Use ABCpdf to generate pdfs of multi-paged html documents

Posted on by

I maintain a library of learning modules which are constantly under development and revision. Our users often want PDFs to print out or view off-line, but we can’t maintain up-to-date PDF’s of each module manually. We needed a way to make on-demand PDFs of whatever the current state of the module is when the pdf is requested.

After looking at many pdf solutions I settled on “ABCpdf ASP 6.0” by WebSuperGoo.com.

ABCpdf has the advantages of fairly low cost (about $400.00 for one server, or FREE if you link back to them), a better HTML-rendering engine than most, and an easy to learn API, so you can write custom dynamic PDF applications.

Continue reading

Construct navigation for your Amazon aStore using php and YUI

Posted on by

Amazon “aStores” are very easy to set up, but you will probably find you want to customize the navigation, particularly if you want to integrate the store into your own site. I’m in the process of doing just that, and decided to construct my own navigation system for the DesignSpace book shop.. The php script that creates the tabs for the store is based on the YUI (Yahoo UI) “Tab View Control” and can be easily adapted to your own site.

This is just a down and dirty approach but it is a good start for you to build from.

Continue reading

Construct a variable name in PHP from a string and another variable

Posted on by

The “Shop” page of this site is a php page which displays an amazon a-store category and the second level tabs appropriate to that category, using a “node id”.

The html for the tabs is defined in an included page like this:

<?php
//-------------//
$tabs6= '<ul class="yui-navset bd">';
$tabs6.='<li class="first selected" id="tab6"><a href="shop.php?tab=6" >Web Development</a></li>';
$tabs6.='<li class="" id="tab180"><a href="shop.php?tab=180" >CSS</a></li>';
$tabs6.='<li class=" " id="tab183"><a href="shop.php?tab=183">Javascript</a></li>';
$tabs6.='<li class="last" id="tab181"><a href="shop.php?tab=181">DHTML</a></li>';
$tabs6.='</ul>';

$tabs180= '<ul class="yui-navset bd">';
$tabs180.='<li class="first " id="tab6"><a href="shop.php?tab=6" >Web Development</a></li>';
$tabs180.='<li class="selected" id="tab180"><a href="shop.php?tab=180" >CSS</a></li>';
$tabs180.='<li class=" " id="tab183"><a href="shop.php?tab=183">Javascript</a></li>';
$tabs183.='<li class="last" id="tab181"><a href="shop.php?tab=181">DHTML</a></li>';
$tabs180.='</ul>';

$tabs183= '<ul class="yui-navset bd">';
$tabs183.='<li class="first " id="tab6"><a href="shop.php?tab=6" >Web Development</a></li>';
$tabs183.='<li class="" id="tab180"><a href="shop.php?tab=180" >CSS</a></li>';
$tabs183.='<li class=" selected" id="tab183"><a href="shop.php?tab=183">Javascript</a></li>';
$tabs183.='<li class="last" id="tab181"><a href="shop.php?tab=181">DHTML</a></li>';
$tabs183.='</ul>';

?>
Continue reading

Site Optimization: use Google Suggest and Google Trends to determine top searches

Posted on by

Google Suggest and Google Trends are easy-to-use tools you might not have thought of using for search engine optimization (SEO).

Google Suggest suggests terms related to whatever keywords you type in, and lists the number of results for each one. According to the FAQ, it uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers.

Continue reading

SyncServer can take up 100% of CPU on OS X

Posted on by

On an underpowered G5 iMac running OS X 10.4, I spent a lot of time troubleshooting performance issues. One of them was the “spinning beachball” effect, where some process would take over for a moment, resulting in everything else hanging until it released some CPU.

On at least one of these instances, launching Activity Monitor showed that Sync Server was taking up 100% of the CPU every few minutes.

Apparently this is a common problem on both 10.4 and 10.5:

SyncServer Problem Post on Mac Forums

Continue reading

Voice recording with the iPhone

Posted on by
UPDATE 2: March 27, 2009 I’ve been using QuickVoice for a couple of months now. It’s good enough that I use it to record piano sessions and meetings. It is pretty sensitive. I did purchase the 15.00 syncing software which you need to pull the files off the iPhone if you haven’t jailbroken it.
UPDATE: Jan 24, 2009 Since this article was written, the app store was launched and there are now many Voice recording apps for the iPhone. Click here to search for the latest list of Voice Recorder applications available in the iTunes Store

Now you can record your voice with the iPhone (or any other phone), and get speech to text functionality as well!

Continue reading

Timing Issues and Javascript

Posted on by

Sometimes, when you use javascript to make a change to some element on a page, you will get a Javascript error along the lines of: “element ‘n’ has no properties.” You check your page, and yes, the element is definitely there, and it is definitely named correctly, and your syntax is definitely correct. So where is the problem?

Well, it may be a timing issue. If your script executes before the element targeted by the script has been rendered, it will not find the element. This can particularly be a problem with frames or iframes. The solution is to move the function call to the bottom of the page, after the element has loaded.

Continue reading

How to analyze Captivate Movie structure

Posted on by

If you want to create widgets that control Captivate files with new functions, other than the standard playbar functions, you will need to develop them in flash. Here’s how to figure out what is going on in a Captivate movie file:

Create a Captivate movie, and publish it (Captivate 2) or export it to Flash (Captivate 3). To create my faster-slower widgets, I had to decompile it into an .fla (I used SWFdecompiler )

Open it in Flash, and start exploring the structure. If you are using version 3, by far the best tool you can use include the “debug movie” command.

Continue reading