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New 1and1 Control Panel

By
Andy
 – April 4, 2011Posted in: Web Development

After 1and1 rolled out a new version of their Cancellation Control Panel (http://contract.1and1.co.uk) they’ve now updated the design and functionality of the main Control Panel at http://my.1and1.co.uk – hopefully they will leave the old version available though at http://admin.1and1.co.uk as I can’t find anything any more!

The design is better but after they updated the Cancellation site, it didn’t work for me and I had to dig out the previous version so I could cancel some domains before their renewal date.

Hopefully this one will work well.

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Dreamweaver colour coding different file types / extensions

By
Andy
 – March 28, 2011Posted in: Software

I’ve been getting to grips with Drupal this month (phew, need sleep) and am now creating my own module to display a multi-step form. It’s essentially some PHP functions within a file with a .module extension and reading it black and white code view is not nice!

Here’s how to get .module, .info, .inc and other file extensions colour coded the same as .php files. These instructions are for Macs but if you look in the Program Files > Adobe > Dreamweaver directory (or whatever it’s called) you should be able to do it on Windows too. Open FInder and head to Applications > Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 > configuration.

First, find Extensions.txt, open with a text editor and after PHP5 near the top, add your file extensions, seperated by commas. Further down the file find the line that ends “PHP Files” and add the extensions in the as well.

Now go into the DocumentTypes folder and open MMDocumentTypes.xml with a text editor or Dreamweaver if you wish. Go down to about line 75 and add your extensions to winfileextension and macfileextension. Save, Close and then restart Dreamweaver.

Simples

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Administer Windows server with iPhone

By
Andy
 – March 14, 2011Posted in: Software, Windows

At one of my client they have a simple server doing file and print sharing. The server is running Linux and never has a problem however one of the printers it’s attached to prints on certificate paper out of a second draw and be wise it’s not used much it doesn’t get topped up, runs out of paper and no one notices for two weeks. In this time the Linux box marks that printer as unavailable and it goes offline. When they finally wonder why nothing is printing and put paper in they email me (even though I left detailed instructions on what to do).

To save me going into the office for stuff like this I set a port on the firewall to forward Remote Desktop to one of the admin PCs where I can use a browser to put it back online again.

Well tonight I was lying on the bed when I read the email and couldn’t be bothered to get my laptop so I got out my iPhone and a quick browse of the app store came up with a free remote desktop app. It’s called Mocha something and is surprisingly easy to use.

Mac OS, Linux and Windows working in harmony.

Plus since I wrote this using the WordPress App I now never have to leave my bed.

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Delete an individual item from Mac OS X trash

By
Andy
 – March 4, 2011Posted in: Software

So apparently when looking for the answer to this problem everybody says “trash is trash” and that you should just empty the trash and anything you wanted to keep in there shouldn’t be in the trash in the first place. Yeah, fine but sometimes there’s something that is in there that you might want to delete and keep everything else in there just in case. Maybe it’s a huge file and your running low on space.

Next most popular solution apart from “you can’t” is to create a folder on the Desktop, drag everything from the trash into there – apart from the file you want to remove and then empty the trash. You then drag everything back into the trash. It works but seems a bit of a pain.

Here’s the best solution. Open terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and also open Trash. Don’t be put off by using terminal – this really isn’t technical at all. Now type “rm ” into the Terminal. Then drag and drop the file you want to permanently delete into the Terminal window. The path of the file will appear. Press enter and the Terminal will just go to the next line. You should see that the file has been removed form the Trash. In case you’re curious, “rm” is the Unix / Linux / Mac OS X command for remove – i.e. it deletes files instead of moving them to the trash. This also works for any file anywhere on your hard drive.

Simples

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How to Hibernate an iMac

By
Andy
 – March 3, 2011Posted in: Hardware, Software

I’ve gone completely Apple native – iPhone, Macbook Pro from work so I can do stuff at home, iMac at work and now I’m trying to any of our clients I meet that their business would be somehow better if I had an iPad. The only thing I miss from the world of Windows is the ability to hibernate the PC.

The Macbook is vastly impressive when it comes to power management – you close the lid and it goes into sleep mode – open the lid and it wakes up nearly instantly. The best bit is that it also goes into what Apple calls Safe Sleep. I can just about go an entire weekend where I may not use my Macbook and so on Monday morning when I go to work it it’s just got enough juice to wake up. The best bit is if it’s run out of juice. While it goes into sleep mode (low power with everything stores in RAM) it also copies everything onto the hard drive so if the battery dies, when you power up it still has everything the way you left it – i.e. Hibernate.

What I wanted though was the same functionality on my iMac since if I have some Flash to do at the weekend I’ll occasionally take my iMac home and having to close everything down and start it all up again is a pain. Well turns out that there’s a dashboard widget that does the job called Deep Sleep which puts a picture of the moon on your dashboard and when clicked, copies everything to disk and shuts it down.

Just be warned that a iMac does not have a battery – make sure it’s finished copying everything and turned off before you pull the plug!

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Removing the bubble from embedded Google Maps

By
Andy
 – March 1, 2011Posted in: Uncategorized

If you are creating a website with a Google Map embedded on the contact page in an iFrame but the Customize and Preview from the Google Maps page only let you embed it with the bubble in it you can remove this by going to the end of your iFrame code and adding &iwloc=near after the output=embed.

Should fix all your problems

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How to clear the Facebook cache

By
Andy
 – February 28, 2011Posted in: Web Development

If you’re using FBML or designing a Facebook App and you’re hosting a CSS, JavaScript or image file you’ll find that Facebook caches it on their servers and uses that copy in your App.

To get rid of the cached version while you’re developing. Add ?v=2 to the end of the file and then increment it when needed.

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Planet Derby – Valentines

By
Andy
 – February 26, 2011Posted in: Web Development

As mentioned previously we were working on a Valentines version of Planet Derby. Well it was ready for valentines day and you can have a go at Planet Derby : Valentines

It’s much better if you’ve got a webcam

Delete autocorrect entry from iPhone dictionary

By
Andy
 – February 26, 2011Posted in: Software

So everyone has got words in the iPhone dictionary that get autocorrected to something you use more regularly. Mine has now started replacing “in” with “i’n” which is annoying because firstly I don’t know how that got in there and secondly, I use the word in quite a lot.

Yeah, I can click the cross and change it back to in but I’d prefer to get rid of the entry. You can go into Settings > General > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary and get rid of all your personal additions but that’s a bit extreme.

The correct way of doing it is start a text, type the word in and when the cross comes up, press it. Do this about five times and it will be removed from the dictionary.

Simples.

Planet Derby

By
Andy
 – February 9, 2011Posted in: Flash Development

Check it out! We’ve been creating Planet Derby for the University of Derby.

So far we’ve done Planet Derby and Planet Derby Chirstmas.

Currently working on Valentines edition which will be followed by Easter version.

Update – 11/4/2001
We’ve now added a Valentines version and a Mother’s Day version but I don’t know if there’s going to be an Easter version or not.

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