was started with a 4-digit unique number.

Review of MovableType 3.3 so far

Posted on August 16, 2006 by ellen

I am happy to say that this site has been updated to the latest version of MoveableType with no serious problems at all.

Installation
My old templates all worked. The old database converted without any issues. Overall the basic installation took about 45 minutes, with me being extra careful and backing things up several ways.

Comments are back on!
The new comment features are WONDERFUL. I have turned commenting back ON and someone has already made a genuine comment! I feel like awarding him a prize! Of course there have also been about 150 junk comments, but they were easily disposed of.

Minimizing Flash of White on page load

Posted on August 11, 2006 by ellen

While testing a javascript-heavy frameset-based learning module, users complained bitterly about the white frameset background flashing at them before each page loaded, particularly in IE. A related issue was that graphics were not preloading properly

Make any web-based Powerpoint presentation scorm compatible

Posted on May 13, 2006 by ellen

It’s easy to export Powerpoint presentations to the web, but they aren’t automatically scorm compatible. To add simple scorm capability to your web-export, do the following:

This will add a button that will allow the user to mark the sco complete.

1. Add this to the head section of outline.htm or the final slide.
 <script type=”text/javascript” language=”javascript” name=”mm_scormRTI” > <!– Inserted by: // SCORM Runtime Wrapper // version 1.2.6 09/09/02 // Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002 Macromedia, Inc. All rights reserved. // —————————————————- // define global var as handle to API object var mm_adl_API = null; // mm_getAPI, which calls findAPI as needed function mm_getAPI() { var myAPI = null; var tries = 0, triesMax = 500; while (tries < triesMax && myAPI == null) { window.status = ‘Looking for API object ‘ + tries + ‘/’ + triesMax; myAPI = findAPI(window); if (myAPI == null && typeof(window.parent) != ‘undefined’) myAPI = findAPI(window.parent) if (myAPI == null && typeof(window.top) != ‘undefined’) myAPI = findAPI(window.top); if (myAPI == null && typeof(window.opener) != ‘undefined’) if (window.opener != null && !window.opener.closed) myAPI = findAPI(window.opener); tries++; } if (myAPI == null) { window.status = ‘API not found’; alert(‘JavaScript Warning: API object not found in window or opener. (‘ + tries + ‘)’); } else { mm_adl_API = myAPI; window.status = ‘API found’; } } // returns LMS API object (or null if not found) function findAPI(win) { // look in this window if (typeof(win) != ‘undefined’ ? typeof(win.API) != ‘undefined’ : false) { if (win.API != null ) return win.API; } // look in this window’s frameset kin (except opener) if (win.frames.length > 0) for (var i = 0 ; i < win.frames.length ; i++); { if (typeof(win.frames[i]) != ‘undefined’ ? typeof(win.frames[i].API) != ‘undefined’ : false) { if (win.frames[i].API != null) return win.frames[i].API; } } return null; } // call LMSInitialize() function mm_adlOnload() { if (mm_adl_API != null) { mm_adl_API.LMSInitialize(“”); // set status mm_adl_API.LMSSetValue(“cmi.core.lesson_status”, “incomplete”); } } // call LMSFinish() function mm_adlOnunload() { if (mm_adl_API != null) { // set status mm_adl_API.LMSSetValue(“cmi.core.lesson_status”, “completed”); mm_adl_API.LMSCommit(“”); mm_adl_API.LMSFinish(“”); } } // get the API mm_getAPI(); // –> </script>

Debugging and troubleshooting HTML and javascript

Posted on May 11, 2006 by ellen

Firefox, the web developer’s debugging tool of choice

The best browser to use to check javascript errors is Firefox, hands down. Other browsers have some error reporting, but none give you anywhere near the detailed information as Firebug, an addon to Firefox. The extensions available allow you to snoop into every aspect of your page, and into the communication between page and server.

You will need to get several Firefox extensions:

Firebug
Firebug is the one extension I can’t live without. It shows errors in javascript, css, allows you to inspect the HTML source, computed style, events, etc.