From news.com, emphasis added:

With IE8, Hachamovitch discussed Microsoft’s commitment to compatibility. He relayed a story of what his kids used to say whenever they had Internet problems.

“They’d ask ‘Daddy, did you break the web?’” Hachamovitch said. “Most of the time I could honestly say ‘No.’“

In a broader sense though, Hachamovitch said, that others might disagree that Microsoft, had in fact broken the Web. “Web developers might answer the question differently,” he said.

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Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/.hostname/username/domain.com/wp-content/plugins/myplugin/myplugin.php:345) in /home/.hostname/username/domain.com/wp-includes/pluggable-functions.php on line 272

I feel your pain. It’s one of the more cryptic error messages I’ve run into. You need to trim the whitespace from the end of your php file. In this example, the file myplugin.php has 345 lines. Delete everything after the closing ?$gt;.

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This unobtrusive javascript snippet (below) will add “highlighting” effects to textareas and text and password input fields. Just define “onBlur” and “onFocus” CSS class styles. The extra bonus (provided exclusively by me <grin/>) is that this function supports multiple class names for the highlighted elements. So your input of class “niftyInput” becomes an input of class “niftyInput onBlur” and, when it’s active, “niftyInput onFocus”.

function addHighlightFunction(field) {
  field.onfocus = function () {
    var N = this.className;
    this.className = N.substring(0, N.length - 7) + ' onFocus';
  }
  field.onblur = function () {
    var N = this.className;
    this.className = N.substring(0, N.length - 8) + ' onBlur';
  }
  field.className = field.className + ' onBlur';
}
function initHighlight() {
  if (!document.getElementsByTagName) { return; }
  var allfields = document.getElementsByTagName('input');
  for (var i=0; i<allfields.length; i++) {
    var field = allfields[i];
    var fieldType = field.getAttribute('type')
    if ((fieldType == 'text') || (fieldType == 'password') ) {
      addHighlightFunction(field);
    }
  }
  var allfields = document.getElementsByTagName("textarea");
  for (var i=0; i<allfields.length; i++){
    var field = allfields[i];
    addHighlightFunction(field);
  }
}
function addLoadEvent(func) {
  var oldonload = window.onload;
  if (typeof window.onload != 'function') {
    window.onload = func;
  } else {
    window.onload = function() {
      if (oldonload) {
        oldonload();
      }
      func();
    }
  }
}
addLoadEvent(initHighlight);

This is adapted from a script by Adam Kalsey, which also uses Simon Willison’s addLoadEvent function.

The effect above is accomplished with this CSS:

.onBlur { border:1px dotted #888; }
.onFocus { border:1px solid #F00; }

Elegant, huh? And if you want these behaviors to be form-specific, try something like this:

#Search .onBlur { border:1px dotted #888; }
#Search .onFocus { border:1px solid #F00; }
#Login .onBlur { border:2px solid #AAA; }
#Login .onFocus { border:2px solid #333; }

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I’ve always appreciated the profoundly surreal pedagogical approach popularized by why the lucky stiff (who is a shatter-brained, god-eating holy madman).

I couldn’t agree more.

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1. Host a domain on a server with Rails support (e.g. Dreamhost shared hosting).
2. Create three MySQL databases. Call them portfolio_development, portfolio_production, and portfolio_test.
3. Create the Rails application skeleton (folder structure, config files, etc.).
   [host]$ pwd
/home/username
[host]$ rails portfolio
create
create app/controllers
create app/helpers
create app/models
create app/views/layouts
***
create public/stylesheets
***
create config/database.yml
create config/routes.rb
***
create script/generate
***
4. Configure your new skeletal app.
1. Edit config/database.yml — set up database hostname, username, and password.
2. Edit config/routes.rb — direct the root to “admin”: change line 14 to:
   map.connect '', :controller => "admin"
3. Link from webroot (here, a folder called “domain.com”) to rails public directory (”portfolio/public”). This is good for security. We don’t want our source files to be under the webroot, where they may accidentally be exposed. ls -l will confirm that we’ve correctly created the link.
   [host]$ ln -s ../portfolio/public domain.com/portfolio
[host]$ ls -l domain.com
total 176
***
lrwxrwxrwx 1 username unixgid 16 2006-11-22 13:40 portfolio -> ../portfolio/public
***
4. Rename index.html to index.html.old.
   [host]$ cd portfolio
[host]$ mv public/index.html public/index.html.old
5. Check the setup by browsing to http://domain.com/portfolio — which gives an error. That’s expected, though, because we haven’t created the “Admin” controller that it needs.
5. Create the database table needed for our app. Save the following as db/create.sql and execute it on portfolio_development:
   drop table if exists designs;
create table designs (
id int not null auto_increment,
title varchar(255) not null,
about text null,
image varchar(255) not null,
caption varchar(255) null,
primary key (id)
);
6. Generate a scaffold. Rails will look for the corresponding table, and automagically give us CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) functionality for it!
   [host]$ ruby script/generate scaffold Design Admin
***
create app/models/design.rb
create test/unit/design_test.rb
create test/fixtures/designs.yml
create app/views/admin/_form.rhtml
create app/views/admin/list.rhtml
create app/views/admin/show.rhtml
create app/views/admin/new.rhtml
create app/views/admin/edit.rhtml
create app/controllers/admin_controller.rb
create test/functional/admin_controller_test.rb
create app/helpers/admin_helper.rb
create app/views/layouts/admin.rhtml
create public/stylesheets/scaffold.css
   “Design” is the name of the model, “Admin” is the name of the controller. Now that we have created the AdminController, we should see something cool at http://domain.com/portfolio! It’s our bare-bones (but working!) application.
7. Time to pretty it up. Let’s customize the listing view.
1. Edit app/views/admin.rhtml to something like this:
   <div id="wrap"><div id="wrap2"><h1>Design List</h1>
<%
odd_or_even = 0
for design in @designs
odd_or_even = 1 - odd_or_even
%>
<div class="ListLine<%= odd_or_even %>">
<div class="ListActions">
<%= link_to 'Show', :action => 'show', :id => design %>
<%= link_to 'Edit', :action => 'edit', :id => design %>
<%= link_to 'Destroy', { :action => 'destroy', :id => design }, :confirm => 'Are you sure?', :post => true %>
</div>
<h3 class="ListTitle"><%= h(design.title) %></h3>
<div class="ListImage">
<a xhref="<%= design.image %>"><img xsrc="<%= design.image %>"/></a><br/>
<span class="ListCaption"><%= h(design.caption) %></span>
</div>
<span class="ListAbout"><%= design.about %></span><br/>
</div>
<% end %>
<%= link_to 'Previous', { :page => @design_pages.current.previous } if @design_pages.current.previous %>
<%= link_to 'Next', { :page => @design_pages.current.next } if @design_pages.current.next %><br/>
<%= link_to 'New design', :action => 'new' %>
</div></div>
2. Edit public/stylesheets/scaffold.css to something like this:
   body { background-color: #AAA; color: #333; }
***
.ListTitle { color:#244; font-weight:bold; font-size:x-large; }
.ListAbout { color:#244; }
div.ListImage { float:left; width:173px; margin:0 10px 0 0; }
div.ListImage img { width:173px; border:none; }
.ListCaption { font-style:italic; font-size:x-small; }
.ListActions { font-size:x-small; text-align:right; padding-left:1em; float:right; }
.ListLine0 { background: #D3E9CB; }
.ListLine1 { background: #F7F9DF; }
.ListLine0, .ListLine1 { padding:10px; border:2px solid #333; margin:20px; }
h1 { text-align:center; }
#wrap { width:787px; margin:10px auto; background:#FFF; border:4px solid #444; }
#wrap2 { padding:10px; }
3. Look at your pretty, pretty site and think of the possibilities.
   

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Ruby :: Overview

Ruby is a modern programming language. It is powerful and extensible like LISP and Python. It is forgiving and flexible like PHP, concise and coherent like Python. End your line with a semi-colon — or don’t. An ellipsis is three dots, but two is ok — we know what you mean. Need a variable? No need to declare it, no special symbol to mark it; just use it.

ruby = "A modern programming language which you will love."
ruby_adjectives = [ "modern", "powerful", "flexible", "concise" ]
ruby_adjectives << [ "clean", "elegant" ]


Ruby’s conventions reflect the collective common sense that programmers have developed through trying times. For examples, naming conventions just make sense: Little things — local, ephemeral variables and methods — use lowercase. Big things — modules, classes, constants — use uppercase. Lowercase names use underscores to split words, and uppercase names use camelcase words.

message_to_readers = "Please comment!"
DesiredCommentCount = 5
if (BlogPost.comment_count < DesiredCommentCount) print message_to_readers